Joel Osborne:  

Life I started this life in 1936 in Los Angeles California. Wound up in Flint Michigan by the age of 5 ... went there to live with my grandparents when my dad was drafted into the Army during WWII. I lived across the street from a large park that took up a whole block, and had a wonderful childhood in what must have been the best time there ever was to be alive. Flint was a wonderful, vibrant city in those days ... the auto plants were in full swing ... it was a great place to grow up. I attended Oak Street and Whittier Jr. High schools ... before moving to Detroit and Warren MI briefly during my 14th to 16th years. At age 16 I returned to Flint, quit high school in the spring of 1953, and after a brief "apprenticeship" at the Modern Dental Laboratories, and a short career at the Home Dairy I hitchhiked out the old "Route 66" to California to reconnect with my mother. I celebrated my 17th birthday in California that summer, and made enough money on a forest-fire fighting crew to return to Flint. I worked at Sears Roebuck for a year, then j...Expand for more