Bruce Freeman:  

Life I struggled with college after high school because the damned unsympathetic university administration had this ridiculous criteria called a "minimum grade-point average." I finally finished my bachelors degree while in Navy, plus I then did some post-grad work at the Navy's Neuropsychiatric Research Unit & Joint Army/Navy Center for Prisoner of War Studies in San Diego. I was ordered to Vietnam but was injured during combat training at Camp Pendleton (Camp Del Mar) & honorably discharged with a service-connected disability. After the military, I used my GI Bill and received other degrees and diplomas in computer science, computer graphics, and fine art and graphic design from a 4-year private art school (Coronado School of Fine Art) in Coronado, CA, where I studied under Monty Lewis, a 1930 Guggenheim Fellow. My first wife & I lived in Coronado for 14 years and loved it there. Later I was art/creative director for a company that made giant inflatable characters and products (we made Otto Pilot, the iconic inflatable 'co-pilot' for the movie "Airplane," we made the 50' Oscar for 50th Academy Awards, & we put a giant King Kong on Empire State Building in 1982 as promo for remake of the movie). Then I was art/creative director for University of California for 12 years until I was layed off in '93. A friend somehow got tickets to the Pink Floyd 'WALL' concert at the Berlin Wall in 1990 as the Berlin Wall came down and invited me to go and we slummed and bummed across northern Europe to Berlin and the outstanding concert. Sharon (my second and current wife since we were married in 1991) relocated to Texas in 1993 and I became art/creative director for Univ. of Texas, Medical Branch at Galveston supervising 6 graphic designers and 2 medical illustrators. After that I was communications director for Leadership Network. Even though Sharon had owned her own graphics and book design business in San Diego, she did not have a college credit to her name when we left California, but she returned to school full time in Texas and completed her masters degree magna cum laude in history and art with emphasis in women's and European studies at UT in 2001. Sharon also ran two marathons in Dublin, Ireland, raising over $10,000 for leukemia research -- and as a remembrance of her Grandma Rose and the wife of a close friend ( Jeff Moody) Peggy Moody. Sharon is an absolutely amazing woman. I did a Peace March in January 2006 around the Mall in Washington DC and stayed for several more days to lobby the house and senate NOT to pass the Iraq supplemental spending bill coming up for a vote the following week. My Dad passed away in Sept 2006, and I brought Dad's 14 year-old springer spaniel, Lady, home to Oregon where we had moved in 2003, and where we now live with our six other pets we've rescued from various places. Sadly, Lady passed away in June 2009 as did our dog Angel in March 2009, but all the rest of our critter...Expand for more