I was reborn on 25 May 1983. At age 40, I underwent life-saving open heart surgery. I was a 250 pound slob who couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without taking a nitro pill. Ninety days after the surgery I weighed 193, my current weight, and took up running. One hundred days after the surgery, I was jogging through the streets of Baghdad with the Hash House Harriers. Thank God! My late wife was so incredibly supportive, as was my leadership at work. I even liked the big hair of the 80s, and the Tigers beat the Padres.
One hundred days after the surgery, I was jogging through the streets of Baghdad with the Hash House Harriers.
Gotta ask -- what were the Hash House Harriers?
I was “reborn’ in the 80’s as well. The 70’s were not good for me. I got a draft lottery number of 308 which did allow me to stay in college thats the good news. I was going to school to go into the military through the Navy’s Officer Candidate Program. When I graduated in 1977, opportinities were gone due to Carter’s military drawdown. I went to work for Fluor Corporation in their Petrochemical Division as a field engineer. We finished a job we were doing for Mobil in Lousiana in August 1980, and the company laid us all off. I returned to my home in Tucson and did odd jobs to support myself. At that time, Reagan’s Presidential candidacy was starting to get going. I spent countless hours walking the neighborhoods of Tucson and Phoenix handing out Reagan Presidential literature since I had a lot of time on my hands. The rest is history.