I was born in Plymouth, England, in the first half of the last century (phew! that makes me sound old...).  Here's a picture of me as a little one in Plymouth. 

Nothing much to report until age 5 when our family immigrated to Canada when I was five years old.  The most exciting claim to fame around that activity was when our ship was cutting through the spring ice on the St. Laurence River and hit ice too thick to break up.  We ended up listed to an angle sufficient for my brother and sister to toboggan down the ship's hallways on carpet mats turned upside down.  We had to be rescued by tugs, who pulled us off the ice and broke through the rest of the way to Montreal.  The photo to the left is us arriving off the boat.  I'm holding a teddy bear and my sister is in front of me in the foreground.

We finally made it to Vancouver, Canada, where I started nursery school.  We loved Vancouver but only stayed there a couple of years.  My father, still looking for an opportunity to build a life for his family, took us on to Los Angeles, California.  Within three years, he and my mother divorced.  She moved us back up to Vancouver, where she began a new life and I grew up.  My brother joined the LDS ("Mormon") Church in L.A. and my mother and I joined later after we had returned to Vancouver.

Other than the new church, my passion during my high school years was dramatic arts.  I was in several high school plays including playing Judge Gaffney in "Harvey, the Invisible Rabbit," playing the invalid in Molière's "The Imaginary Invalid," and bouncing around the stage as the straw scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" (right).  A drama class project my friend and I did turned into, "The Conversation Piece," which was entered into the Vancouver Inter-High Drama Festival (winning "Best Original Script").  We also performed the play at Simon Fraser Univ. and our teacher entered it in the B.C. Drama Ass'n One-Act Play Festival as a non-competitive high-school entry (we were too young to compete with community theater).  I was also in several productions at the church including writing and directing "Faith and a Wall" and directing and acting in Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors," which was a big production.

At the University of Victoria, I was in several plays including being one of only two actors in "Moby Dick," which the newspaper called, "a beautiful, fast paced, bawdy, bubbling piece of delightful nonsense."  I also directed "The Assassins," which won the Canadian University Drama League Western Regional Festival.  I no longer remember the title, much less what the play was about.  Somewhere around here, I actually earned money for my acting -- the huge sum of $12.  I have the photocopy of the bills to prove it, though I no longer remember what the money was for ... probably for a mini-tour of "Moby Dick" or "The Assassins" but I'm not sure which one.  

In 1969, I left for a two-year LDS mission to Paris France.  This was a wonderful experience with many adventures and an adolescent dream come true.  Thirty years later, we returned to France and the adventure continued.  Now my entire family speaks French.  I consider myself a very lucky person.

I majored in French at BYU and started my real adventure when I married a beautiful young woman named Merry Huntamer.  A year later, I received my BA in French and we had our first child, Devon L. Ellis.  Then we completed work on an MS in CDFR, completing that in 1975.  Then we moved to WSU in Pullman, WA, to work on a PhD in Family Sociology and Social Psychology.  Steven G. Ellis was born later that same year.  In 1978, we moved to Stillwater, OK, where I began work in a department of FRCD at Oklahoma State University and where David P. Ellis and Braden J. Ellis were born.

Sometime around 1983, I became dissatisfied with conducting sociological research and publishing yet another article on family life.  Even my very best publications raced their way to a discouragingly early obsolescence.  I wanted to touch people's lives in some more meaningful way. I became interested in marriage and family therapy and began taking a few classes.  Soon I was completing practicum experiences at Starting Point II (an alcohol and drug detoxification facility) and the Parents' Assistance Center (an agency specializing in court-referred abusive/neglectful parents).  Then I began seeing clients at the Methodist Counseling Center in Oklahoma City and started earning various therapy credentials. 

In 1987, I completed a wonderful sabbatical leave from OSU.  We traveled up to Merry's hometown of Lacey, WA, and I went to work at Cascade Oaks, an adolescent alcohol and drug treatment facility.  I learned a tremendous amount and we loved being in Washington.  When we had to leave to go back to Oklahoma, the whole family was in tears.  I heard about a position available at Saint Martin's University teaching some of the courses I was most interested in (Family Therapy, Psychopathology, and Therapy Practicum).  To make a long story short, we got the job, sold our house in a miraculous manner and, two months after returning to Oklahoma, we were on the way back to Washington.  We've been here ever since and never regretted the decision to come to Saint Martin's.

More Photos of Growing Up
On to Merry Ellis mini-biography
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