biography
An active childhood w/friends running in open fields and hills in Monterey Park, a burb of Los Angeles.
Yearly Summer vacations, camping, hiking the Sierras, and Deserts of California w/family. Graduated from HS, and a study of commercial art, with kids I entered Kindergarten with. Looking back…prob more into cars and hanging w/guys than any long lasting girl relationship.
After HS, worked, started Community Collage… began working with clay, on a potters wheel… Drafted under the first Lottery drawing, #33, age; 22 years old.
Basic as well as Infantry AIT, @ Ft. Ord, California. Orders for temporary transfer to Ft. Lewis, Washington, then on to VietNam, assigned to 1/502nd, Infantry, 101st. (Phu Bai). 1st. Plt., Bravo Company’s AO was mostly near or on the East wall of the Ashau Valley. As I stepped off of a resupply Huey, the M60 Gunner (short timer/going back to the World), handed me the Gun…I humped it for the next 9 1/2 months.
Get this…the 101st Division’s (Lt. C) Chaplin’s assistant, a buddy from back in the World, got me out of the bush, and a rear job w/G2, extended my tour, and ETS’ed out w/13+ months in country.
Back on the streets again in So Cal, Community college near the Pacific Ocean, clay and botany began to be a focus…along side of a few disorders left over from my Army days.
Part time work on sail boats led to a few extended rides on the Pacific.
More commission work in clay, and a transfer to a Cal Poly in Botany, and a State of California job, ……. And a few more years, to a teaching position, a marriage (still married), 5 adult step kids, retired small ceramics studio, in a mountain resort community in California.
Involved with Viet oral history w/HS students, a past involvement in volunteer work in VietNam, Life Membership w/Chapter 47, VVA and long winded Bio work up’s…
