I was born in the hills of Pennsylvania on the cusp of the Great Depression and the Second World War. I ran away from home at the age of fifteen, joined the Navy when I was sixteen. After spending eleven years there, I realized the Navy wasn't for me, so I joined the Air Force. I can only surmise I wasn't ready to work for a living. The military educated me and taught me there was always someone over me giving orders. I could barely read or write when I joined the Navy. When I retired from the Air Force, with twenty years of service, I managed to earn a high school diploma from the state of Washington and completed three years of college. In the navy, I worked as a jet engine mechanic. In the Air Force, I flew as a Flight Engineer. In civilian life, I became a businessman. First, I opened a camera repair shop, which I did for many years as and off duty job to help raise my five rug rats. Then I opened a lawn and garden equipment repair shop. Finally, I bought a struggling storm window manufacturing company, which I worked for twenty-two years. In 2000, I retired and moved to Pensacola Florida where I met my lovely Russian wife and became a restaurateur. That too, I found out wasn't my cup of tea. I started writing in 1992, gave it up for a few years, and took it up again in 2004. That’s when I learned I was a dyslexic. So, I wrote a book Runt, 'Memories of a Dyslexic Bastard, based on my struggles with reading, spelling and speaking as a young schoolboy. So here I is, still struggling with writing and spelling at the age of seventy. It keeps me off the streets and out of the bottle.

Being a dyslexic, my greatest achievement has been my writing