The Author

The Guy Who Wrote It

Born of pioneer stock I came kicking and hollering in the hands of a midwife at her home in Mountain Home, Elmore County, Idaho on April 20,1933. They say my Mom was there too. My parents were blue color workers, my father being a fuel truck driver and sometime in the late 1930s, my mother went to work for the county recorder’s office. It was in 1938 my father joined the Elmore County Sheriff’s office. From then on I was known as the Sheriff’s kid. From the time I was 4 years old, I was shoveled off with my uncle Clyde Love and Aunt Bertha to the mountains of the Boise National Forest where my uncle was county road overseer for the 80 miles of road from Dixie through, Pine Grove, Featherville, Rocky Bar, ending in Atlanta. I grew to love the country, the fishing, inventing adventurous games and going to work with my uncle. In Rocky Bar and Atlanta, he regaled me with stories of Peg Leg Annie as did Rocky Bar’s infamous Charlie Sprittles who taught me about gold and the stories of the ghost town, once the gregarious mining town and county seat.

Peg Leg Annie started as a challenge to find out the truth about her life, stories I was reading were redundant using the same episodes and never explaining much if anything about the people connected to her story. Some things didn’t stack up with what my uncle and Charlie Sprittles had told me. So in 2008, I started the first efforts to discover her story. The ultimate research has served to bring identity and truth to those factors previously in error or left to inconclusive results. Peg Leg Annie was published in May 2019.

Life moved on from the area. My father, becoming sheriff through WWII joined the Idaho State Police and we moved to Lewiston in North Idaho. It was in high school I began my fascination with journalism. I  became editor in chief of the school paper, an award-winning publication. I went to the University of Washington to further my studies of the craft, transferring to the University of Idaho. It was the end of my 1st semester at Idaho when my mother called to warn me that my draft notice was being mailed. She had friends in high places. I jumped on a bus and headed for Spokane, Washington where I joined the US Air Force. The Korean War was still waging on.

Following the Korean War, I decided to follow my Dad’s footsteps and joined the ranks of law enforcement in Idaho as well as serving as a Chief of Police in Oregon. It was at that time I was prompted by my mother to write a book about her grand mother’s emigration from England. This included her great grandfather’s survival of a major shipwreck in 1873. My great grandmother passed away before I was able to record her story. Upon losing my mother in 1981 I decided to get back to the book. That became Destiny’s Voyage with a new theme.

In 1967 I went to Alaska where I spent the next 45 years. During this time I worked with Lloyd’s of London which required me to travel to England. I took advantage of these times and did research at the maritime museums and historical archives along with a researcher from Lloyd’s Press that discovered old documents for me. In 2000 my wife contracted cancer, we sold our business and I remained home as her caregiver and went to work on the book. It was first released in 2006 and reprinted in 2009. From inception to publication a span of 48 years passed.

Writing has always been in my blood but for many years it was restricted to analytic reports, of theories, major case insurance claims investigations and adjusting. During these years I studied writing, acquiring a good library including study through Great Course’s video lecturers. In spite of all these lessons, I write as the words come to me and not necessarily with the proper grammatical structure called for in the manuals.

I hope you, as my readers will derive some satisfaction from my books and leave your reviews on Amazon. It is a great help to us writers and the best promotion to acquire more readers. Thank you all who have purchased the book and to those I hope will do so.