While stationed in West Berlin, I became interested in Soviet aircraft, shining glints of which I could see in the sky over the city. From time-to-time their sonic booms nearly deafened us. So I took up modeling them in plastic from kits. As with many model builders, research into the aircraft became an avocation. In fact, I haven't built a model in years, although I still buy the kits. Someday I intend to build them all, to the high standards required for entry into the competitions held by the International Plastic Modelers Society, of which I once was a member of the U.S.A. branch, but over time and because other activities, I have allowed my membership to lapse.

After I retired from the Air Force in 1981, I went to work for the Department of Defense, where I served in various organizations.  From February 1999 until July 2000, I worked under contract as an Internet Research Specialist for a major U.S. aerospace firm. 

Because of my interest in languages,   I was asked to obtain a list of conferences for linguists. What began as help for a few folks turned into an interesting, albeit time-consuming task that I can no longer support. I also consider myself something of a historian, concentrating of course on the Soviet/Russian aircraft, their designers, and their test pilots. I had been acting as a translator and technical advisor for George John Geiger when he passed away before he completed his multi-volume history on the aircraft. George had been a free-lance magazine writer; I believe that his last aircraft article was about the Yak-141.

From 2000 until I tore my rotator cuff about 2012, I had been a free-lance translator of Russian into English, specializing in handwritten documents, cancer research studies, history, and so forth.  For the first time in 2005, I  had the opportunity to translate a book from Russian into English for the author of that book, "The Medieval Empire of the Israelites."  The book takes a different look at history.  Please note if you read this translation that I did NOT use the word "photographies" for the caption for the photos of the Colossi of Memnon on page 156.  Someone changed it.

I am married,  have two daughters and five surviving grandchildren. Chase, named after my late father, and Aileen, are Terri's, while Owen, Aaron and Noah are Kelly's.  We lost Harry, Terri's youngest, very sadly due to an undiagnosed heart condition in April 2018.

It is June 2024. I am now 80, had and have been cured of head and neck cancer.  Noah was the last grandchild to graduate high school, which was spring of 2019. Chase left the Marine Reserves for the US Army in early 2020 (the year of COVID). He is married and has a daughter and a son. Aileen is divorced and has a daughter and a son, (who also had cancer, but it seems to be gone after a fortuitous fall in the playground that revealed the tumor). Now we have four great grandchildren.    Where has the time gone?!?