I can remember picking up discarded soda bottles and turning them in at a local mom and pop store, two cleaned bottles for one penny. When I had enough pennies, I'd exchanged them for Mercury dimes. I also collected Buffalo nickels, but Mercury dimes were my favorite. Unfortunately, when I entered the service all of my coins were sold.

I completed high school in Greenville, South Carolina and by summer's end, was off to see the world through a porthole. After some Navy schooling, I was assigned to the USS Kittyhawk CVA-63, a floating city with a crew of over 5,000 men. I served 5 years that included three tours in Viet Nam onboard the Kittyhawk, the shortest was over 11 months in duration. During this time, every coin that went into my pockets later went into a jar and would eventually become the backbone of my new collection.

During my time onboard the Kittyhawk, I completed schooling as an NTDS Computer Programmer, NTDS Air Intercept Controller (AIC) and Anti-submarine Air Controller (ASAC) graduating at the top of the class in the last two courses. I then spent 2 years at NAS Point Mugu in Range Operations as an AIC and participated in many of the test operations for the Navy's F14 and the Air Force's F15 development programs. From Point Mugu I was transferred to the USS Constellation, CV-64. Between the three duty stations, I had the opportunity to control nearly every type of aircraft in the US Navy's arsenal and many in US Air Force's. Piper cubs to C-130s, A-4s to F-14s and even the SR-71 Blackbird.

I left the service in August 1977 to see what college was like and after a while decided to do some reserve time for extra money. After finishing my AA in Business, Computer Sciences Corporation dangled a carrot that included travel and I spend the next 10 years doing a little programming, a little traveling and a lot of writing for them. During that same time frame, served 4-1/2 years in the US Army National Guard Reserve as a Tank Commander, and then 4 years in the US Coast Guard reserve in Law Enforcement. I also took up sport diving and metal detecting and had a remarkable amount of success finding gold and silver coins and rings throughout San Diego county and its beaches.

During this time, I also completed my first U.S. coin type set, including gold. Most, but not all, of this set was BU and Proof, except for the really old stuff and which was mostly XF. Between a burglary and a divorce within a few months of each other, my entire collection was lost, everything, gone once again.

In 1987, a small government contracting firm, ETA Technologies Corporation, offered me a very handsome salary increase to join their staff, which included working with my wife once again. With a new job, my new spouse and I purchased a fixer upper house in the Kensington area of San Diego. We remodeled that house ourselves, taking a little over 9 years and every vacation day and weekend we had. The remodeling effort had been completed only a couple of months before the USSR fell apart, and the southern California job market with it. Almost every government contracting firm in Southern California "downsized" thousands of employees and the firm we both worked for was no exception.

Later that year we lost everything. Needless to say, coin collecting took a back seat for quite a few years, until one day in 1998, I came across a really neat on-line coin club and started developing collecting urges once again. Then in Dec. 1999, congestive heart failure nearly ended my participation in everything. With the help of my loving wife, Sharol, and the care and attention of the VA Clinic staff, I survived, but unfortunately parts of the old body didn't fair so good. Nuropathy in both feet has made the simple act of walking a real chore, but there are sunrises to see and coins to collect.

I collect very little US coinage any more, preferring 17th and 18th Century world coins and bi-metallics instead, thanks to Charles Calkins who opened my eye to a whole new world of collecting. I have more books now than ever before and I'm enjoying collecting much more. It's no longer how much I can spend or how many bright shinny things I can gather, but rather finding an older coin and researching what part it played in history. Some of my favorites include the Maria Theresa coinage of 17th Century Austria.

I am enjoying living high in the White Mountains of Arizona with my wife Sharol and teenage daughter, Christina, and I'm thankful for each day I'm allowed to share another sunrise and a cup of coffee with my wife. Between my family, the Barbershop Quartet I sing Lead in, "Hook, Line & Sinker", and my coins, I am quite content. Happy collecting.