I was born (February 1941) and raised in Flint, Michigan in a middle-class family. My father was a musician and a radio D.J. My mother was a writer of short stories and radio and scripts. She and my father had a Sunday afternoon radio program. My mother wrote the scripts, and she and my father played the different characters.
As a teen, I worked for a gun shop and learned a great deal about weapons, hunting, and shooting. I became an instructor in shooting skeet and trap and came in second as junior state champion. This training came in handy when I joined the Marines in 1959 after high school.
In the Marines, I graduated boot with a promotion and sent to Camp Pendleton to work as a small arms repairman. I attended several weapons classes always finishing in the top ten in class. I later was assigned to a guard company in Guam. During this tour, another Marine and I were involved in a prolonged gunfight with six intruders in a highly restricted area. We captured five of the intruders and the sixth one the next day. We were given letters of accommodation for "Prompt and heroic action while in a restricted area." I returned to the states just in time to be deployed to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Upon my return, I was discharged.
I spent the next several years working in law enforcement in California. I was a city officer, federal officer, and a deputy. Police officers did not make a great deal of money back then. By now I was married with two children. I began working in heavy construction as a teamster driving the big heavy trucks you often see in mining. During this time we decided to move back to Michigan. Unlike California, construction work was seasonal and so sought a more stable job. I found it in foundry work.