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My Education I have had a quest for knowledge since I was in my early twenty’s. It began when I got the courage to enter college, I think I was 20. Learning was never difficult for me, but I didn’t enjoy high school or any of the K through 12 years. But, college was different. The professors were teaching in a manner that really shared information and knowledge. I was hooked from the first semester and even still to this day. My first degree in Aeronautical Engineering was not enough for me. A few years after I received the degree I found myself missing
When I was a young teenager I ran away from home. There were problems in my family and it was a good decision for me to leave. Still it was difficult to make my way since most companies couldn’t hire me because of labor laws. There were two years of my life that shaped me in struggles for food and shelter. I was at the bottom of life with no money and no home, but none-the-less finding the ways to survive. One day I walked onto a building construction work site and asked if they were hiring. I was given a job as a laborer. I carried materials for the tradesmen, pushed wheel barrels filled with concrete, broke up concrete and Six months after I began working as a carpenter I decided to open my own sub-contractor operation. I planned to drive around the city going from one job site to the next in search of work. The second place I stopped hired me to do the exterior siding, doors and windows, and roof prep on a 450 unit apartment complex. I sat up my workstation and hung a “Now Hiring” handwritten cardboard sign on my sawhorse. Within a few hours I had a crew of three carpenters and we went after the job with eagerness. Over the next few years I had acquired a good reputation as a sub-contractor and it wasn’t unusual to have five or more jobs going at the same time. And, I was living! I had my own apartment for the first time ever. I bought a jeep for transportation, and I had food to eat whenever I was hungry. All the while this was going on from my days living on the streets to this business operation I had an advisor, a police officer who had found me wandering the streets one day and befriended me. He would come a pick me up once or twice a week and take me to lunch and talk with me about life and life choices. Police officer Snodgrass came to the job site where I was working one afternoon to take me to lunch. He told me, as we drove to the restaurant that a friend of his was going to meet us there and he wanted me to meet him. Turned out his friend is an architect who was interested in my sub-contracting business. During the It seemed like a good idea to me to go to college, but what would I study, where would I go? The more I thought about it the more I liked it. Here I was almost 20 years old making fantastic money, but working 7 days a week from sun up to midnight. Hard work too, I was sore and tired and now I’m wondering how would I feel at age 40 still working like this? I’ve always liked aeronautics so I thought about aeronautical engineering as a degree. Officer Snodgrass took me to the library and we looked up colleges that offered that degree. I went to Embry Riddle because it is the only University in the world whose sole curriculum is aviation. Besides Daytona Beach Florida sounded like a great place to live. Two years of college were completed when I found myself running out of funds. The party life of Daytona Beach had taken me away from prudent spending several times. I found myself wondering how I was going to finish the degree. |
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the classroom. I wanted the learning environment of joint student projects and the professor with exacting knowledge sharing and directing. Soon enough I had gained a Master’s and major in Statistics. It wasn’t long before I went back to college again. This time I choose something different. In part because my career had me working with several small businesses and also because two science degrees seemed enough to me. This time I entered a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) program. Science and math always came easy to me but the MBA was more of a science of people intermixed with the numbers. It was 
rewarding and challenging and eventually I completed the requirements. Throughout my life and career philosophy has always been a guide as well as a curiosity. My last degree was therefore fitting; a Ph. D in Philosophy. 
pavement with jackhammer and sledge, etc. After a few weeks the foreman sent me to talk with the General Contractor of the job. The boss asked me to pick a trade and he would let me apprentice on the job. He liked my work ethic and wanted to give me a shot at learning a trade. I picked carpentry.
He guided me to understand the difference between doing the right thing and doing what is right. He also provided me with a book “Think and Grow Rich” and I read it several times. The words in the book seemed to make sense to me but there were a lot of words that I had never heard before too. Still I liked the ideas of being responsible for my own actions and making my own path in life by using the skills I was born with. Discovering the skills was the excitement of life and mastering the skills is life’s rewards. 
course of this meeting I learned some interesting facts. For example I had no license to run a business within the state, I was paying no taxes to the government, providing no insurance for my employees, and a few other details. What a mess this information presented me, but I figured I had been operating this way for three years without a problem so I wasn’t going to worry about it. Then the guy offered to buy the company from me. This I had never planned for or expected and took me by surprise. I looked over at officer Snodgrass who looked me in the eyes and said, “Take the money and go to college!” I told them I would think it over and let them know in a week.
Part time jobs didn’t pay too much and I wanted the degree. One day the military showed up at the campus to talk with students about jobs in the armed services. The Navy recruiter told me that I could finish my degree and get hands on aviation experience at the same time. I signed up for four years in the Navy. There I completed my degree and got the first hand aviation experience I was promised, and when I got out I was prepared for an excellent job – somewhere… My career was ready to begin?
