To keep from having to update this every time I have a birthday (and I plan on having a few more), I’ll just say I’m in my seventies. I was born in 1942. You can do the math.
I’m now retired, having spent 52 years as a structural designer, mostly in the offshore oil bidness. I designed offshore drilling rigs and production platforms for service all over the world—the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, off the east coast of Newfoundland, off the west coast of Africa, in the Bering Sea off the north coast of Alaska, and off the east coast of Brazil.
I spent a year in South Korea as part of an onsite team working for ExxonMobil, supervising the construction of one of their deepwater production platforms by Daewoo Shipyards. I recorded the experience in a weekly journal that I published under the title Stranger in a Strange Land.
I’m a licensed Private Pilot. I once dreamed of being a military or airline pilot, but my poor vision put an end to that ambition. I compensated by owning two different airplanes. In the ‘Sixties I bought a two-place Cessna 140, similar to the airplane I learned to fly in. A few years later, I sold it and bought a four-place Cessna 172.
I’m a licensed Amateur Radio Operator and was once an active volunteer in Civil Defense and civil emergency communications. The fact that everyone carries a cell phone nowadays has rendered amateur radio operators pretty much unneeded in civil emergencies, though.
At various times in my younger days I was an amateur, semi-pro, and professional musician. I played piano in a rock ‘n’ roll band when I was in high school. I played guitar and sang in The Prelude Trio during the folk-singing craze of the ‘Sixties. And I played bassoon with the Beaumont, Texas, Symphony Orchestra during their 1962 and 1963 seasons.
I got away from music for about fifty years, but I’m getting back into it now that I’m retired.
I’m married to the former Sonja Jane Holbrook, of St. Paul, VA. As of January, 2021, she’s put up with me for fifty-two years. We have two fine children, a boy and a girl. Well, they’re both in their forties now, so I suppose I should describe them as a man and a woman.
We also have three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Our grandson, Trey Foster, is the one who set up and maintains this Website. If you need a Website created, revised, or improved, he can do it. Click on the link in the lower right-hand corner of this page to contact him.
All three of the grandchildren know more about digital technology than I do. Even the youngest one frequently says, “Here, Grandpa, let me show you how to do it.” I claim to know more than the five-year-old great-granddaughter, but I know that’s only a temporary condition.
I’ve written a bunch of short stories and three novellas. All of the short stories and two of the novellas have been published. The third novella will never be seen by anyone except me. It’s a projection into the future of this Website, titled A Future History of the United States.
I’ve written two novels, neither of which have been published. I now recognize that the first novel, written almost forty years ago, wasn’t very good. With all appropriate modesty, I think the second one, Requiem: A Novel of Political Prophesy, is superb. The book-publishing industry is pretty well dead nowadays, but one of these days I may try to find a publisher.
Writing has always been a big part of my life. Now that I’m retired, I’m doing a lot of it. Thus, this Website.