September 9, 2024 | By Jennifer Levin

St. John’s Santa Fe is turning 60! To celebrate, we’ll be looking back at key figures, moments, and movements from the campus’s past, all of which have proved instrumental in transforming the foothills of Monte Sol into a beloved home for generations of Johnnies. We chatted with Pioneer Class graduate Lieutenant Colonel Chester Carl Bostek while taking a trip down memory lane—one that will be followed shortly by a literal return to Bostek’s college days when he attends September 2024’s in-person Homecoming festivities.

As a teenager in Redondo Beach, California, Lieutenant Colonel Chester Carl Bostek (SF68) was active in the local Unitarian Church, where his Sunday School teacher, Robert Thompson (Class of 1945), taught classes as St. John’s-style seminars and encouraged Bostek to consider attending the college himself. “I was inspired by the seminar concept, the small classes, the exchange of ideas,” Bostek says. “It just so happened that the year I finished high school they were opening a new campus in Santa Fe. I like the West, so that was appealing.”

Bostek enlisted in the military a year after graduating from St. John’s and spent 27 years as a registered nurse anesthetist in the army and the Air Force, followed by many years in the field as a civilian. Retired since 2018, Bostek and his wife live between Alaska, Colorado, and Florida, and travel frequently; we caught up with him over the phone as he sat at Denver International Airport awaiting a flight to London.

Bostek, a donor to the college, will attend Homecoming in Santa Fe on September 13–15, 2024.

What do you remember about your first days on campus?
There was a wonderful sense of community right away. But my roommate didn’t even make it through the first night. I don’t remember his name; I’m not sure I met him. I went into the dorm room, and he had stuff there, and he signed the book that night when we all met as a class for the first time. But then he disappeared.

What was Santa Fe like in the 1960s?
Small, artsy, friendly. We got to know folks because people in town were interested in what the college was doing. People from town would frequently come to Friday Night Lectures and have dinner at the college. There wasn’t any transportation to speak of, so students walked down to the Three Cities of Spain, which was one of our favorite coffee shops on Canyon Road. I loved the architecture and the climate, the history and the culture. Everything about it was exotic to me, coming from Los Angeles.

Do you recall any world historical events or happenings on campus?
I don’t remember us being politically active as a group. Looking back at the things that were going on at the time, it really had little influence on the college. We were very insular. Allen Ginsberg once showed up with his hippie entourage in the student center, and a bunch of us sat around the tables talking to them, but I remember thinking they didn’t have much to offer and that they were dirty and smelly. As a group, we were unimpressed. And there were people from sororities and fraternities who came [to encourage us to form a Greek system], and it was like, “Are you kidding?”

Do you have a standout memory from seminar?
The first memory that comes to mind is how everyone smoked in class in those days—there were ashtrays all over the seminar tables. This guy who was not a smoker decided the way to never become a smoker was to put five cigarettes in his mouth and smoke them all. He was tilting his chair back—you know how those chairs are—and he tilted back so far that he fell over, flat on the ground, with all those lit cigarettes in his mouth. He never smoked again.

You graduated in the middle of the Vietnam draft, and you chose to enlist. Do you come from a military family?
I’ve always had kind of a pro-miliary bent—probably because my mother was in the Marine Corps during World War II—but it wasn’t a military family. I was opposed to the Vietnam War. I thought it was wrong. But I had a sense of duty. I never intended to make a military career; it’s just one of those things that happened. Anesthesia was kind of an accidental discovery. When I originally enlisted in the army, I volunteered for officer candidate school, but when I was waiting for a class date, a notice came out about a shortage of operating room technicians, and I decided that would be a better fit for me. I was going through the training course at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, which was the center for the nurse anesthesia program, and that’s where I discovered that specialty.

What are you looking forward to about Homecoming? 
We’re going to stop in Taos to eat at Orlando’s, and then we will eat our way through every good place in Santa Fe. I gain weight whenever I go to a reunion. I’m looking forward to the As You Like It seminar, seeing my classmates, and meeting current students. At previous Homecomings, I’ve been pleased to see so many students from overseas and how much support they have.

What lasting impacts has St. John’s had on your life?
I think the most important thing is to think critically when we see things in the news—not just to accept them at face value, but to try to put them in broader context and figure out what’s really underlying things. A fellow student, Hugh Hazelrigg, taught me how to process film and work in the darkroom. That really fueled a love of photography that I pursue to this day. The college was my true home. For years I would have dreams about being back there, and every now and then, I still dream that I am there again as a student. Those four years were among the happiest of my life.