John Harmon McElroy

John Harmon McElroy's detective novel, Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker Murders (BFQM), is the first in a series portraying the illustrious man as a detective working clandestinely (see benfranklindetective.com). John was born in a small glass-manufacturing town on the banks of the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania, and two of his ancestors fought for American Independence in the Revolutionary War. A Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, John is also the author of four books on American cultural history. He and his wife, author Onyria Herrera McElroy, PhD, were married in Havana, Cuba in 1957. Their adventures together include spending an afternoon conversing with Ernest Hemingway at his home La Vigia outside Havana; planting 500 redwoods in Galicia, Spain, to commemorate Columbus’s world-changing voyage of discovery; making a 480-mile pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago; and John’s firewalking at a festival in Soria, Spain, that has celebrated the summer solstice that way since time immemorial. A graduate of Princeton University (which makes an appearance in BFQM), John spent two years as an ensign on a destroyer escort radar picket ship in the mid-Atlantic, keeping watch for Soviet bombers. He has twice been appointed a Fulbright Professor of American Studies (in Spain and Brazil), and after teaching American Culture in Poland during the summer of 1981 he became active in the Solidarity movement and founded Solidarity Tucson. He is also the founding host (2007) of the KVOI radio program America's Fabric, and is proud to say he’s visited all fifty states. John and Onyria live in Tucson, Arizona, and have four children, eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren. [Author photo courtesy of Ana Henderson]