The author played baseball in college, participated in a professional tryout camp and for the 3rd Marine Division in Asia. 

He never used the term “wanderer” until he became one. He served with the Marines in Vietnam and experienced a second war in Israel. Living in Israel after the war offered him time to explore castles and ancient ruins of the Greeks, Crusaders and Romans. He spent a Christmas Eve in a 10th C. Roman monastery and Christmas Day in Bethlehem. He floated on the Dead Sea, climbed the Roman ramps used to destroy the Israeli defenders at Masada and walked the ancient quarters of Jerusalem and Tyre. He stood along the shore in water of the Galilee and Tiberius, where the Apostle Paul preached a new religion called Christianity. Before returning home, he witnessed the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Two years later, his final itch was scratched by parachuting with a civilian sky-diving club. Later, a second jump to verify the first was not a fluke.

He was a voracious reader and writer from age eight. He discovered a fascination for all facets of history and the humanities. He credits realist French author Honore de Balzac, Homer’s Odyssey, Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, J.D. Salinger, Herman Wouk, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and Ernest Hemingway. All planted the seeds of his subsequent wanderlust, its bountiful bouquet and the catalyst for his novel The Price for Glory. His Destiny!