After that first year, we moved to Windsor, VT where I first stayed with a Baptist minister and his wife and then with an elderly couple. The minister taught me the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-Third Psalm and then molested me in the bathtub and in my bed (he just loved "tucking me in"!). After less than a year in Vermont, I moved to Buffalo, NY with my mother where I lived with strangers off and on and later, when I was about twelve, we moved to Wellsville, NY where I finished growing up and subsequently graduated from Wellsville High School at the age of 17. I didn't do very well in American sports, though, except for track, but most of my classmates will probably remember me as the photographer for the school newspaper, "The High School Owl," and for the school yearbook, "Sonnontouan." I was also active (naturally) in the German Club, having served as president for three years as well as president of the Camera Club. I'm always looking to renew old acquaintances from those good old high school days.

    I spent ten years (eight on active duty and two in the Reserves) in the United States Air Force, serving as a medical corpsman. From 1964 to 1968 I was assigned to the 2845th USAF Hospital at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY. While stationed there, I volunteered as an Assistant Scoutmaster with Boy Scout Troop 10 for a brief time before establishing my own troop, Troop 7, which I led for about three years, along with my best friend, the late George A. Long. I also worked two summers ('66 & '67) at Camp Kingsley, serving as the Camp Medic, "on loan" from the Air Force. Those two summers were just like paid vacations!
 

    I spent 89 days on a temporary duty assignment ("TDY") at Ton Son Nhut Air base in Viet Nam during September, October and November, 1967. I served on a Triage Team at the field hospital there; our assignment was to determine which casualties required immediate treatment, who could wait for delayed care and who probably wouldn't benefit from any further care ; the latter being the ones who we could only try to comfort in their final moments.

      After a two-year break in service to finish college, I returned to active duty and was assigned to the Base Hospital at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, VA, where I served as a CHAMPUS Advisor for the mid-Atlantic region for all three major services.  I continued to volunteer,  in my spare time, as a Scoutmaster and Merit Badge Counselor and later, as a District  Commissioner with the Peninsula Council, Boy Scouts of America.  In 1973 I was chosen "Military Citizen  Of The Year" by the Hampton Roads Jaycees, and in 1974 I received  the District Award of Merit from the Colonial District, Peninsula Council, B.S.A.  I'm always looking to reconnect with Scouts  and Scouters with whom I enjoyed so many wonderful scouting experiences.

 

     From 1975 to 1985 I was the Founder and Executive Director of New Beginnings Therapeutic Foster Homes, Inc. (AKA: New Beginnings Boys' Home), a treatment-oriented group home for mildly to moderately emotionally disturbed boys, ages six to twelve  at intake, which I relocated from Newport News, VA to rural Middlesex County in 1979.  I even had my "fifteen minutes of fame" in 1983 when Yoko Ono announced her "gift" of a waterfront mansion in adjoining Mathews County ("Poplar Grove"),  formerly owned by her late husband, John Lennon of the Beatles, to my boys' home program (more about this on the "Some Clippings" page).  Unfortunately, that "generous gift" led the program into financial problems from which the home could not recover so, on Halloween 1985, the Board of  Directors closed it's doors forever, plunging me into deep despair and personal bankruptcy.

 

       I also serve as a volunteer mentor, trying to "give something back" to help troubled kids stay focused on the ideas and ideals that they will need to live successfully as adults in a society that often seems to forget what positive role models can mean to kids who are "at risk." Without those mentors who  gave some of their time and friendship to provide positive influences for me during my formative years, I don't believe that I would be where I am today, having never known my father and being frequently placed in the homes of strangers for months at a time.  When I was fifteen, my mother abandoned me for the last time, moving about ninety miles away and leaving me to live in a rooming house, when she left to marry a man for whom she had  been "keeping house."