About the Author

My first tour out of the Naval Academy in the mid-fifties was an unbelievably great tour on the destroyer Buck steaming throughout the Pacific. Then it was off to Navy flight training and a succession of eight fighter squadrons ashore and onboard carriers flying the venerable Phantom jet. Interspersed were two years in the Stanford MBA program, CNO aide duty, command of a large supply ship and the carrier Forrestal and finally, as head guy for Navy flight training. Early on I was lucky to have joined up with my wife Carolyn who stuck by me in good times and bad and raised two wonderful girls.

After retiring from the Navy in the mid-eighties, I lucked out again and served as president of two publicly owned maritime cruise ship companies, American Cruise Lines and Europa Cruise Lines, and returned to the sea as second mate on the SS Constitution and then onto a series of mini-adventures sailing as a master of civilian ocean-going research ships listening for Soviet subs far north in the Barents Sea and drug interdiction in the Pacific off Colombia. For the past twenty years, we have lived in the Navy town of Pensacola where most of my time is spent writing, traveling, seeing four grandsons and two daughters in Atlanta, playing racquetball and offering gratuitous missives to anyone willing to listen.

Eight years ago, I published Humble in Victory, a hypothetical tale of young American heroes doing the tough combat job at sea in 2010 and, three years ago, a journal, True Faith and Allegiance. True Faith chronicles three decades of the Cold War as seen through the eyes of thousands of real patriots with whom I was privileged to serve during these perilous years. A third book Sea Buoy Outbound, was published in 2008. In the conceptual works are two more: A one-of-a-kind family cookbook centered around Carolyn, kids, friends and family and a "living" (lots of scans of letters and photos) family history on both sides.