August 2, 1946, I was the last of 6 children born to a dairy farmer and his wife in a farm house in Forest Hill, Maryland. Mom was a housewife and Dad, now a dairy farmer, had been a licensed steam engineer until he was injured in an accident at Aberdeen Proving Ground during WWII. 

1957 saw us sell the Maryland farm and move 9 miles across the Pennsylvania line to a 600 acre farm. Lots of hard work. During my high school years my life’s plan was to be an electronics technician in the Navy like my brother Richard. In my senior year I quite seriously dated another senior, Gail Edwards. After graduation at 17 years of age from Kennard Dale High School, a small rural school in York County Pennsylvania, I was facing military time and possibly college and Gail was focused on getting out of the area and we broke up. Realizing I had never learned to swim, the Navy wasn’t looking so good any more. I tried to sign up with the Air Force but failed the physical and was told I was “1Y” draft status. They said, “Go on and live your life,”1Y” is after women and children, and you can’t be drafted.” 1Y is a medical status as I supposedly grew too fast in my late teen years and had blackouts because of it.

So at 17 it’s off to Williamsport Tech and study Electronics for a year. 1965 I found employment at General Electric’s Radio Receiver Plant in Utica, NY within a year I was made a line leader making radios. January 1968 saw me making great money and living the “Good” life but it was to be short lived! 2 changes were coming, in January, my brother Richard was getting out of the Navy after 20+ years and in late January I received a letter from my Uncle Sam stating that they needed “me” of all people! It told me to report for induction at New Cumberland Army Depot in April. I said I can’t be drafted but the letter said otherwise. So it was move 3 years of accumulations to my folk’s home in PA and I reported in at New Cumberland. 4 hours later this sergeant tells me I can’t be drafted because I am “1Y” and to call someone to pick me up. I told him that I had been telling people that for almost 4 months but it didn’t make any difference!

 So, its move back to Utica and GE until I got a reclassification letter in July changing my draft status to “1A” and I had 30 days to appeal the reclassification. Why bother. On the 31st day I got my letter to report September 9, 1968 for induction.  2 of the 96 inducted with me were drafted into the Marines. (Wow I lucked out!) We were transported to Fort Dix, NJ for basic training and in the7th week of basic I found out my AIT would be at Ft Monmouth, NJ where I would become a 05B (Radio Operator). Knowing that would not be a fun job, I saw a career counselor and signed up for a third year and was given orders for Redstone Arsenal Alabama where I would become a 21R (Sergeant Missile System Firing Set Repairman). 

After 6 months of intensive electronics school I graduated 2nd in my class and was promoted to SP4. I was informed that I was surplus, so I told them just let me go home then…HA, that didn’t set well with them!  I was assigned duty in the Avionics Shop at the Redstone Arsenal Airfield. At 15 months in the Army I was promoted to SP5. Great duty at the airfield. 

There were 2 GI’s and 4 civilians in the Avionics Shop to maintain a small fleet of WWII planes electronic systems. I would go in at 6AM to make coffee and check the flight-line for early flights and swap out any equipment that had been written up for those early flights. All the others came in at 7 and worked to 3. Because I came in early. I went home at 1PM. Is that great duty or what! No company responsibility, no formations or even reporting. I worked for a civilian. Who just happened to have a 1962 Pontiac Catalina that frequently needed my personal attention so I would leave at 9 and work on it for Charlie Hendrix, my boss. Who could ask for a better military assignment? I was on 24 Hr call but only got called in 1 time in a year to repair the 121Mhz emergency transmitter that was on the mountain. Replaced a fuse and took the next day off as comp time. 

Working there afforded me to see and meet Chuck Yeager when he flew in with his personal P-51 to Redstone. Also saw many of the Astronauts fly in with their T-33s and met a few, and of course the Super Guppy came in several times carrying the Saturn 5 Rocket motors for testing at adjacent Marshall Space Flight Center which shared our airfield. 

I never understood why they had to test those rocket motors in the middle of the night. I owned a house trailer 2 miles from base and it would shake rattle and roll every time they would light off one of those rocket motors! 

Redstone duty also had a most profound impact on my life as it allowed me to be introduced to the gospel and I received Jesus Christ as my savior while attending Calvary Bible Church February 23, 1970.

But all good things must come to an end, and after a year at the airfield I received orders for Camp Colbern Korea. While at Redstone I had OJT’d a new MOS, 35L (Avionics Technician) so now because I was technically on my second tour of duty and a 35L, I was able to draw $75 a month “Propay” which helped. 

My duties in Korea included taking care of the Ordinance Platoon Jeep. It had been the Mail Jeep and was pretty beat up so I spent a lot of time cleaning, polishing and shining her up. 

In 1971 President Nixon was reducing troops in Korea so I was sent back to Ft Lewis Washington to ETS with 5 months to go and was discharged honorably since the Army didn’t feel it worthwhile to reassign me with that little amount of time left. That was April 21, 1971 I was a free man.

Knowing that GE had shut down radio production in the states and now only 900 were working where 12,000 worked in ’68, I thought I would do some fixing up of the home I had in NY and draw unemployment for a while just taking it easy. However I got home on a Tuesday and started work at Paolozzi’s Car World, a Saab/Fiat dealership on Thursday as a line mechanic. The Owner, Joe Paolozzi had left word for me to see him as soon as I got home. So much for taking it easy. 

