After graduation from Concordia University, St. Paul, I earned the Master of Divinity degree from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. I continued graduate education and was awarded the Master of Sacred Theology degree from Lutheran Theological Seminary - Philadelphia and pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University. I served for over 20 years in the United States Navy and retired as a Captain (06). My duties included major ships of the line, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, the 3rd Marine Amphibious Forces in Vietnam, and wintered-over in Antarctica during Deepfreeze '66. I am a decorated veteran and a member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign wars. I am a professor emeritus of Concordia Seminary, where I served as Dean, Assistant to the President, and taught courses in religious history, public policy, and politics and American life. I have recently penned a novel of historical fiction, "Constant Bearing - Decreasing Range", which tells a tale of naval intrigue regarding the collision of public policy and national defense. I write as a veteran naval officer who served and sailed aboard vessels of the Fleet during the period in which the novel is set. I witnessed the effects of social experiments during that era and was fully aware of the unhappy burden that inappropriate public policy added to the already heavy responsibility that rested on the shoulders of the Commanding Officers of the Navy's Fleet. I have elected, using historical fiction in a novel of adventure, drama, humor, and romance, to share a portion of what I experienced and what was related to me from sailors' diaries and letters home. "Constant Bearing - Decreasing Range" was written with a great deal of affinity for the little boy in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Social experimentation and its resultant policies involving the resources that form our National defense are a most serious matter. At times thay have produced noble objectives, such as the integration of the Armed Forces by Harry S. Truman following World War II. At other times they have not. It is my conviction that in the 60s and throughout the 70s such experimentation and policies created a "nakedness" that most refused to recognize or acknowledge. An even more serious issue resides in today's "moral waiver" policy in regard to military recruitment.

My novel, "Constant Bearing-Decreasing Range" received the "SILVER STAR Award for 2007" from the Military Writers Society of America.