Brian Chellas

In 1959 I went to Florida State as a music major, switched to philosophy the next year, 

and by fall 1962 was a philosophy graduate student at Stanford University. In 

December 1962 I married the first light of my life, Merry Elisabeth Morehouse, whom I 

had met at F.S.U. (in a course aptly titled “Modern Man's Search for Value”).  On the 

way to a Ph.D. I taught at F.S.U. and San Jose State College.  Afterward, from 1968, I 

was at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Michigan and for twenty years at the 

University of Calgary teaching, doing research, writing, and sometimes 

administrating.  The second light of my life, our daughter and only child Anne 

Morehouse Chellas, was born in 1969.  Semi, as she's called, is days from presenting the 

first grandchild, a baby boy. 

 In my 40s and 50s I traveled in the South Seas the Society Islands, the Cooks, 

Fiji, Tonga, the Samoas, the Tuamotus, Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia 

realizing a dream prompted by Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, which I read as a little boy, 

under the bedcovers with a flashlight.  Merry and I have also traveled widely in the 

United States and Europe. 

 I retired early, in 1997, and re-devoted myself to music and jazz guitar.  I play in 

combos, accompany singers, and have been a member of Calgary's Wednesday Night 

Big Band for more than twenty years.