Terry McCloskey '03 follows a nomadic spirit back to Princeton

As Terry McCloskey '03 takes in the lecture, gripping a pencil with a calloused hand, one can tell he is not like other students. If the thick mustache doesn't immediately distinguish him from classmates, abundant streaks of gray peeking from beneath McCloskey's blue Adidas baseball cap quickly give the game away.

At 48, McCloskey is the oldest member of the Class of 2003. Originally slated to graduate in 1976, his life story has as many twists and turns as the tangled underbrush near his farm in St Margaret's village in Belize.

An outdoor enthusiast and a born wanderer, McCloskey remembers feeling constricted as a young man by the academic regimen and social hierarchy of the University.

McCloskey recalled his friends embracing the Vietnam War protest atmosphere with long hair, anti-establishment rhetoric and a fair amount of cynicism. The Missouri native earned extra cash between classes selling hot dogs at a neighborhood "Weenie Man" cart.

At the end of sophomore year, McCloskey decided he wanted a change. Through the German department, he found a summer job at a library in Munich. There, he worked on his language skills, sampled German beer and developed a powerful appetite for foreign living. By August, he had decided not to return for his junior year.

"I really wanted to travel," he said. "I was very independent. I had made some money of my own and found that there was very little keeping me at Princeton. I also think I got kind of scared of having to choose a major."

From Germany, McCloskey traveled south, stopping for several months to join migrant workers picking grapes in southern France. Along with Spanish, Moroccan and Algerian fruit pickers, he would fill large wooden barrels with grapes before dumping them into a mule-powered cart.

"At a few of the farms where I worked," he said, "there were no machines at all. It was just the workers, the carts and the animals. From one of the fields you could look up and see the ramparts of a medieval French fortress. It was really exciting."

McCloskey moved on after the grape season ended. He hitchhiked through Italy, ending up on Crete where he took on various temporary jobs that included farm construction, olive-oil manufacturing and cucumber harvesting. A sympathetic farmer secured him a small cave to dwell in.

Travel continued into 1976, when McCloskey wandered through northern Africa, visiting Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia and left only when his possessions were stolen in Tanzania. He returned in June to the United States, where he moved through the Pacific Northwest sustaining himself through manual labor.

"In Oregon and Washington I picked cherries, apples and pears," he said. "My whole life was on my back – clothes, pots and pans, and a book or two. I walked most places I went."

In 1980, McCloskey arrived in Belize for the first time. For a short while, he tended land for an American farmer who provided him with seeds, equipment and land until a flood washed out the soil. For a year and a half, McCloskey pursued "catch and kill" employment, shifting jobs as new opportunities opened up. At the end of that time he was able to by a tract of land in near St Margaret's Village. To cultivate it he personally chopped down 40 acres of dense bush by himself.

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Twenty years later, McCloskey's 65-acre farm was a success, producing a wide range of products including corn, pineapples, beans, livestock and more. He had married the niece of one of the village men and fathered two sons, Oakie and Jeffie. The boys are now 8 and 6.

Since 1998, groups of Princeton undergraduates have been visiting the farm on Princeton Project in International Community service trips. For several years before then, the group had been working in a nearby village. When McCloskey saw a reference to the trip in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, he quickly suggested that they move the trip to a [national park near ] St. Margaret's.

In 1999, when their sons were 4 and 6, McCloskey and his wife Gabina decided that the children needed access to better education.

McCloskey suspected that his youngest son, Jeffie, needed special attention in the classroom and felt his son could only receive in the United States.

"They were going to a school that had 52 kids to a class and a teacher with a high school education," he recalled. "There was not much emphasis on schooling."

In addition to returning to the United States for his children's education, McCloskey decided to continue his own. He would try to finish his Princeton degree, more than 25 years after he had left it to follow a restless spirit.

And so his mission to complete unfinished business began. McCloskey's brother, Douglas McCloskey '78, began contacting the University to find out whether Terry could return and what sort of financial funds might be available. The University was very receptive to their inquiries, McCloskey said, though he didn't learn until after he arrived in the United States that he had received the full scholarship he needed to attend.

"I wasn't sure what was going to happen. If this hadn't worked out, I probably would have gotten a job in a factory. We just needed to be here for the kids," he said.

Things have gone well since they arrived. The University has helped to subsidize graduate-school housing for the McCloskeys. Both children attend Princeton-area public schools, and the younger one has recently received a cochlear implant to compensate for a hearing loss. He is also enrolled in a county special education school and receives free after-school tutoring, resources that would not have been available in Belize.

Both parents are working. In addition to taking a full course load, Terry works regular shifts at the graduate school dining hall. On the weekends and during breaks, he works with the University grounds crew. Gabina, who is still learning English, works full-time in the Rockefeller College kitchen.

Sometimes the two get lonely for their Belizean farm, McCloskey admits.

"But we are so happy for the kids, we forget about anything that's bothering us. Plus I've really enjoyed my classes here. Some of the professors are just great." Finally able to declare a concentration, he has chosen geosciences with a Wilson School environmental studies certificate.

McCloskey does draw a few stares. "Every day, a student or two will come up and ask me about myself," he says. Professors are often curious too, though they usually hold their questions until late in the term.

He notes, though, that he's used to being different. "Actually, here, I'm probably more similar demographically to everyone else than I am back home in Belize," he says. "It's just that here, people want to know more about me."

Like many students, McCloskey is undecided about his plans after finishing college. "I'm not sure," he says. "It depends on the kids, I guess. Actually, I'm thinking about applying to graduate school."