Professor Kermit Wonders Moyer II died at Cape Cod Hospital on March 8, 2024 at the end of a day spent with his family. The cause was advanced Parkinson’s disease. He was 80.
The son of Kermit Wonders Moyer and Frieda (Hess) Moyer, Kermit was born on Aug. 3, 1943 in Harrisburg, Pa. His father’s military career took the family to postings in Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Okinawa, Japan, all of which appear as settings in Kermit’s last book, The Chester Chronicles.
Kermit’s home away from home in his early years was a 100-year-old cabin in Caledonia State Park in Pennsylvania, where he and his cousins gathered in the summer. Memories of that environment appear in his short stories and poetry, which evoked childhood and the transition to young adulthood.
At 18, Kermit left for Chicago, where he studied with the poet Stephen Spender at Northwestern University. He majored in English and went on to earn his Ph.D. with a dissertation on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, later published as A Child of the Last Days.
As an assistant professor at American University in 1970, Kermit began to favor creative writing over the critical work that had demanded so much attention in his early career.
That was also the year he met Amy Gussack, who “walked into his classroom on the first morning of the first class” he taught there, Kermit wrote in a 2010 essay. The couple married in 1972 and honeymooned at Windward Cottages in Wellfleet, where Amy gave Kermit a crash course on how to summer on the Outer Cape, swimming in ponds, battling waves at Cahoon Hollow Beach, dining at Captain Higgins and the Bookstore, and marveling at sunsets. Every summer thereafter, they spent two weeks in June at Amy’s family home in Wellfleet, where Amy had vacationed since 1959.
He published his first story, “Compass of the Heart,” in the Georgia Review. Over the next 37 years, Kermit published stories regularly in the Hudson Review, Sewanee Review, Northeast Corridor, and Southern Review. Seven early stories were compiled in 1988 as Tumbling, which the New York Times called “a work of ringing authenticity.”
The Chester Chronicles, a novel in stories, came out in 2010. In a review, Richard McCann wrote that the stories were “astonishing, each so attentive, precise, evocative, and moving — the book is at once triumphant and elegiac.” The book won the L.L. Winship/Pen New England Award in 2011.
Kermit taught literature and creative writing at American University for decades, serving as chair of the literature dept. and director of the M.F.A. program. His students praised his high standards, honesty, and joy in their accomplishments. Many went on to publish novels and poetry, and Kermit kept their books in a place of honor above his writing desk.
Diagnosed with Parkinson’s at 51 in 1995, Kermit continued to teach, write, and travel, returning to Japan and visiting Italy several times. After the disease made it impossible for him to teach, he and Amy retired to Eastham in 2006, where friends renovated their new home to accommodate him.
He gave readings from The Chester Chronicles in Orleans and Chatham and loved walking at low tide at First Encounter Beach, even when he became prone to falling, because it was a soft landing; he would just get up and keep going.
Kermit loved jazz piano, Keith Jarrett especially, and songwriters like Josh Ritter, whom he brought to American University to perform. He learned to play the harmonica and once played in a show of Bob Dylan’s music at the Music Center at Strathmore near Washington, D.C. He enjoyed the music scene on the Outer Cape, especially Chandler Travis and the Rip It Ups.
“Kermit was perfect,” Amy said. “He was attentive and supportive, and he let me run the show so he could write.”
He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Amy Gussack, of Eastham; his sister, Candy Carter, of Sarasota, Fla.; his niece, Leslee Brackin, and husband John of Tampa, Fla. and their children Jack and Anna Grace; and by the Gussack family: Lisa Gussack of Brewster, Nina Gussack of Orleans, Faith Gussack of Philadelphia, David Gussack of Wellfleet, and nieces and nephews Adam, Jonathan, Becca, Daniel, Benjamin, Asher, and Natasha. He is also survived by a circle of close friends: David Keplinger, Bobbi Whalen, Jim Youngerman, Jane Goodrich, Dave Singleton, Dori Sless, David Sless, Soyoko Higaki, George Lehner, and many more.
A memorial celebration is planned for June 9. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you read something Kermit wrote or listen to him on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show at kermitmoyer.net.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this obituary, published in print on March 28, incorrectly stated Kermit Moyer’s birth year and age. He was born in 1943 and was 80 when he died.
