I have often been asked how I got from being a Journalist to a Biologist to a Controls Engineer to a writer – actually, not all that many times – none, really – but I was thinking about it one day.

After leaving the service, I met with my high-school sweetheart to tell her that I had changed and was no good for her anymore since I was basically a worthless bum.  She said that she would fix that, and we were married.  My father-in-law also shared my initial belief that I was a worthless bum, so to prove him wrong, I gave up my ambitions of being a demolitions expert and my new wife and I started College at ISU.  I enjoyed writing fiction, so I enrolled in the Journalism department.  When I found out that, although journalists do generally write fiction, they get really upset when you point that out, and also, you had to be able to spell (since spell checker had not been invented yet), I decided to switch majors. I took a test to expose my major interests and the results were either the sciences or computer programming. I chose sciences (Biology) since all I knew of computers was they took up the whole basement of the business building and every now and then I would see a computer major walk down the hall with a stack of cards that he or she would invariably drop and spend the next hour picking up (while cursing prolifically).

After ten years doing research in Biology, I switched careers to computer programming. After that, I moved on to factory automation in the engineering department of a food company.

Then, after I retired, besides activities pictured here, I took up writing.