W Lawrence Daniels:  

This journey though life has taken many paths. As I journey from day to day, all those paths have led to the center of my world, my family. I have the most amazing spouse, Lyn, that I met while I was teaching in the Philippines. We have six children between us. My oldest child Erynn is a mechanical engineer who spent time in a relationship with a mouse. As an Imagineer for Disney she managed the handheld assistive devices for the deaf and blind. If you ever toured Nauticus, she was one of your educators. Lyn's oldest is at Tidewater Community College studying digital design and animation. My youngest dreams of being an intelligence analyst for the FBI and is studying at ODU. Lyn's daughter is studying to become a surgeon while trying to finance it by a tour in the Air Force. She is only fluent in Tagalog, Arabic, Mandarin, French and English. Not bad for a young lady that could not speak English 10 years ago. The artist of the family comes up next. He spent a summer learning construction by working on a crew rebuilding a house at Kitty Hawk. An incredible artist, he graduated in 2018 from high school and is only waiting for orders for boot camp with the Air Force. The youngest walked away as state champion in Taekwon Do in his weight and belt division for all three competitions in his first tournament. The most philosophical of all of the kids, he graduated in 2019 and will most likely find a unique and interesting field of study. Currently, I have a practice as a pediatric nurse practitioner caring for children with mental health needs. I work with an incredible group of caring professionals with Family Insight in Norfolk, have my own practice as Adapt Well, PLLC, and serve as the lead nursing theory instructor for US University in San Diego. This is a resting place on my journey that I never dreamed I would find. The story of how I got there is convoluted. While in college, I bought and ran an ambulance service. Due to undercapitalization and a changing Medicaid market, it folded about a year after I graduated. It is amazing what you will do when you are hungry. I started selling insurance as a debit agent moving up to a manager of the agency in Baltimore. I spent 10 years one 18 months in that (shudder) northern city. Returning to Virginia Beach, I had an agency and brokerage license and went independent. Have you ever tried to sell something you cannot see, taste, smoke, or touch and does not work until you are dead? I so hated getting up every morning. Thankfully, there was a saving opportunity. Even though I was selling insurance, my life really centered on my volunteer life at Phoebus Volunteer Rescue Squad in Hampton. While I sold insurance, I had a small company on the side that taught CPR and first aid. I was also on faculty for ODU as their EMT instructor. That was a position I held since five days after graduating with my BS. One day, I was teaching a class for Operation Smile and one of the students, a facial reconstruction student from Liberia, said "We have nothing like this in our country, can you come and teach us?" Life changed at that moment. During the travels on that path of my journey, I decided that I had to change careers. The actual adventure in Liberia is a whole other tale. Returning to the US, my wife-at-the-time and I decided that I could return to nursing school (it was nursing school and a family or medical school and no family! priorities must be maintained). So, I spent two semesters catching up on prerequisites and then 13 months in a one-...Expand for more