Within the span of our lives, said Shakespeare, we play out several
characters through seven acts. This has been especially true for author JT Caldwell.

Act 1: Kentucky-born minister’s son and his two sisters travel almost continuously as their father preaches around the country, settling finally in Michigan.

Act 2: A teenager mesmerized by a performance of Carl Orffs’ Carmina Burana, makes the decision to become a professional singer. He attends the University of Michigan where he earns both undergraduate and masters degrees in vocal performance.

Act 3: He marries his high school sweetheart and prepares for life as a performer, husband and college professor.

Act 4: He’s drafted into the Army, where he trains to be a chaplain’s assistant. His year in Vietnam change his life forever. After his discharge, the effects of Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) begin to affect every facet of his life.

Act 5: He continues and excels in his career as a performer, conductor, and professor.

Act 6: He embraces writing as therapy and completes The Chaplain’s Assistant: God, Country and Vietnam as a way to deal with his PTSD and make sense of the world.

Today, far from completing Act 6, Caldwell remains an avid observer of veterans’ rights and military policies, politics, the environment and the sociological and political factors that influence the health of our combat veterans. Caldwell will retire from Central Michigan University in 2010, where he taught voice in the School of Music for thirty-six years. He lives in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, and will be writing, spending time with his family, and traveling with his partner of thirty years, Barbara Dixon, who appears in The Chaplain’s Assistant as “Liz.”