Donnel Schmidt:  

After high school I promptly joined the Navy as a hospital corpsman. My objective was to see the world, sow some wild oats and return to college and become a doctor. Real life has a way of changing the best laid plans. Oh, I saw things but it was as a Marine Corps corpsman. I grew up fast and learned about things I had not even imagined in my middle America, Santa Fe Springs upbringing. My journey with the Corps was the setting for my first book. As for the wild oats, there were loves that still haunt my dreams. Southeast Asia (Vietnam), North Africa, Cuba and places my memory still has not caught up with. I did my three year tour. Being only 17 when I graduated from high school and after obtaining an early out from the Navy I entered Cerritos College right before my 21st birthday in 1964. It was there I met Suzanne who was to become my wife of 30 years. I graduated from Long Beach State with a degree in telephone communications and engineering in 1970. Marriage and children prompted my major change from premed. I went to work for GTE along the way. My wife and I have three children two daughters and a son. In 1976, with the spirit of the Bicentennial celebration we packed up our household and moved to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. A beautiful lake town about 90 miles from the Canadian border and 35 miles east of Spokane, Washington. I worked in the local hospital for a while and because the money and benefits were so good I begrudgingly returned to my old engineering job with the phone company. Time pasted much to swiftly, the children grew and were soon off to college and careers of their own. I was forced into retirement a the age of 53 as GTE became Verizon and down siz...Expand for more