I was born and raised in central Illinois. I began writing short stories and poems in junior high school and have continued to write throughout my life. Because I write primarily for myself, and not a specific audience, I remained unpublished until I entered college and worked on the school's newspaper.
Immediately after graduating from high school, I joined the U. S. Navy and spent four years as a radio operator. First, I entered Radio "A" School in San Diego, California. Upon graduating, I was stationed aboard the USS Hunley AS-31, a nuclear sub tender, for two and a half years. Then I received orders to serve aboard the USS Colleton APB-36, a barracks ship, assigned to a combined Army/Navy flotilla operating throughout the Mekong Delta region of the Republic of South Vietnam.
I was honorably discharged and upon returning home, I spent only a few months in Illinois before deciding to move to Pennsylvania. While in Pennsylvania I earned a BS degree in English, but decided teaching was not a career path I wished to pursue.
It was during my time in Pennsylvania when I began my art career by painting in oils, then acrylics. I still continued to write, and did submit short stories and poems to various publishers.
After receiving my English degree, I eventually moved to Wisconsin, where I attended college for one semester pursuing a master's degree in English. Deciding that was not practical, I turned to pottery and began a major in art. Eventually, I earned a MA degree in sculpture and a MFA degree in ceramics.
Although I did continue producing artwork, and have paintings in several public and private collections throughout the country and abroad, I continued to write. Writing offers a certain satisfaction that painting, sculpture and pottery doesn't seem to satisfy in me. Writing forces you to dig deep within your soul and ties you to history and life in the pursuit of the basic universal truths of humanity. Within the last several years, with the advent of electronic self-publishing, I have begun to concentrate totally on various writing projects.
Currently, I reside in Illinois, where my roots are and where my ancestors settled, beginning in the 1850s. Here I feel comfortable and in contact with the spirits that generated the lineage to me. It is this connection that helps feed my writing and the search for those elusive basic human truths that all writers should strive to discover.
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