I was born in Los Angeles and first lived near the corner of 39th and Vermont but in 1941
my parents bought a new house at 10515 Hunt Ave., near Abbott Road, in South Gate. I attended Mrs. Harwood's School for Tiny Tots, Bryson Ave. School, South Gate Jr. High and South Gate High. Shortly before graduation, I enlisted in the Navy in an office above the Lyric Theater (around the corner from the old Yellow Car "Loop" in South Gate) and headed off to Boot Camp two weeks after grabbing my diploma.
I served in the Air Department aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kearsarge (CVS-33) (homeported in Long Beach) until my discharge in 1960, but served an additional year as a radioman in the USNR at Huntington Park while majoring in journalism at Compton College, where I met my future wife, Karen Christie, a Lynwood High grad......
    After graduation, I worked as a reporter for the Compton Herald-American and then as editor of the Wilmington Herald-American in the port of Los Angeles. We married in early 1964 and honeymooned in Sweden and Germany for three months.
We moved to Central California in late 1964. I first worked as a reporter and then newswire/entertainment editor at the Merced Sun-Star daily newspaper and Karen became a school teacher. We both attended Merced College and Cal State-Stanislaus in nearby Turlock, CA. Our son, Ian, has taught school and is presently a grad student at Stanislaus and plays guitar/sings in a rock band, Zerostar.
   I retired from the Sun-Star in 2001 and Karen retired from teaching in 2003. Our main hobbies are traveling, history and genealogy, and in my case, old movies (It all began at South Gate's Allen Theater, aka "The Flea pit") and ham radio telegraphy (first licensed in 1956 as KN6TBX and presently KD6DKC). We hope to continue traveling in our retirement.