Bellingham man to recount his life’s adventures at Blaine library

The Blaine library is hosting a talk by a man who grew up in China, was interned at a Japanese prison camp during World War II, crossed the Alps with an Indian elephant and became an inventor in Silicon Valley.

John Hoyte will be speaking at the Blaine library on Saturday, March 2 at 10:30 a.m. He recounts these uncommon adventures in his memoir, Persistence of Light, which was published in August 2018.

According to his website, Hoyte was born in 1932 in Ping Yang Fu, China, to medical missionary parents. He attended a British-run boarding school at Chefoo, Shantung Province along with his three brothers and two sisters. During World War II, the school was interned by the invading Japanese at the Weihsien Prison Camp, which was later liberated by parachutists.

After the war, the family settled in England, where Hoyte completed his education at Forest School, Essex, and St. John’s College, Cambridge.

After two years in the army as an instructor in electronics, Hoyte worked in British industry for three years. In 1959, he led the British Alpine Hannibal Expedition over the Alps with Jumbo, an Indian elephant from the Turin Zoo. The expedition garnered international media coverage and a seven-page feature story in Life Magazine.

The goal of the expedition was to follow the military general Hannibal’s route over the Alps with an elephant, in order to test theories about which way Hannibal had gone. Hannibal famously crossed the Alps with African elephants in order to invade ancient Italy.

Coming to the U.S. at age 27, Hoyte worked as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard Corporation in Palo Alto, California for six years, and was awarded a patent.

He then founded his own company, Spectrex Corporation, in Silicon Valley based on a direct reading spectroscope, invented by Fred Vreeland, who is Hoyte’s uncle. After 50 years as president of Spectrex, he sold the company to his employees.

Hoyte now lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife, the poet Luci Shaw.

“I recently spoke with someone who has heard Mr. Hoyte speak before and said he was engaging and had quite a life story,” said Debby Farmer, Blaine branch manager of the Whatcom County Library System.