I’m a native 3rd generation Floridian. I am a forty-something father and husband. I have 2 grown-up, married children ages 26 and 24 and five grandchildren. I remarried in 2006. We were recently blessed with the birth of a daughter.
My two beauties
I spent four years in the United States Army as a Pershing Missile Electronics Material Specialist (21G). When I signed up I thought this would the kind of job where guys in white lab coats work on delicate electronics in a lab. I later found out that Pershing missiles are “tactically mobile systems”, meaning they take them out in the woods and hide. Most of our field training exercises involved a great deal of mud and bore a striking resemblance to Elbonia. I learned a great deal about troubleshooting complex electronic, hydraulic and pneumatic systems. We carried nukes. This involved regular practice at destroying the world. I was one of the guys who ran count downs to launch a nuke.
We also spent a great deal of time guarding nuclear storage sites in Germany. We were the target of many anti-nuclear demonstrations and Soviet bloc espionage activity. I was injured in an car crash while off duty. I had recently re-enlisted to allow my family to accompany me to Europe. Through and oddity in the Army College Fund law I was left out of the G.I. Bill educational benefits, even though I served my full first term and received an honorable discharge. The educational benefits had been one of the primary motivations for joining. This left me with a certain distrust of our government and it’s policies.
After my hitch was up I went on to earn a degree in Public Policy with course work political science, economics, history, sociology, ethics and philosophy from New College of Florida, the best little liberal arts college in the world. (/end of shameless alumni plug). I paid for this myself, no thanks to the supposed college benefits from the military and have the loan debt to prove it.
My primary area of interest in college was health policy and economics. I was particularly interested in the effects of medical insurance on the delivery of health care in America. I wrote a long, rambling paper with a cross-national comparison of health care delivery systems in the US, Canada, Germany, England and Japan.
I started, but later dropped out of, the masters program in Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta. My ex-wife became disabled because of an undiagnosed brain tumor, and I was forced to find “a real job”. Ironically, I found myself dealing with a major family health crisis without insurance while trying to study the same.
I found gainful employment in the high tech industry with IBM, mostly because of my technical background in the military. By time the tumor was discovered 18 months later, the company HMO picked up the tab.
I currently work as a technical analyst for another company in the Tampa Bay area and make a fairly comfortable living. I’m something of a political junkie with some liberal leanings tempered by a strong skepticism of the exercise of government power in the lives of the people.
St Pete Beach, FL - March 2007
