McManis, Jack, 1917-1989

Jack McManis (1917-1989) was born in Chicago. During World War II, McManis served in the Navy as a regular seaman. During the mid-1940s, he was one of the top ten amateur tennis players in the United States. In 1951 he married Jean Weldon, with whom he would have one son. He lived in New York City for a time before studying English at the University of Michigan and then transferring to Columbia, where he received his bachelor's degree in English in 1953 and master's degree in American Literature in 1955. McManis taught freshman composition for one year at Hobart College and worked for New York Life Insurance Company before coming to Penn State in 1957. He taught in the English department for the next 25 years. For much of that time, he was the director of the department's poetry workshops. During this time he also wrote openly about his alcoholism and recovery, published poems in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, served as associate editor of Pivot Magazine, and judged the poetry competition at the annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. McManis retired from Penn State in 1982, and died in 1989.

Poet Jack McManis taught English at The Pennsylvania State University from 1957 to 1982. He joined the Penn State English Department in 1957, became assistant professor in 1963, and retired in 1982 having published his poetry in a variety of venues. The author, Donald Newlove, of Greenwich Village, New York City, wrote Sweet Adversity (1978), The Painter Gabriel, Eternal Life, Curanne Trueheart, and the "life study" Those Drinking Days: Myself and Other Writers. Both wrote openly about their alcoholism and recovery.