My name is Harry Coverston. I taught for the Philosophy Department at UCF for 13 years beginning as an adjunct, then as a full-time instructor and finally as a lecturer. I retired in 2015.

I came to the department with an eclectic academic background. I had majored in History at the University of Florida while minoring in Journalism and gaining Secondary Education certification. After teaching in Florida’s public schools for three years, I returned to UF to obtain a law degree. I then practiced law in Orlando for six years. Five of those years I worked as a public defender and private side court appointed counsel for juvenile offenders, mentally ill clients facing Baker Act commitment and with families and children involved in the dependency system.

In 1991 I closed my law partnership and left a full-time appointment teaching Political Science at Valencia College, drove across the country to Berkeley, CA to attend seminary at the Graduate Theological Union. I obtained a Masters of Divinity and would be ordained an Episcopal priest there. After four years in the Bay Area I returned to Tallahassee to complete a Ph.D. in Religion, Law and Society at Florida State University graduating in 2000.

I am a sixth generation Floridian and a fourth generation educator. My great grandparents were named Reed and Wright. Like them, I guess I was destined to be a teacher. I have taught students at every level from fifth grade to doctoral level over a 33 year career, much of it spent in higher education serving the people of Florida.

At UCF I taught courses in religious studies, a wide range of humanities courses and a course in the Philosophy of Law. Teaching general humanities courses is humbling on a good day. These courses cover the history, arts, architecture, literature, music, philosophy and religion of human civilizations (prompting students to describe these courses as “Stone Age to the Space Age”). No one can be an expert in all of those subjects. But what I discovered as a side benefit of teaching these courses was that it allowed me to continue to learn, to deepen understandings I brought to that teaching and to expose me to names, places and events I had never previously heard of.

I am a better human being for having taught these courses. And I continue to ask myself and others the questions I regularly posed to my students: What does it mean to be human and how do we know? And, when considering a given socially construction, Cui Bono? Good for whom? And at whose expense?

By the end of my time at the university, it was clear that chapter of my life was ending. As I saw my courses increasingly moved into asynchronous online format where I never met my students, I realized that the gifts I brought to my teaching, largely rooted in interpersonal classroom interactions and advising, were no longer what the university was demanding. I had once told myself that I would only leave the classroom feet first, breathing my last at the end of a lecture standing behind a lectern. That was not to be. But it reminds me of an old rabbinical joke: If you want to make G-d laugh, tell G-d your plans.

In my retirement, I continue to do the things that I have always loved. I tend a small Jungle in the middle of Orlando, I write and I preach and celebrate at my parish, St. Richard’s Episcopal Church in Winter Park. I spend time with my husband, our fur and fin babies and with my two siblings who both live within an hour and a half from us. And I value the wonderful family of choice I have been given over my 70 years of life.

Through a UCF Philosophy colleague who retired the same time I did, Kristin Congdon, I became involved with a local justice group, the Alliance for Peace and Justice, an affiliate of the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery which has coordinated the commemorations of lynching victims across America. Our local group was responsible for the marker in front of the Orange County Regional History Museum commemorating lynching victim July Perry as well as the marker commemorating Arthur Henry at the Wells’built Museum in the Parramore District. The latter came about primarily due to my research on that lynching in 1925.

This year my husband, Andy, and I will celebrate our 50th anniversary as a couple. In August we will celebrate our 14th anniversary as a legally married couple, having gotten married on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court underneath the inscription “Equal Justice for All.” We had come there to get our share of that equal justice and to hold our country accountable to its stated ideals.

I am grateful for my time at UCF. I learned from some very bright colleagues there. I was also able to engage in educational travel extensively including a summer spent in Brazil as a Fulbright scholar and another at Brandeis University and Israel as a Schusterman scholar. I am also deeply grateful for the recognition of my teaching as the recipient of the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching award in 2009.

But the greatest reward for my time and the life energies I expended at UCF is watching the students I taught setting the world on fire. I often referred to them as my Jedis, not so much because I envisioned some Evil Empire they were fighting but because I knew that their talents, their values and their enthusiasm for making the world a better place were badly needed by the world we all share. It was always a privilege to teach them and to write the many letters of recommendation I provided these students in whom I still deeply believe. They truly have the power to change the world. And it is my gift now, in my retirement, to watch them flourish, raise their beautiful families and to prove their old school marm right about them being Jedis.

One thing is for certain - the Force is decidedly with them. And for that we should all be grateful.

[Image: New Year’s Day, 2024, Cape Canaveral Beach, FL]