Mike Adams:  

Mike Adams came into your life as a result of World War II. His folks met in Australia during the LAST World War where one thing led to another and the “Yank” swept his mother off her feet making her a WAR bride. Lo and behold, along comes Mike, born and raised in Australia. His first trip to the States, by ship, was memorable; he was six months old, traveling on HIS British passport. He returned to Australia at the age of four with his new baby sister who was six months old. This time he travelled on his US passport. They lived in Australia until he was ten, where he acquired a new brother. His dad said that three kids was the limit. So he grew up in a rural farming community on a dairy farm. It was neat, riding a bicycle three and a half miles to school each day, doing the "chores" on the farm after school, and rarely seeing people in public outside of school because of the work at home. As a side perk, he learned how to drive an American Jeep (left hand drive) converted to Australian requirements, right hand drive. It was fun during and after a rain storm, as you had to cover the holes on the left side of the floor with your feet or take a mud bath. It was terrible without passengers. When he was eight years old he was allowed to drive the milk into the dairy on weekends, and STRAIGHT back home!!! The school he attended was a building that was built on stilts, so that it would not flood when the creek crested. It was here that he was introduced to doing his school work on a slate. When arriving in the States for the final time, traveling on HIS Australian passport, he learned to speak like and AMERICAN within 30 days of arrival. Some of his "classmates" took offense of his Aussie accent, and figured "whooping up" on the foreigner was fun. Kids will be kids. Incidentally, his mom died a few years ago with her Aussie accent intact. The family stayed with his grandparents in Missouri for a couple of months before moving to California, relocating to Sacramento, California the next year. His mom and dad must have forgotten that three were enough and had another son, followed by a daughter (16 years Mike’s junior). He graduated high school, joined the Navy and had a wonderful career in a field which he thoroughly enjoyed. He was an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) operator, which means that he was trained in the art of detecting submerged submarines with some very sophisticated equipment (at the time he used it). He flew in the US Navy’s P-5M Marlin seaplane (briefly in training), and then in the P-2V (SP-2H) Neptune for approximately six and a half years. During this time he deployed every six months and returned home for six months. The only difficulty with this was it was the monsoon season in the western Pacific and winter in the States. His deployments took him to Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam. He then transitioned into the P-3B aircraft and was stationed in beautiful Hawaii. The P-3 is a plane the Navy converted from a passenger plane to a special platform rather than build one from scratch, proving that it was a financially profitable system. When not in a squadron and in a flight crew, he had two tours (duty stations) where he was an instructor. To qualify as an instructor, he was sent to “IT” school to learn the finer points of how to teach sailors. But when he arrived at his duty station, his students were officers ranging in rank of Ensign through Commander in both cases. He was also assigned to two different operations centers. Here he was involved with preparation an...Expand for more