I grew up in Santa Fe, NM amid many famous writers and artists and I always wanted to write, but never had the time until I retired from the business world.  In my youth, I was one of the very last Morse code trained Airborne Radio Operators in the USAF just before that skill passed into the realm of ancient history.  I wanted to chronicle that for history so I wrote "Departure Message," a memoir about being an enlisted aircrew member when the Cold War was not so cold and airplanes could not fly without a radio operator. I put together a short story from the manuscript, "Mr. Marseille," about air traffic control in Morse code and and in 1994 it was published in Air&Space,Smithsonian. From that point, I was hooked, so I got busy and finished my memoir and published it in 2001. A second edition was issued in 2006'