Born in Montana, I grew up and attended school in Ohio and Illinois. I served in the U.S. Army in 1970 and 1971 in the 213th Assault Support Helicopter Company as an aircraft commander of a CH-47C Chinook in Vietnam. I began working for Universities Research Association as a technician at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 1973 where I helped to build and commission the Tevatron, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator. I moved to Texas in 1989 to help build the Superconducting Super Collider where I was the electronics laboratory manager for the front-end group of the Controls Department. My last responsibilities there included organizing and placing Controls Department documentation on the World Wide Web. When the Super Collider closed in 1993 I began working as a programming and system administration consultant for various clients, finding a permanent position as an IT Consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers until they downsized and sold the division for various reasons. Unable to compete with younger candidates for a tech job for a couple of years, and the mortgage company demanding to be paid, I worked at Vought Aircraft Industries as an aircraft assembler for as long as I could stand it until finally retiring in 2014.