I was born in Huntington WV, and when I was about one year old, my mother and father moved me and my two older brothers to a coal mining town in Logan WV where my father began working as a railroad detective for C&O Railway. I don’t remember any of that, but I wrote a silly song about it called Guyondotte River.
We eventually moved to Charlotte NC where my father worked as a police officer for Greensboro, and eventually landed a job with the US Secret Service and moved us to Fairfax VA. My father was promoted to the presidential detail during the Nixon administration where he mainly guarded Vice President Spiro Agnew traveling around the
world with President Richard Nixon. It’s pretty cool when your dad takes you to work and sits you in the limo seat where JFK was assassinated and shows you the closet full of secret weapons used by agents.
My mother worked as medical technologist and studied to get a master’s degree in Microbiology while managing the Microbiology Lab at Commonwealth Hospital in Fairfax, eventually co-founding Fairfax Medical Labs when finally selling the extremely successful and growing lab before retiring. She worked full-time, raised three children, and completed a graduate degree. I remember her taking me to night classes and lectures at George Mason University, like a guest lecture of Jane Goodall.
Somehow I graduated Robinson Secondary School in 1981 after a pretty crazy childhood growing in the suburban neighborhood with guys like David Brockie, founder of provocative metal band “Gwar”. Don’t look them up unless you want some shock. It’s just to describe the environment.
Eventually, I made my way to Virginia Tech where I studied philosophy while earning a certificate to teach physics and math, and with some lucky timing I managed to land a job teaching Physics at Blacksburg High and Life Science at Shawsville Middle School, when I met my future wife Karen, we raised two amazing children, Kaela and Cole.