By Drew Gallagher, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
Dr. Christopher Kilmartin, a longtime Fredericksburg resident and beloved college professor, died suddenly on Friday, August 21, after a heart attack. A Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University, Chris retired in 2016 after teaching for more than 30 years at the University of Mary Washington. He loved playing guitar and listening to music and was an avid golfer and consumer of gin and tonics. A natural performer, he did stand-up comedy, performed in university productions, and wrote and acted in a solo theatre performance on men’s issues entitled Crimes Against Nature, which toured to more than 150 campuses and other venues for a total of more than 220 performances.
Chris was an internationally recognized expert on gender, violence prevention, diversity, equity, and inclusion. A prolific writer, he is the author of five books, including The Fictions that Shape Men’s Lives, The Masculine Self, Men’s Violence Against Women: Theory, Research, and Activism, Overcoming Masculine Depression: The Pain behind the Mask, and Sexual Assault in Context: Teaching College Men about Gender. Chris served as a consultant on related issues with many institutions, including the U.S. military, the United Nations, and the U.S. Peace Corps.
He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the United States Air Force Academy in 2013-14, as well as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He was also a Fellow in the American Psychological Association.
Chris is survived by three sisters, two brothers, four nieces, and two nephews, and his partner and wife of more than 33 years, Dr. Allyson Poska.
FXBG Advance columnist Drew Gallagher was a longtime friend, and wrote the following column in October 2025, headlined “Fair Winds and Following Seas, Dr. Kilmartin,” when Chris and his Allyson moved from Fredericksburg to Baltimore last fall.
***
It was an early morning yesterday
I was up before the dawn
And I really have enjoyed my stay
But I must be moving on
Like a king without a castle
Like a queen without a throne
I’m an early morning lover
And I must be moving on
--Supertramp “Goodbye Stranger”
Fortuity has shaped all our lives. There are moments sprinkled throughout life that may seem as insignificant as they are random, but sometimes those moments prove that the world is not as expansive or as uncaring as we may have believed. Meeting Chris Kilmartin on a volleyball court 36 years ago was one of those moments.
On the night I met Chris, in the summer of 1989, even the stifling heat of a Pennsylvania evening must have needed a break from the constant humidity because there was a chill in the air that made me grab a Mary Washington College sweatshirt as I headed out to the community park to officiate volleyball for $5/hour. I don’t remember the particulars of any of the matches I officiated that night or that summer, but on that fateful night one of the players came over to talk to me.
Generally, when a player comes over to an official during a match, it is rarely to exchange pleasantries, especially on the team that Chris played with because their captain, who was a reporter who worked for my father, seemed especially fond of taking out any frustrations from the newsroom on the 19-year-old referee who failed to recognize that the Exeter Parks and Rec courts were an obvious stepping stone to Olympic greatness for middle-aged men who wore knee pads and could not jump.
Chris, however, did not come over to tell me that Stevie Wonder could have called a better match, but rather he came over to ask me if I went to Mary Washington, which I did, and where I had just finished my freshman year. (Mary Washington sweatshirts remain a rarity in Eastern Pennsylvania.) He told me that he had just taken a teaching position there in the Psychology Department, and I should stop by to see him when I got back to campus. He seemed sincere in the offer, so, a few days into the fall semester, I stopped by his office, and one of the great friendships of my life was born.
Chris was a popular and charismatic professor who taught a generation of scholars about the optical illusion known as the phi phenomenon. He was also an athlete who once held the high jump record at Frostburg State, and was also featured on the cover of a Frostburg publication “streaking” across campus. Though Chris was athletic, I don’t know that anyone would have ever described his running as “streaking,” unless he wasn’t wearing any clothes, which clearly wasn’t the case in that 1970s-era cover photo.
Chris’s enjoyment of sports was an instant bond for us, even if he was an Orioles’ fan and I was a Red Sox fan. I added him to our intramural co-ed volleyball roster, and we went on to win the championship the final three years I was at MWC. I played on the club volleyball team at Mary Wash, but Chris introduced me to the larger Fredericksburg volleyball scene which led me to more friendships including one with Garland Fenwick who hired me and my English degree to tote cabinets for his local business until another volleyball friend, John Crow, recognized that my limited skillset and a budding cynicism were perfectly suited to enter the exciting world of insurance claims adjusting.
When Chris moved to Fredericksburg, his soon-to-be first wife stayed with her job in Pennsylvania, so we spent a lot of time in his car riding up and back for school breaks where we listened to Randy Newman, Supertramp, “Bitches Brew” and “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.” We once completed the famed “Fredericksburg VA to Fredericksburg PA” trip on a Friday evening with an unwanted detour into Northern Virginia when we missed the turn for 15 North because there was no phone to guide us.
Chris took me to his favorite bar in Reading, an Albright College hangout called The Northeast Taproom, where I proceeded to spend many a night on barstools with my hometown friends drinking exotic beers that one could only find in this forgotten corner of the city. The Taproom (or “Proom” as Chris called it) had a memorable jukebox and an equally memorable rite of passage where first-time visitors to the Taproom had to eat a wedge of Pennsylvania ring bologna that had been soaked in battery acid, according to Pete the Proprietor whenever asked what gave a “unit” the uncanny ability to make grown men both cry out for their mothers and cry out for death in equal parts.
Chris was also a part-time stand-up comedian, and one night my friend Rob Farr and I drove to Petersburg to see him headline a show where he absolutely killed, and which he claims to this day was the best of his career. Rob and I take full credit. We celebrated afterwards at the Texas-Wisconsin Border in Richmond which did not require us to eat ring bologna soaked in battery acid.
When I was offered an unpaid internship with the Prince William Cannons’ minor league baseball team after graduation, Chris insisted that I stay in the guest room of his townhouse for a pittance of rent which allowed me to chase my baseball dreams all the way to Woodbridge and back for eight months. I continued to live in the townhouse after the baseball dream ended in a night of tequila and a hangover that lasted for a few months (as all baseball dreams must) much to Chris’ wife’s dismay. When Chris and his wife separated, my friend Mark Bennett and I bought the townhouse, and I got to keep my bedroom in the divorce.
One of the joys of living in a town the size of Fredericksburg is randomly bumping into friends and acquaintances on the city’s streets and in its restaurants. I hope to still see my friend after he moves to Baltimore leaving Fredericksburg with his lovely wife, Allyson, but I know that my walks on the VCR trail will no longer feature the faint whispers of jazz music that would mark Chris’ approach on his daily bike rides.
Dr. Kilmartin has given a great deal to his adopted community through music, comedy, theatre, and academia. Fredericksburg will miss him, but not as much as I will. All because of an unseasonably cold Pennsylvania summer night, and a MWC sweatshirt in a world that now seems impossibly far away.
Beautiful and poignant tribute, Drew.
His books on masculinity helped me and countless other therapists. He was a star. My heart goes out to Allyson.
What a wonderful tribute. And a smile of equal warmth. Treasures often appear when you aren't searching for them.