Personal Biography

Below is a "highlight" reel of that life, with the most significant Good Breaks noted.

Childhood  (1949-1964)  
I was born in Des Moines,  Iowa on June 29, 1949.  My dad was a steelworker and my mom a housewife, and we did not live in a very high socioeconomic area.  Good Break #1 occured when they moved us to West Des Moines, Iowa when I was in 4th grade.  Still not very well off financially, but I could now go to school with more affluent  and brighter kids and to better schools than I would have ever done in the old Des Moines neighborhood.  I found I could compete well against these richer, smarter kids, and that gave me a lot of confidence.  That carried me through grade school and jr. high.  Good Break #2 occured when my folks got an old piano.  I started taking lessons in about 3rd grade and carried through until about 16, and that ability (while never great) has allowed me to have fun ever since.

My dominant memories of childhood are negative.  In this new suburban environment I resented being
poor while morons I knew had money.  My dad was angry and verbally abusive.  I viewed him mainly with fear and contempt.  My mom was a good person but into suffering, and also a bit ditzy.  Any good in the home we had was due to her.  I played Little League for a while, but that was an early lesson to me
that group activities were not my thing.  I much preferred golf, which I could play alone or in a small group.  Never been much of a team player at anything.

I was also the smartest kid in the class through those years.  That set me apart.  I was made to feel
different.  I didn't really mind that.  I still don't.

The absolute worst year of my  early life was 6th grade.  Somehow ended up at a new school, much higher socioeconomic than my 4th and 5th grade school.  Just did not fit in. Was derided for my clothes by these wealthier kids, all of whom were new to me.  No one really tried to be a friend.  I was easily the brightest kid, which meant I caught flak for that from some of the morons.  A very memorable teacher who did her best to prop up my self esteem. And a long damn walk up hill in the mornings.  Altogether, a bad year.

In 7th grade I hooked up with a group of guys who I would hang out with for the next 5 years, and
even a bit beyond.  All but one were much higher socioeconomic, and I enjoyed hanging around
in those surroundings.  The time in 8th and 9th grade is not too memorable.  Principle thing I recall
was an influx of kids from a suburb called Windsor Heights.  Far higher socioeconomic than anything
I had seen before...these kids were rich.  My own dissatisfaction with the family I had been dealt
grew.

This was not all a grim time.  I read a lot, and that paid great dividends later.  I played a lot of
golf, and that was good most of the time.  I became extremely competitive academically, and that
would also pay off in the future.  I kept plunking away at the piano, and am grateful I did that.

High School (1964-1967)
West Des Moines Valley High in those days began high school in 10th grade, which I entered in the fall of 1964.  High school was a good time for me.  I became active in debate and in journalism, and those two activities helped develop skills that are helpful even today.  By my senior year I was co-captain of a pretty good debate squad, and editor of the school paper.  I had a pretty good social life.  I dated Carol all through high school, and we'd go out one weekend night.  I had a gang of guys I hung with and we'd go out the other. There was also a group of we "eggheads" composed of newspaper, debate, music and
theater people, and we were together often.  For reasons already alluded to, I was always eager to get out of the house, and the combination of school activities and good friends allowed me to do this.

My main concern in high school was money, or rather the lack of it.  I continued to be resentful of the richer kids, which was almost everyone.   I was pretty angry at being one of the poorer kids.  I found it most productive to focus on getting ahead and becoming some kind of success.  Mae West said it best:  I been rich and I been poor, and rich is better.  Amen.

This was the most transforming time in my life, as I moved beyond a bad home environment to
gain confidence and build skills.  Those three years were very busy, and I was able to get myself
prepared for the next step.  I was not yet anywhere close to where I wanted to be.

College (1967-1971)
I had no family role models for college, nor any kind of high school advising.  I applied to one and only one school, and started at Iowa State in the fall of 1967.  I majored in Psychology, mainly because a couple high school friends a year ahead of me said it was interesting.  How's that for sound academic planning?  While at ISU I was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, and had 3 good years in the ATO house.  Lots of partying, and lots of studying. Work hard. Play hard.  I learned some lessons, good and bad, about love. In order from best to worst, those teachers were Joyce, Sherry, Susan, Margaret,
Kathy, Mary, Marti, Diane and Carol  (who dumped me after Freshman year).  Joyce and I would likely have married, but factors of distance and parental opposition caused us to drift apart. That is a long and
sad story. None of the other relationships were at all serious.

