- My Bio…
The Early Years…
I was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. I am an only child. I was a mediocre student until 6th grade. Then two things helped me to advance in my academic life. 1) I entered a special school for asthmatics, which had only 11 students in my class, and 2) I had an exceptional teacher for the next 2 years.
I did better in High School, and graduated 11th out of about 250 students. My health also improved, and became quite active in the Boy Scouts and enjoyed hiking, biking and camping.
College…
I wanted to be a pilot, so I studied Aerospace Engineering. My eyesight wasn’t good enough to be a real pilot, but I ended up graduating after 4 years as a Mechanical Engineer and went to work in Phoenix, Arizona, building satellite parts.
Over the next several years I bounced back and forth between work and school and managed to complete my Aerospace degree and get a Masters in Electrical Engineering.
While in graduate school I became more active in my religion and in 1985, I was baptized into the Catholic Church.
Traveling to Europe…
After completing my Masters degree, I decided that I should see a little more of the world. So I took a 9-week backpack tour of Europe. This was an eye opening experience for me. I never really considered that daily life could be so different. It is an experience I wish every American could have.
After I returned from Europe, I decided that I should try living in a different place, so I found a job in Pittsburgh, PA. It was quite an adjustment for a desert boy to be thrust into the Rust Belt in January, but I survived, and actually grew to like Pittsburgh very much.
But I had contracted the travel bug while in Europe and longed to go back there. In 1990, my backpack and I got our chance and we spent another 8 weeks there. I was able to see the bread lines in the Soviet Union. I was there when they hoisted ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ from the Berlin wall onto a truck and carried it off to a museum. These images will always be in my mind.
From Then till Now…
I wish that my life could always be that exciting, but of course, it can’t. I went back to work in Phoenix for about a year. Then I did a 3+ year stint in the Baltimore area working for Westinghouse Electric, at which time I got some feel for the D.C area and learned what Beltway Bandits were.
In late 1994 I moved back to Tucson and got a job that has been really special to me. It is the one I have now, working on planetary research at the University of Arizona.
