MY HIGHWAY OF LIFE Had Many Detours

About the Book

My book is composed of 84 stories. Each story is a separate entity, and ends with my wish of how and why I had been able to do, or not to have done something. The book is divided into four pars. Part I cover my life from childhood through university. Also, included are my years in the US Army. Part II is titled, “Have you ever been Elko? and other Nevada stories.” Part III describes my life in four countries in Africa. Part IV is titled “In between and miscellaneous.” The conclusion of my book summarizes all the parts of my life.

About the Author

I was born June 10, 1915 in Holtville, in the southern most part of California. My grammar and high school years were in Hemet, San Jacinto, Riverside and Brawley. For my university years, during the Great Depression (1930s and 40s), I attended UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) for two years, transferred to UC Berkeley and graduated in 1939 with my BS in agriculture. After graduation I started working on my MS, but service in the US Army prevented me from its completion. Eileen and I were married soon after I become a second lieutenant. My Army life of four years included service in the US and Europe, ended in 1946 when I was discharged as a major. I joined the Army Reserves, am now a lieutenant colonel in the Inactive Reserves. After the war my first effort was to complete my MS at Berkeley. Then raising a family become my life, but in 1955 a scholarship sent me and my family to Cornell University to complete in 1958 my Ph.D. for three years I taught at Cornell as assistant professor, transferred to the Agency for International Development (AID) in the State Department, to spend the next 16 years in Africa (Nigeria, Liberia, Somalia, Sierra Leone). My first 11 overseas years were AID, then five in the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. I retired in 1977.