I recall college as a pretty good time. My first priority was always preparing for grad school, but I was able to have a date whenever I wanted one.  I held important positions in several college organizations.  I had a lot of good times,  and I was finally out of the home I disliked so much

My college years were a turbulent time around the country.  I took little interest in that.  I had
no time for so-called hippies and radical politics.  I had become a conservative Republican at about
age 14, and all the disruption disgusted me.  So I let the protestors protest, and I tried to prepare myself for the future.

Good Break #3 happened in December, 1969, when they held the first Draft Lottery.  This was the Viet Nam era, college deferments were no longer too much good, and the lottery would determine the order of being drafted for military  service.  I had worried,  gathered materials from Canadian schools, and was ready to do whatever necessary to avoid the draft.  When I drew #353, worry vanished.  A low number and the rest of this story might not have happened at all, or, likely, would have been much different.  But the number 353 is near and dear to my heart even today.  By the strangest of coincidences, if one takes I-70 west of Topeka, the exit for our place is #353.   I see those numbers on a great big green sign almost every day!

My junior year I met a gal named Judy and we got engaged about a year later, and married
in fall, 1971,  at the end of the summer after I graduated.  I had amassed a good GPA, got pretty good GRE scores, and was accepted by five schools for graduate study in Psych.  I picked Southern Illinois-Carbondale, and Judy and I headed off to the future in September, 1971.

Altogether,  this period was a very good one.  Fun, productive, and enjoyable.  It is interesting
to me, though, that I carry forward no friendships from these years.  I have lots of pals I correspond
with from high school, but few from college.  College for me was an intermediate stop on the road
to the future....it was a means to an end.  It was, so to speak, disposable.

Grad School  (1971-1975)
The first two years were pretty good.  I found I had little aptitude for the pure clinical field (meaning that doing psychotherapy did not interest me as much as I thought it would) , and was able to regroup and  construct a program in Experimental Clinical that prepared me well for a future academic career.  Judy and I had some fun, but not for a real long time.  The stress of school,  maturation, and some different goals and in 1973 she moved out and filed for divorce.  Getting divorced, finishing my M.A. thesis and passing the first round of doctoral comps, all within a couple months of one another, convinced me I could pretty well survive anything.  Not that I was happy.  This period was not a good one. Anybody who tells you their divorce was an amicable one is a liar.  I know I think about it even today, and it really
set me back for a long time back in the 70s.  But I kept putting one foot in front of the other every day,
and tried not to waste all that education and sweat.

The third year I roomed with a guy in the Experimental (rat running ) program and pushed forward with my research and study. In the aftermath of the divorce I found it good not to be living alone.   My final year I became the Resident Advisor in the ATO house at SIU, and was also teaching a class, and, for the first time in my life, I had more money than was required to survive.  This last year, like the first  year was thus  pretty good.  The intervening two years sucked.
In that 4th year I got my dissertation underway  and searched for a place for the required one year internship for my Ph.D.

Learned some more lessons on love, all mediocre at best, from Heather and Ginny.  At this point,
career was more important, and I was well on-course for that.  Mostly I took a hiatus from women,
as I still carried great anger about Carol, the forced breakup with Joyce and especially about the divorce from Judy. I was a three-time loser!   From about  1975 to about 1983 I dated very, very little. Just no stomach for it.

On the whole, this period was not good.  There were some good times and moments, but I ended
up alone,  I found I had no strong love for the field I had chosen.  And the divorce haunted me for
a decade.  I was greatly glad to get out of Carbondale, Illinois alive and  in one piece.

