About the Book
For sometime I have felt compelled to write this book about my life. But each time, I sat down to write I wondered, silently, why it must be so. Do they want to read about my memories? What about their memories? What do I say? In retrospect, it seems as if there are, or have been, three distinct, yet overlapping time periods in my life. There was first a memorable childhood. My childhood was full of good times with my parents, my siblings, and my friends. We played together; we traveled together, and we bonded together. As I grew older, I realized that I wanted to provide my own children with the opportunity to forge those memories, events and milestones, just as I had been able to do during my years at home in Chillicothe. My memories today are not only of a life, but also of a place and a home in Chillicothe, which I can still visit and reminisce about the good times.
My life was interrupted as those ambitions were placed on hold by my service in the Army and a yearlong tour of duty in Vietnam. As I have related, the focus of my life, at least during that time period, came to be more upon survival. A night of fear of the unknown at a Listening Post beyond the perimeter of a relatively secure Marine base camp, the sights and sounds of war, the screaming of an incoming rocket, and the horrible blast, as it exploded on some nearby target, perhaps changed my perspective of life.
