Henry Juhala:  

h she pushed me beyond my comfort zone. Mrs. Mollett, I would not be the creative person I am today without your tireless time and devotion to help make me a better musician and creative thinker. My greatest improvement was in the 4th Grade thanks to Mrs. Moncur. Mrs. Christopherson probably served me best by helping me develop a positive image for myself and helped produce some needed advanced math and reading skills. I have a zest for understanding the world better and love to travel, including internationally because of Mr. Dorsett¿s geography class. Mr. Muth -- wow. I wish everyone could understand literature through the same perspective and eyes you taught us to look at it with. Mr. Gillespie, I owe part of my career to you. The love of science and the process of scientific discovery you honed into me served me well as I work with top scientist from around the world. A few college professors are a different story. Some of them were superb. Mr. Gunther, I owe so much of my savvy and love for journalism to you. Mr. Matsdorf, your skill at teaching me practical Greek and Hebrew study methods to understand the Bible probably saved me from a life of living to please others rather than how God designed me to be all because I learned exactly what the Bible did and didn¿t say on certain subjects. And Dr. Eno, Romans has been the most practical application class for my personal living than any I could have taken. I also appreciate your personal friendship over the years. Many other professors, including some of my own relatives, I respect in their disciplines. But, many Profs in the Christian colleges I attended have a lot of bridge building to do before they get my respect back. A big part of this is their purposeful misuse and abuse of the Bible against gay and lesbian sons and daughters of the church. I can¿t tell you how many lives I have seen destroyed because of how you have placed priorities of legalism over grace and forced it on others, contrary to what you even know the Bible truly says about it all. Some of you have a lot of repenting to do. (Yes, I can be activistic at times when it is appropriate and necessary). Now on to more frivolous things. If I won $100 million, I'd give 50% of it to various charities, and then spend the rest on developing a business that I could manage. This would be a Department Store style business like Fister's Dept. Store that I worked in through high school. Another option I could be very passionate about is a fragrance marketing and manufacturing company. I would also invest a part of the money in a brownstone in NYC and prime, secluded real estate in the Black Hills. I've lived in more than 7 dorms and 2 apartments during my college years. I was never part of the Greek system. But, I loved campus life. When I was a student at Black Hills State, I was part of the programming board of the Student Union and eventually became chairman of the Student Union Board (SUB). This was probably the best thing I did in my life to help develop and enhance my future business career skills. Grades suffered, but in the long run it was the wisest priority I could make at the time. A special thank you goes out to Jo Marie Ruddell for her mentoring of me during this time period. One plus was also the times I worked on campus that also helped to draw me into campus life. One drawback was the times I had to work off campus without other students around. Even then, when I went to school at LIFE, I worked with several fellow students, thus developing close bonds not otherwise found on campus. To be truly happy I would be doing all the creative things I love to do without the grind of the corporate environment I've worked in for so many years. In reality, however, there is a healthy amount of happiness and contentment that comes from being able to afford a decent lifestyle because of the corporate environment I've been a part of for so many years. My current age is 53. When I was 12, I thought that people my age now would be wrinkled, white-haired homebodies. I was so completely correct about many of them (Oh, I¿m talking about myself here ¿ a wrinkled, white-haired homebody). Others surprise me with their continued quest to remain youthful in looks and spirit. Though my career has been very different than I could have planned out, it has been nevertheless very rewarding. Over time, I developed and utilized many different skill sets in my career that I would not have envisioned at the age of 12. A large part of this success I attribute to a very broad liberal arts education that started in early elementary school and continued throughout college. It is amazing how many of the skills I learned through various church responsibilities over the years contributed to my business success. The one thing I learned best throughout all my education was how to transfer learning skills from one discipline to a very different and often contrary discipline. This helped me quickly ramp up to very dissimilar jobs in very opposite environments than my prior ones. Here are some examples. I went from retail sales to legal advertising and administration. I followed this with the international marketing of cosmetics and fragrances. I even got to work with such spokesmodels like Jane Seymour and Jaclyn Smith. .This in turn helped position me as a liaison between international marketing, other marketing support groups, supply chain planners and our R&D folks. As such I took what science background I had and parlayed it into a long history in the field of consumer new product development (mostly on the R&D side) working closely with scientists, marketing professionals and project management folks of all kinds. I then further parlayed all of this into the Regulatory Affairs environment. Here a big part of my function was/is to serve as compliance liaison between our corporate interests and various government entities regarding product labeling and legal claims management. All that from the guy who started out mowing lawns, sweeping floors and doing windows at Becker's Drug Store. Yes, I still dress like I did 10 or 20 years ago. Actually then I probably wore more suits to the office and church and had a much more savvy wardrobe. Now everything is casual. The change from a stylin business attire to business causal all happened when I was just beginning to get a very solid wardrobe put together of suits and hundreds of ties -- all now in storage. Having a past that includes significant jobs in retail clothing, the beauty industry, beauty pageants and modeling, etc., I do have a keen sense of style. But, I also have little vanity. As long as it is somewhat stylish, color coordinated and clean, you will often find me wearing someone's hand-me-downs that I got from Goodwill. After all, why spend $50.00 on a shirt at a Dept. Store when you can get ten of them from Goodwill, contributing to a good business model helping needing people at their very basic level, and using the savings for a more important need beyond my own. I think some who knew my parental family, as always having to struggle financially and socially, would be surprised at my present life vocationally and socially. The more my poetry gets published, the more I think they will also be surprised at my literary creativity. Also, unless they were with me in church or in my music theory classes, most would not realize how musically adept I have been and can be. The same is true of theater and visual arts. Most people, including me, were in denial about my sexual preferences while I was in school, but I don't think it really should be a surprise to anyone. What is more at issue with many of them however, would be that I am quite confident that God created me to love someone of the same gender rather than the opposite gender. I have no doubts medically and scientifically that it is prebirth disposition (different from it being genetic) that is neither contrary to Christian principles nor the mandates of the Bible. Many of those in my past have strict, legalistic religious backgrounds. In this realm many of them want to be the keeper of secrets and the arbitrators of judgment rather than instillers of grace and lovers of their neighbors as Christ commanded them to be. As such, this is the one area they will be the most uncomfortable with -- just because it hasn't been in their realm of possibility based on their prior acculturation and socialization of the issue. My first jobs were at various residences of townsfolks such as the Fowlers, Mrs. Penfold, etc, (usually homes on Kingsbury Street) where I got paid below minimum wage to mow lawns and do other lawn chores. This was around the 3rd to 6th grades. What I remember most about it is being welcome in their homes, being given refreshments like lemonade and a pastry after a hard afternoon of work and basking in surroundings much grander than I was used to in my own home. This probably played a big role in motivating me towards upward mobility. Mrs. Penfold in particular was fond of showing me some of her china, vases, art objects, etc. because she knew I appreciated them. She would often send home with me the latest selling brochures for fine items like Buick or Cadillac cars, art auction and fine antique catalogues, home furnishing and gardening magazines, etc. I think she was perhaps the first person to understand and seek to help nourish my gay sensibilities even before I had a clue. Didn't I tell you at the start I could ramble? This is still in draft form. You might check in here later for a better edited, more cohesive version. But, my life's an open book. I don't mind you reading about it even with the writing flaws.