Internship (1975-1976)
In 1975 I  wound up at Central Louisiana State Hospital in Pineville/Alexandria.  That was a good year.  I was not much good in therapy stuff, but I was able to crank out some research, finish my disseratation, and have a little fun.  A lot of poker games,  some fun with fellow interns, and an annual salary of $10,000 and a free place to live, which was awesome in 1975 after years of being a starving student.

As the internship wound down, I began to search for jobs.  It was clear that I was never going to be the full time clinician, so I knew the academic route was the one to take.  I struck out in interviews at Denison, Bucknell and Oklahoma, but was offered a job in May, 1976, at Washburn University.  Good Break #4 was that I got the offer because the guy they interviewed ahead of me made a bad impression.  Had he made a good impression, I likely would have been unemployed at least for that year.  I didn't know much about Kansas, but that's where I was headed next.

Internship was another intermediate stop.  No friendships from this time, but some good preparation for my future. Many good moments there, but overall kind of a neutral adventure.  In ten years I had lived in
Iowa, Illinois and Louisiana, and each new experience pretty much replaced the last.  All were steps
along a path.  Finally at age 27, after being continuously in school or training since age 5,  I was ready to launch a career, and a life!!

Assistant Professor  (1976-1983)
I showed up in Topeka in August, 1976, pulling a small U-Haul trailer and  I installed myself in an apartment complex in west Topeka.  In 1977 I moved into a small rental house where I would stay until 1983.   As is true of all rookies, the early years were mainly work.  From 1976 until the early 80s I socialized very little,  and  spent most of my time preparing courses,  running research, and writing articles.  It was a lonely time.  I drank too much beer.  But in hindsight, it was also a valuable time.  The university liked my work and gave me early tenure in 1980.  I published over a dozen research articles, which led directly to significant pay raises, and I built a pretty good professional vita.  Tenure was the biggie.  Job security and money in the bank sure helped counteract the lonely feelings that came often.
Good Break #5:  In 1976 I bought a Toyota Corolla, and paid for it by 1979.  That car would run, with no repair bills beyond routine upkeep, for the next 13 years.  Not having to spend money on car repairs
was a major help in amassing money for a better life.

1983-1984
From 1977 to 1983 I lived in that little rental house.  As mentioned, I spent most of my time alone, and
wrote articles and built a career. I had purchased a piano and a pool table, and those provided good moments.  By the early 80s I had banked some money, had some small successes in stock investing,  and in 1982 I made arrangements to have a new home built.  I moved in in July of 1983. That was the first really nice place I had ever lived, and it got me to thinking I should get out of this angry funk about women and try again. In 1984 GREAT Break #6 came along, when I called a History prof named Sara and asked her to lunch.   Twenty years later and we're still having lunch!  Also in 1984 I became an Associate Professor. Moving up the career ladder.  Life had taken a turn for the better after a decade
that was very productive professionally, but not very productive socially.

Associate Professor (1984-1988)
I continued to generate scholarship and build my career, but not at the pace I had.  Sara and I
together had enough money to design and have built a house, which we moved into in April, 1988.
Those were good times.  A beautiful wife, a beautiful home, a solid career.  Our house was out in the woods, up a hill and not visible from the road. Very private, lots of wildlife.  We enjoyed it.
Toughest thing was caring for my folks. Mom developed Alzheimers and we had to move them
to Topeka.  Neither Sara nor I were built as caregivers, but we are good at finding social services,
navigating through bureacracy, and we got  Mom into a real nice nursing home.
It took until age 35, but I finally got where I wanted to be.  Some money,  a nice house, a nice
woman, a good job.

Professor (1988 -2004)
In 1988 I made professor.  I wrote a textbook that took until 1991 to get published, but otherwise
took the research mill out of gear.  Sara and I liked the house in the woods so much, we went
looking for more land, and found some in the early 90s.  In September, 1993 we moved to our
present home, which we designed and had built on 35 acres of woods and prairie west of Topeka.

Sometime in the 90s, Good Break #7 came along.  Somebody (and it sure as hell wasn't Al Gore) invented the Internet, email and the WWW.  This was a good break for several reasons.
I am a bit of social phobic and a recluse, and I find ordinary conversation to be difficult.  Ditto for
telephones, which I use only in emergencies.  The invention of email allowed me to capitalize on my great communicative strength, which is through the written word.

