Terry Gordon Colbert was born February 3, 1946, and was raised in Galesburg, Illinois. He studied English as an undergraduate and graduate at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and also did some graduate work in religious studies in Evanston, where he met his partner Jim Mason in 1977. They lived in Illinois and Kansas before moving in 1996 to San Francisco. Terry retired from the University of California, San Francisco, in 2011. He and Jim are associate members of the San Francisco Fog Rugby Football Club.
