It is my good fortune to walk down the hall each day with coffee in hand to slip into my Herman Miller lumbar support chair to work on a novel or screenplay that's been in the works for some time. Novels like Camel Red can take upwards to five years to research and complete while I often finish a screenplay in a month. Regardless, writing became my passion from the time I read my first novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Perhaps it was what influenced me to sign my current works Gregory David Page. But besides passion, writing requires time, opportunity and commitment, ingredients that would come much later in life.
Good fortune, too, had me born and raised in the company-run town of Hopedale during a time when its public school system was academically rated the best in Massachusetts. Unsure where to take my life upon completing high school, I began studying electrical engineering at Northeastern University, mainly because it offered a co-op plan that included a salary to offset tuition. But even with that added advantage, the going was rough and on the recommendation of a cadet friend on leave from the United States Military Academy at West Point, I applied and took all the tests for both West Point and Annapolis.
No one could have been more surprised than I upon receiving principal appointments to both academies. I graduated from West Point four years later and just when my obligated tour ended, was offered an assignment in Pakistan. But an untimely tragedy created the need to remain closer to home, so I accepted a simultaneous offer from General Electric where I had previously co-oped, to join their three-year on-the-job Management Training Program, which led to an MBA (my master's in information technology would come later) and opened a new career path mostly in the electronics and computer industries.
Growing up during a time when World War II waged and talk of the Great Depression still resonated across the globe certainly had a hand in shaping me. So did growing up on a farm the youngest of four with a sister and two considerably older brothers while working parents struggled to put food on the table. Escape from the loneliness of my existence during those times was routed through good books read under dim lights by a coal-burning furnace, where my imagination would run wild with thoughts of what it would be like to change places with the characters in the book. The amazing things one could do with words and writing! Not only could you erase great injustices by writing about them, you could have the ending come out any way you wanted. How powerful is that?
It was during those early years that I learned not only to cut down trees, chop, split, and stack wood; raise chickens and grow a garden; mix mortar and make my own wine; but also to cook, sew, iron and clean house. Perhaps that's why some describe me today as resourceful. It may also explain why I earned a culinary arts degree from Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island, the most fun I ever had attending school throughout my lifetime, and I've attended many. But I like to think that life to this time prepared me for a greater purpose, that is to work with words, shape and make them come off the pages and move readers to help them escape their daily routines and contribute to their thought processes, the same way books have entertained me over the years.
Just before she passed away, I promised Azelia I would finish this book so people would know of the sacrifices Larry Heron made for his country. More than that, people need to learn of her equal sacrifices. I did my part, now I hope people will read and enjoy the amazing story of these two great Americans as much as I enjoyed writing about them.
