The sight was disturbing enough on its own, but context made it worse. In November 2021, Gregg’s mother, Juanita Camfield, passed away from the muscle-wasting disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. It took hold in her throat, stealing her ability to speak. As it progressed, she became unable to swallow.

“It was ugly,” Camfield said of his mother’s last days. “I wouldn’t want anyone to go through that.”

There are more than just painful memories at play here. According to the National Institutes of Health, a parent who experiences a genetic change that causes ALS has a 50% chance of passing that along to her children.

Clearly, this had to be investigated. Visits to local doctors escalated to numerous trips to UC San Francisco Medical Center, where Camfield has undergone “bazillions” of tests. Specialists confirmed that nerves in his calves were dying, leading to muscle atrophy. Camfield doesn’t feel pain or experience difficulty walking. He recalled a test at UCSF in which standing on tiptoe was more difficult than before. Now and again, the calf will twitch, the muscles thrumming under his skin.

Numerous causes were ruled out. It wasn’t a pinched nerve or infection. There was no obvious genetic cause. The doctors are calling it benign focal amyotrophy, which often manifests in the legs. Camfield said his medical team, at this point, doesn’t think it’s an early manifestation of ALS; the atrophy is slow and localized (“Let’s hope it stays that way,” he said).

But the hard fact is that there is no conclusive test for ALS and, in Camfield’s case, they can’t rule it out.

And so he will step away from higher education administration – a path he stepped onto years before coming to UC Merced in 2007 with the intention of being a teacher and researcher.

In 2001, after five years as an English professor at University of the Pacific, he took on the role of UOP’s director of the honors program. As director, he led a successful application for a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at the Stockton institution.

“UOP has a lot of history and tradition,” he said of the 172-year-old university. “To be part of that, to help move it forward, was a lot of fun.

“So, I kind of got the taste for building things.”

Around that time, Camfield and others at UOP kept an eye on the UC campus going up an hour down Highway 99. A friend of Camfield’s, UC Davis Professor Linda Morris, “kept saying, 'We’ve got to get you into the UC system.' Which was very flattering,” he said.

Morris was a friend of Jan Goggans, a literature professor and UC Merced founding faculty member. When Goggans told Morris the university was looking for a professor who specialized in 19th century literature, Morris told her about Camfield. The two urged him to apply.

Camfield came aboard two years after the first undergraduate classes were held on campus. He settled in as a professor of literature and culture, being named the Vincent Hilyer Chair for Literature in 2009. Life with Twain and Co. was motoring along, but not without interruptions.

Camfield’s administrative experience at UOP led then-Provost Keith Alley to ask Camfield to be the faculty lead in securing UC Merced’s all-important accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

“That was an intense, three-year project. We had to get our campus completely ready for demonstrating our effectiveness at teaching our students,” Camfield said. He immersed himself in details of finance, programs and campus politics. “For a very brief moment, I probably had a better understanding of this campus than anybody else.”