His contemporaries may be retired, but this UT grad has a new lease on his writing life.

By Chester D. Campbell (Knoxville, ’49)
UT Golden Grads have been off The Hill for many years, but if you think they’re "over the hill," think again. Take my case. Though graduating in 1949 with the first class to complete the journalism curriculum on the Knoxville campus, I recently started a new career at age 76. My thriller novel, Secret of the Scroll, was published in October 2002 by Durban House.
The plot involves retired Air Force criminal investigator Greg McKenzie and his wife, Jill. They are caught in a struggle between militant groups of Palestinians and Israelis over an ancient parchment scroll the Americans unwittingly bring back from a Holy Land tour. The action takes place in Nashville and Israel.
In one respect, my new career culminates a 55-year apprenticeship that began during the summer of 1947. That’s when I wrote my first book while living in the basement of the old Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity house at 944 Temple Avenue (now Volunteer Boulevard). Looking back, the book was awful, but it hooked me on fiction.
I was studying journalism under legendary Prof. Willis Tucker and served as news editor of the Friday edition of the campus newspaper, The Orange and White. That fall I had the choice of moving up to managing editor or taking a job as reporter for The Knoxville Journal. The lure of a weekly paycheck was too much–I picked the morning daily.
A full load of daytime classes and a full schedule of night work at the newspaper ended any further fiction attempts for a time. But I learned a lot in both places that would help greatly in the years ahead.
Receiving an Air Force commission on graduation, I joined the Air National Guard and was called to active duty in December 1951. Shipped off to Korea, I served as an intelligence officer at 5^th Air Force Headquarters in Seoul.
After Korea, I got married and moved back home to Nashville. There I became involved in various phases of writing–another try at fiction (short stories), reporting for The Nashville Banner, free-lancing articles for national magazines like Coronet, The American Legion Magazine and The Rotarian, work in advertising and public relations, speech-writing for Gov. Buford Ellington. I founded Nashville Magazine in 1963, serving as editor until 1969. From 1970 until retirement in 1989, I worked as executive vice president of the Tennessee Association of Life Underwriters, editing its bimonthly magazine.
Around 1970 I turned out another novel, amassing a colorful collection of rejection slips. But by then my family had grown to include four kids–Steve, Mark, Anne and Betsy, all later UT Knoxville graduates–limiting my time for outside writing.
Retirement brought a new opportunity to create plots and characters. Booting up the computer, I began writing almost a book a year. However, I made no sales. My wife Alma’s death in 1998 after a long illness set back my efforts, but the new millennium brought a change in my luck. I completed Secret of the Scroll in mid-2000. After revisions suggested by a professional editor, the manuscript was bought by Durban House of Dallas. Their list appears at www.durbanhouse.com.
I had retired from the Air Force Reserve as a lieutenant colonel, which led to my fictional hero, Lt. Col. Greg McKenzie. I’m featuring him and his wife in a new mystery series. The first, Designed to Kill, is set for release by Durban House in 2003.
When people ask, I say I’m retired. But don’t believe it. My new wife Sarah and I live in Madison, Tennessee, where I’m hard at work on the new career.