His master’s degree proved to be useless in finding a job in
the Los Angeles of 1970. After a
year of alternating unemployment with minimum wage jobs, he fulfilled a long
standing dream of his and joined the Peace Corps.
After training on the Big Island of Hawaii, Ridgell was sent
to what was then called the Truk District of the Trust Territory of the Pacific
Islands. Stationed on Puluwat, an
atoll 180 miles west of the main island of Truk (Chuuk), he taught English and
trained local teachers. During his
second year he traveled around among four islands, often by sailing canoe,
training brand new teachers. After
Peace Corps, Ridgell took a contract with the local government and stayed in
Chuuk for two more years, moving to Guam, where he’d gone to second and third
grade, in 1975.
On Guam he taught
high school and
worked part time as a disc jockey at a progressive rock station. By 1980 he had joined the faculty of Guam Community College
as an assistant professor. He is
currently a dean at the College.
Noticing the dearth of material on the Pacific Islands, he
wrote a textbook, PACIFIC NATIONS AND TERRITORIES, covering the islands of
Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Published by the College, it was a great success, filling a need long
ignored need. Bess Press in Hawaii
picked it up for a second, third, and fourth edition. The book has been in print since 1983. An elementary version, PACIFIC NEIGHBORS, is now in its second edition.
In 1991, the University of Guam published his short story
anthology "Bending to the Trade Winds, Stories of the Peace Corps Experience in
Micronesia." It is available
through Amazon.
In the 1980s he began work on a novel set in
Micronesia. Written as an adult
adventure/chase story the plot centers on a former Peace Corps volunteer who
kills a mob figure in revenge for the killing of his wife and brother, then runs
to the islands of Micronesia to elude hit men sent by his victim’s father. He didn’t find a publisher, Blue Ocean
Books, until 2010. The novel,
GREEN PEARL ODYSSEY, is available through Amazon and other book selling sites.
His current novel, published by Savant Books and Publications is THE ISLA VISTA CRUCIBLE. Writing it gave him the opportunity to wallow in nostalgia and see if he could recapture the spirit of his experiences at University of California at Santa Barbara in 1969-1970.
Reilly Ridgell
Author of THE ISLA VISTA CRUCIBLE (Savant 2012)