Russell Best:  

After high school I joined the Air Force, then volunteered for VietNam. I worked in photo recon/photo intel. After a 13 month tour in VietNam, I served in Germany until my discharge in Nov.71 (four years of active duty), coming out as a SSGT. After the military I used the GI Bill to attend college, but also got married and started a family in 1974. I left college at the end of my junior year because the GI Bill funds ran out and I had a family to take care of (first son was about a year old at that point). I worked in the advertising industry as a catalog photographer for several years, but later got fed up with clients and left that field. Having been a total "gearhead" my entire life, I brought my mechanical skills into the machine repair and rebuilding field and stayed there for almost 20 years, much of that time as supervision or middle management. Over time, as manufacturing jobs left Connecticut, this line of work started drying up and I had to change careers. I now work as a maint.supervisor for a large luxury retirement facility in Guilford. My wife was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1989 and passed away in 1993 after 19 years together. My two sons were aged 17 and 12 at that point and the 17 yr old was also diagnosed with the...Expand for more