Jim Lacey was brought up in Brooklyn, New York, in the Golden Age before the Dodgers departed for Tinseltown. He was the victim of a classical education under the auspices of the Jesuits at Brooklyn Prep and St. Peter's College, where he majored in Philosophy, English, and (well, almost) mathematics.
After a year at the University of Bern, Switzerland, studying German and English literature, as well as half a dozen other subjects, he became the first Teaching Assistant in the English department at Boston College. With an M.A. almost in hand, Jim did a stint as an artillery officer at Fort Benning, GA, returned to New York, married the love of his life whom he had met at a summer camp when she was 15 as soon as she graduated from Smith College, got a job teaching English at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and began to take courses at New York University. After a year of research at the University of Munich in Germany, he received a Ph.D. in American Civilization from NYU and was offered a job at Eastern, where he came in the fall of 1968.
At Eastern Jim co-founded the American Studies Program, chaired the English department, served on the Advisory Board of the Connecticut Review and the Board of Directors of the Henry Barnard Foundation, and was Director of the University Honors Program for ten years. While he was director, the program achieved regional and national recognition; as President of the Northeast Regional Honors Council, Jim organized the 2000 conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and presided over the annual conference in Brooklyn the following year.
In addition to developing new courses involving active learning, interdisciplinary study, and internships, Jim has been active professionally. He has read papers at national and regional conferences of the American Studies Association and the National Collegiate Honors Council, and has published chapters in scholarly books, as well as reviews, reports, and articles in journals including the American Quarterly, Connecticut History, International Exchange, and American Studies International, for which he regularly reported on conferences of the German Association for American Studies.
Turning an avocation, sailing, to professional account, Jim developed an honors colloquium, New England and the Sea, and has published reviews, reports of conferences, and stories and articles on maritime history and boating in Messing About in Boats. It must also be confessed that Jim is a science fiction nut, who introduced a course and workshop on the subject at Eastern and is guilty of having published a novelette, "Witch Children," in Galaxy, one of those garishly illustrated pulp magazines that flourished in the heyday of hard-core science fiction. In recognition of his excellence in teaching, devotion to scholarship, and service to the university, Jim was the recipient of Eastern's Distinguished Faculty Member Award in 1999.
Though he retired in 2003, Jim ordinarily teaches a course about once a year. Recently he has offered ENG 235, The Bible as Literature, a course which he developed, and LAP 130, World Religions, a seminar for freshmen. Jim and Barbara Lacey, who is Professor Emerita of History at St. Joseph College, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in August, 2008. They have two children, Christopher and Beth, both of whom have Ph.D.s in science, and six grandchildren.