Lewis Richard Luchs is the oldest of four siblings adopted from a children’s home into a single family, a story he tells in Children of the Manse, books one and two. He has had a life-long interest in abused and neglected children, served for years as a CASA volunteer in Lane County, and through his blogs, is an advocate on adoption issues.

 

Lewis has four sons and nine grandchildren. In 2016 he published Diplomatic Tales, a memoir of his career in diplomacy which took him to Madagascar, Mali, Singapore, France, Malaysia, and Australia. He also spent two years in Malawi working for the Anglican diocese there, and a summer in Guatemala enrolled in San Carlos University. In the course of his duties and as a tourist, Lewis visited 32 additional countries.

 

Lewis is a graduate of Beloit College (1957) and Seabury-Western's Graduate School of Theology (1961). In l983 he successfully completed a graduate program in military strategy and international relations at the National War College in Wash. D.C.

  

His passions include his wife Sharon–featured in the memoir The Story of Two Loves–his sons and grandchildren, writing his books, playing the piano, classical music, 30 to 40 mile bike rides, and the UO’s Insight Series. He is widely read in cultural anthropology, philosophy and theology.

 

One of his early birth family ancestors, Degory Priest, was among the pilgrims who made the Mayflower voyage. Priest's was the twenty-third signature on the Mayflower Compact.

       

Lewis chose Eugene as his retirement home after a two-year search and thought the following passage from The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham was written for him.

Here is the quote from The Moon and Sixpence
“Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men and women he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here he at last finds rest.”