I was born in Los Angeles. I spent my formative years in Covina, California, living in the Masonic Home for Children. Aside from going to public school, I learned to ride horses, camp, ski, bodysurf, and scuba dive. I was 14 years old (1955) when I took my first open water dive in La Jolla, California. There was no wet suit, no BCD, a J-valve tank, a double hose regulator, and fins that weighed a ton, but I fell in love with the underwater world. Little could I imagine I would still be diving after all those years.

As a child, I watched the T.V. travelog adventures of Marin and Osa Johnson, the original travel movie makers, photographers, and writers. I knew then I was going to see the world. How? I could never have guessed.

In 1962, while still in college, I answered President Kennedy’s call to join the Peace Corps. I was among forty invitees sent to the University of Michigan; in three months, we learned to speak Thai and trained in our specialties (mine medical technology – parasitology). I returned home after two years and had a hard time readapting, a familiar happening to many Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV). Shortly after that, a friend introduced me to Jim Turpin, M.D., founder of Project Concern; he immediately offered me a job in Vietnam. In 1966 when the Vietnam war got too close to my location, I returned home. With the lure of adventure still on my mind, I saw an ad for flight attendants in the LA Times. Continental Airlines was hiring. That was June 1967. I retired from Continental Airlines (now United) after35 fantastic years of exploring the world.

My writing life started as a stringer for the Houston Community Newspapers, then to the Tribune and Houston Chronicle as a travel photojournalist.

I am the co-editor of Scuba H2O Adventure Magazine and freelance for X-Ray Dive E-zine and other travel magazines. I am a member of the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA), the International Travel Writers Alliance (ITWA), and the Texas Photographic Society (TPS).

My passion for travel continues, always searching for (pardon the cliche) those faraway places., exploring the world with my cameras. I use an Olympus OMD Mark III and a housed SeaLife DC2000 for underwater photography.