Ringside to Racism

Barbara Rowan was Black. Harry Gossett is White. When they married, interracial couples were extremely rare, and had only recently been made legal by the United States Supreme Court. Barbara, a linguist and a lawyer, taught Harry to allow her to deal with racists with humor. When death did them part, Harry decided to share some of his stories about his brilliant wife.

In the mid-20th century, overt racism was socially acceptable. Barbara Rowan, a well-educated polyglot, did not suffer racism in silence. She used humor to show her antagonists how wrong they were. She married the whitest man possible, Harry Gossett. They expected the worst. They loved and laughed together for nearly 18,000 days in a row. When he lost her to Covid-19, Harry decided to share some of their stories. Nothing morbid or maudlin. Their life together was a daily delight. When things did not go their way, motorcycle wrecks for example, they stayed focused on their mission in life: to make one another happy. And that paid great dividends.

Harry Gossett served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam era, but in California, not Vietnam. Throughout a twenty-year veteran of the FBI, he learned a wide variety of investigative techniques, but more importantly, he met Barbara Rowan, a federal prosecutor who became the love of his life. Later, they both worked for the 95th Congress. He returned to the FBI, and she became an Assistant Director of the Federal Trade Commission. Harry left the FBI to join Barbara in an investigative consulting firm which required them to travel the world on behalf of over eighteen hundred client companies during that thirty-five-year career. He wrote this book to share the happy details of their half century together.