I quickly got tired of working on rusty cars with dirty salty ice dripping from them and moved to Orlando September of ’72.  I started working for Central Florida Lincoln Mercury.  In 74 I took over the Service Manager’s position at Bill Bryan Imports a Fiat dealership in Orlando. January 1975 I opened my own shop, Orlando Car & Truck Repair as mechanic, owner, manager, janitor or whatever as needed. 1976 I started nights and weekends going to Jones College studying Business Administration and graduated in 1981. I applied for and received a Florida Adult Teachers Certificate and started teaching Adult Education Automotive courses at Mid Florida Tech 2 nights a week. 

By December 1989 I had 7 mechanics working for me and 2 part time errand boys and was pretty tired of all the 18 hour days and calls at all hours of the night so I placed all my employees with other employers, sold my accounts, some equipment and the real estate and took over the full vehicle maintenance for Chemical Systems of Florida as an employee working 40 hours a week.

My brother Richard was living in Orange Park, Florida and was one of the founders of The Tucker Club of America. As such he restored 2 Tuckers, #22 and #26. I assisted with the engines, and he did all the rest. I then towed both to Arlington, Virginia for the owner of them Mr. Dave Cammack.

I should tell you that both of these cars were donated by the owner (Dave Cammack) to the Antique Auto Club of America in Hershey, Pennsylvania and are on permanent display.

Now I must add in that I married my first wife in 1969. We have 3 children, a son and 2 daughters. In early 1988 we separated for the last time and that was that. In May 1989 I received a telephone call from my High School Sweetie and she was coming to Orlando for a work related seminar and could we go to lunch. During the conversation I discovered she was in the middle of a divorce as was I. I suggested Dinner instead of lunch and on June 15, 1989 we had dinner at Barney’s Steakhouse, then a horse drawn carriage ride around Lake Eola  and a tour of Church Street Station. All in all a really perfect evening. We continued to date long distance, she was in Ft. Lauderdale and I was in Orlando 200 miles away. It made for really long dates! 

In January 1989 I moved to Ft Lauderdale and started working for Powell Ford as a Front End and Brake Specialist. And then June 23, 1990 Gail and I were married. 

Through a head hunter in 1991 I took a 6 month contract to work as a Technical Advisor for Al Jazirah Vehicles in Saudi Arabia. They are the only Ford Lincoln dealership for all of Saudi Arabia, 13 locations around the Kingdom. Gail and our 2 dogs joined me there. It was an interesting experience but I wouldn’t want to go back. One of my duties was hiring mechanics and body men in Manila, Philippians. 500 interviews in 2 weeks yielded 43 employees and I am ready to go back to Riyadh. Unfortunately Mount Pinatubo erupted and I was stranded in Manila for 2 more weeks. I must say that driving on Saudi roads was really an experience. My company car a Lincoln Mark 7 topped at 134 mph and the roads were perfect. And I was passed at that speed several times driving the 580 miles from Jeddah to home in Riyadh.

My contract is up and I won’t renew so back to Ft Lauderdale and Powell Ford until 1996 when we moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico. The employment I had lined up turned out to be much less than I had been promised so I ended up commuting to El Paso every day for work (100 miles round trip every day). A year of that and I didn’t think twice when a head hunter set me up to work in Moscow Russia for a year. 

We arrived in Moscow with our dogs June 1997 and I set up a shop for the Moscow Police and one for The Kremlin Medical Center for GM vehicles. Work involved training the mechanics and laying out the shops and parts departments. It also took us to Tbilisi, Georgia to do some hands on work for a member of the Georgia Parliament. As things were moving along well I took 2 weeks and we flew to Germany and drove around Bavaria 2 weeks before Christmas. Lots of Christmas markets! 

In Moscow we met a couple from Kentucky who were field hosts for the Kentucky Russian Baptist Missions Partnership. Soon we would spend Thursday evenings at Red Square giving out tracks and singing hymns with the missions teams that had come in that day.  Finished up in Russia in March and back stateside to Tucson, Arizona.

 I took a job as Fleet Supervisor for Golder Ranch Fire District. An autonomous paid, (not volunteer), fire district that had 3 stations and 45 paid full time Paramedic Fighters. We covered the City of Oro Valley, towns of Catalina, Rancho Vistoso, Saddlebrook and Oracle Junction for fire and full ems service including ambulance transports. The district was comprised partly of Pima County and partly Pinal County. All told we were responsible for 299 square miles.  A lot of state wild land coverage in that as well. By the time I retired in 2010 we had 8 stations and 154 paid Paramedic Firefighters.  My duties were to oversee the operation of the maintenance and repair shop, hire mechanics as needed, spec and purchase Fire trucks and Ambulances and other vehicles as needed.  

In April 2005, we discovered Gail had stage 3 inflammatory breast cancer! Surgery, 6 months dosage chemotherapy administered in a 4 month time span and 6 weeks of intensive radiation followed. And praise to Our God, April 27, 2020 we celebrated her 15 years of cancer free!

As retirement appeared on the horizon and I started looking for someplace not as HOT as Arizona. Much research led us to Anderson, South Carolina and we are not sorry! Since moving here I do a lot of automotive work for friends and Church members. I have joined Vets Helping Vets Anderson about 4 years ago and 3 years ago Campbell Patriots Honor Guard. Gail and I both are active at Oakwood Baptist Church. And that’s 74 years condensed into 6 pages! There is much more I could share but enough for now.