Burning
at the
Grassroots

Inside the
Dean Machine

Dana Dunnan just finished six years as a visiting scholar at a major university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did his undergraduate work at the University of New Hampshire, and his graduate work at Stanford University. Dana taught at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University, and served fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley. He spent twenty-six years at Masconomet Regional High School in topsfield, Massachusetts; two of them were years that he describes as enjoyable. Dana worked as a volunteer in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire office of the Dean campaign, making phone calls, entering data, leading house meetings, and serving as Seniors Outreach Coordinator, but was excluded from all campaign strategy discussions. A resident of Greenland, New Hampshire, Dunnan and his wife Judy also have a log cabin that they built in Walden, Vermont. They first met Howard Dean when he was campaigning for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont in 1989, and have followed his career ever since.

A graduate of Stanford University and the University of New Hampshire, Dana Dunnan has taught at Harvard University, Phillips Exeter Academy and in public high school. He is 52, and married to his college sweetheart, a speech pathologist and assistive communications expert. A member of the National Writers Union, he was a Teamster loading ice cream trucks during hot summers in Minnesota., then an NEA member and AFT affiliate member while he was a teacher. He is now a member of the National Writer's Union.

As a teacher, Dunnan taught journalism, English, chemistry, physics and physical science. He was an officer in his local union, published a column on education in local papers, and helped direct Massachusetts' construction of the curriculum frameworks now used as a basis for statewide assessment. He worked with the Harvard Teacher Education Program, mentoring as a teaching practitioner, supervising student teachers, and doing admissions work.

Dunnan's father was a school superintendent, a change agent who moved every five years or so, when he had made enough enemies through the changes he brought. As a result, Dana Dunnan lived in Malone, New York, Meadville, Pennsylvania, Springfield, Illinois, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Peabody, Massachusetts. Dunnan spent the chronological years counted as adolescence in the Twin Cities, where his father, Donald Dunnan, was the superintendent of schools as St. Paul wrestled with integration in the late 1960's.

In the last of his six years as a visiting scholar at MIT, Dunnan worked as a volunteer in the campaign of insurgent Howard Dean. His experiences lead him to write his first book. "Burning at the Grassroots" combines personal, political, and cultural perspectives.

"The cultural values I developed growing up in the Twin Cities shaped what I was trying to do in my book. I worked on floods on the Mississippi, I went to Sons of Norway picnics, I embraced the Midwestern values of family and neighborliness that our fast-paced society has too-often lost today."

"My values came from parents who began their adult lives in a country shaped by the Depression, which guided what I was trying to do in my book. 'Burning at the Grassroots' is as much about American culture as it is about politics. I grew up with the Midwestern values that make 'Heartland of America' more than a geographic statement."

Dunnan talks in "Burning at the Grassroots: Inside the Dean Machine" about boyhood friends who faced the Vietnam-era draft in very different ways. "There are heroes in everyday life, and I grew up around them. Each of us must step forward as Americans right now-. Lincoln must come from within each of us."

Dunnan is a member of the National Press Club, and has done interviews with nationally syndicated radio shows and print journalists. The book was written between February and May of this year, and came out on July 4th.

He has no children, but still has boxers, the same breed he grew up with in the Midwest. His last magazine article was on the canine genome project at MIT, a study of genetics and health that started with the genetic material of a boxer.

He has a home on the Seacoast of New Hampshire and a log cabin that he and his wife built in northern Vermont. He has begun lining up interviews for his next book, a novel on basketball and the human spirit. So far, he has discussed the book with Bill Bradley, Bill Russell, and various other past and current members of the Celtics organization. His work on the new book will begin after the November election.

Dunnan is available for further interviews at (802) 533-2243 or (503) 433-0173.

To order the paperback version of
Burning at the Grass Roots: inside the Dean machine
for $9.99 click here: