Mike Gallo:  

After high school I went on to Iowa Western and then on to Iowa State and graduated in 1988. From there I went to Los Angeles and started working for Douglas Aircraft building commercial and military fighter aircraft for a few years, then after living as much as of the good life in Southern California as I could stand, I wanted to move back home. I moved back to Carroll Iowa and began working for a compay that built gas turbine aircraft engines. Thats where I dipped into the company ink and met and married my wife, Theresa, who worked for that company. She used to do some filing in my engineering office and after I took one look and I was a goner! I left that company and joined another company that designed and built large highway constuction equipment. I enjoyed that also and who woundnt enjoy playing with giant earth moving equipment like the ones in your sand box growing up??...guess that'd be a guy thing. During this time of my life, we began our family. Then on Sept 11th, 2001, 19 middle eastern men flew two planes into the world trade center and killed 3000 Americans. I had no idea at the time how that event was going to change my life forever. My wife who is a medic in the Iowa National Guard was activated and given orders to to deploy to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio Texas. Her deployment was to last TWO YEARS !!! I was going to have to be Dad and Mom for two kids ages 5 and 12 !! The 1st year was hard a...Expand for more