Dennis Cox:  

Hi, My story begins, strangely enough, as a baby, the rest is history (thank God)! After expanding to 5'9 and all of 146 lbs by age 24, I had already been married and separated, so I kicked out west to Tacoma, WA. I must tell you that the tale that follows has been reality tested for its factual content; this in light of the fact that the reporter was admittedly, shall we say "psychedelized", for much of the early years. My journey took me to the forests of the Cascade Mountains where I was to become a Helli-logger (now famous due to Reality TV). Actually, when I started this work in 1974 there were only 200 of us worldwide. The work was dangerous, but the pay was good and we traveled to work in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia, mostly settling briefly in small towns located in or near National Forests. It was a great way to explore the mountains of the NW. In 1976, I visited Ellensburg, WA, where I would return to live in 1980. There, in 1984, I met Sherry, who became my wife and best friend for life in 1988. During this period, I worked a number of woods related jobs that included Heli-logging, and about 5 years with the Forest Service as a Forestry Tech in Pre Sale. I fought forest fires, planted trees, cruised timber, etc., etc. as a seasonal employee. Off work time included river rafting, hiking, climbing, and vacations with Sherry to Montana. By our second date, I had learned from Sherry that her dream was to return to the Rocky Mountains, in Montana. I also learned that her dream business was a laundry mat, because you don't need to be there while you are making money. I shared with her that I would one day like to own a pizzeria, because people out west don't know a damn thing about pizza; more on this later. By 1987 I could see the writing on the wall (yes, I'm certain I saw it), the timber harvest was shrinking, jobs were few and mostly with big outfits that paid small checks. The Forest Service was not hiring males with my ethnic make-up, and I was getting tired of giving them my expertise for low and seasonal wages. I felt like I was caught being truant from school, so at age 36, in fall 1988, I entered classes at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. Got kids and grand kids? Get them to Evergreen! Never did I realize that education could be so fulfilling; self-directed, hard work, but rewarding. Evergreen has an 85% placement rate for its graduates, and they are hired around the Nation. After I completed my BA, Sherry decided to get hers. I took work with a children's program with the local mental health clinic in Olympia following Evergreen. I had already worked in the field for 7 years, mostly in Rochester, during the early seventies, at the Convalescent Hospital for Children, on Scottsville Road. An interesting side story to this is that I also spent two years as a child in residential treatment at CHC. I had returned to Rochester in the late seventies, hoping to reunite with my first wife, NOT! While there, I worked at St. Joseph's Villa for about two years, before returning to the NW to work in the woods. After Sherry graduated Evergreen, in 1992, I decided to go to graduate school. I received my Masters in Applied Behavioral Science from John Bastyr University, in Seattle, WA and thought I'd do some consultant work with Microsoft, or Boeing, but I kept getting calls from social workers whom I had been working with while at the mental health center. They wanted me to work with children who they had on their case loads. In 1995, I hung my shingle and opened my private practice: Dennis K Cox, Counseling and Consulting Services. For ten years, I had the privilege of working with youth at risk, in foster care (I grew up in foster care), children and adults with developmental disabilities, TBI, mental illness, etc. My practice specialized in preventing out of home care, and transitioning youth back into their families from out of home placements. I never wanted for business, and I am proud to say that I was highly sought after and held contracts with schools, courts, WA State's Child and Family Services, Child Protective Services, Developmental Disabilities, and Economic Development Council. I answered a call from a colleague at The Evergreen State College, where I returned to work part time in their student counseling center as well. What a gift it was to work with these youth and their families. In 2003, after residing in the Puget Sound region (fondly known as the " I-5 Corridor") since 1988, I came home one day and told Sherry that I had a feeling that was hard to describe, but that I felt like I had finished whatever it was that I had been out to do. I was looking at leaving the counseling field and wanted to look into doing a pizza business. She shared with me that she had been following me for nearly 20 years with no complaints, but she wanted the next move to be hers, and she wanted to pursue our dream of moving to Montana. We had visited Montana for vacations yearly till that point, but could never decide where we would settle if we moved there, so, it was always put on the back burner. Now, it looked more serious, so I began looking for work in Montana, and we began thinking of what we could do as alternative ways of making a livin...Expand for more