Also,  I have been able to build this website, which advances my tv collecting hobby and allows me
to make contact with other collectors all over the world.  Many of them have become good friends.
Finally,  online education came to Washburn, and I jumped enthusiastically on that bandwagon.  I can
teach and work from home, where I am far more comfortable than in any other place.

It is odd what stand out as good breaks. I feel I took good advantage of these, but the
fact that they happened at all was pure fate.

#1:  moving to a suburb gave me a shot at a high quality education
#2:  an old piano helped me develop a lifelong interest in making music
#3:  the Draft Lottery allowed me to use my abilities and talents rather than be in a useless war
#4:  the job offer from Washburn gave me a good career at a good place
#5:  a good car that ran for 13 years and cost me nothing---priceless
#6:  the best woman in the world for a wife, although she'll never quite forgive me for
rating Break #3 as just a teensy bit more significant than Break #6.
#7:  a way to communicate without having to be face to face--priceless

What I notice when I look at the breaks is that, with the notable exception of #6, they don't
too much involve people.  I've always been a solo act; never a team player.  The  concept
of family has never meant a whole lot to me.  Moving around so much  made it difficult to
sustain a lot of friendships.  I've never been much on having or interacting with neighbors.
I pay the taxes, and leave others to worry about that concept they call community.  So life for
me is very, very much home centered.

This has allowed me to sculpt the life I wanted.  I was able to overcome many negative
early role models and I am pleased with that.  It takes a special  person to appreciate this set of
attitudes, and Sara is very special.

The Future....2006 and Beyond 

And now we look to the future.  I am now nearly done with my 3 year Phased Retirement, during
which I work completely at home.  As I walked out after my last day on campus April  25, 2005 I could not but reflect on the absence of feeling.  No exhiliration, no nostalgia.  It was much like every work day had been.  I was never espeially unhappy to go nor was I ever especially happy to leave.
Not the passion for teaching that some of my colleagues claim to feel.  Not the disdain and contempt for it that others expressed.  Work was never life.  Work was a means to a life.

We have for some months been researching retirement communities.  It dawned on us  in 2005 that we came to Topeka to earn a living, and for no other reason.  As our jobs wind down, why don't we go someplace more interesting?  After a lot of sifting through brochures, and doing on-site visits, we have found a place that greatly appeals to us in Kansas City, MO.  It's called Kingswood. and is a CCRC--Continuing Care Retirement Community.  One enters a CCRC in the independent living area, and we will get a nice big house (they call them villas) at Kingswood.  Should we need it, there is assisted living, a dementia unit,  and skilled care nursing.  Lifetime care.  Until then, a nice place live,  lots of activities, and some freedom from the tasks of home ownership.  We like the idea of making these decisions now, while we are reasonably of sound mind and body, instead of having them thrust upon us in our 70s or 80s.

Life hit a speedbump on June 17, 2005 when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.  Seems that
15 years of healthy eating and exercise were not enough to outduel genetics.  Mortality reared its
head.  The good news is that my health team is excellent.  I've learned to do four blood tests a day,
and we are using Metformin to try to stabilize the condition.  So, I take my meds for diabetes and
Sara takes hers for hypertension, and we both hope that we can continue to enjoy our days together
for a long time.

Our days generally begin with exercise.  In bad weather it's indoors.  In good we bicycle and sometimes just walk.  I enjoy hard 20 mile rides on my own, and more sedate rides with Sara along on her recumbent bike.  Being in shape is hard work, but is worth it.

Much of my time is spent with spreadsheets and other tools trying to carefully track our current expenses and project those against our future income.  This might seem obsessive, but we don't want to someday have to choose between dinner and paying for the medications.  We fear many of our age peers who have not planned for retirement will face unpleasant choices like that.   Conventional wisdom used to be that one needed 65-80% of their working income in retirement---BALONEY.  If anything, we all will need more as government and private insurance costs more and covers less,  as utility costs rise, gasoline prices rise, etc., etc., etc.

Life goes on......