Donald James Paul Forth:  

In the spring of 2002 I retired from full time teaching after thirty-four years at the community college level. Most of this time I taught geography but for ten years I served as an instructional administrator, director of international student programs, teacher of history, film appreciation, ethnic studies, and study skills. I also coached cross-country. I did and still do have multiple interests! Like the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics and the Denver Broncos. I was born, raised and educated in the San Joaquin Valley. My mother was Irish and my father English, so my ethnic roots are from the British Isles. I grew up in Wasco, a small rural farm town in Kern County, played football, basketball and ran track. After high school I went to Fresno State University on a track scholarship and graduated in 1960 with a BA degree in history. Next I joined the US Coast Guard and was stationed in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was supposed to be a radar man but after I mistakenly identified Catalina Island as a aircraft carrier while on a training cruse they had me play basketball. I wanted to teach, so after my military service I stayed in the Bay Area and attended San Francisco State University (1961-62). My teaching and coaching career began in a high school in Santa Maria, California. I taught history, political science and geography and coached basketball and track for the next four years. In Santa Maria I found my bride (a fellow teacher) and we have been together since. Community college teaching was my goal, so I needed a Masters Degree. I returned to Fresno State University for the next two years, completed an MA in history and accepted a teaching position at West Hills College  in the fall of 1968.. During our WHC era my wife and I added two fine sons to our family. Both later graduated from WHC and UC Berkeley. I also earned a Doctorate in Geography at the University of Northern Colorado (Greeley) and was a Fulbright exchange teacher at Stamford College in Stamford, England during 1974-75. Thirty- four years later the circle was complete. My wife (who also retired after thirty-three years at WHC) and I are now on the Central Coast of California enjoying the SLO way of life. So as I enter my seventh decade with my lovely wife of forty-nine years, our two fine sons and their well educated and beautiful wives and now five grandchildren, I am a contented guy. I don't need a mansion - I need my books, music, cameras and a garden and in this wonderful Coastal Mediterranean climate all is well. In 2008 and good friend and I planted a small vineyard of 2000 pinot noir vines. We hope to have our first juice in fall of 2011, with luck we will have a bottled product in 2013. Each day I get up and learn something new, I hope you do as well. Travel is probably my biggest and the most expensive interest. I have been able to visit all  fifty states of the USA , Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Japan, China, South Korea, India, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam ...Expand for more