I was born in Bryn Mawr, on the Main Line, six miles outside of Philadelphia. I attended The Haverford School, a college preparatory school for boys, as my father had done. While attending Haverford College, across the street from my prep. school, I successfully bid on a place on an archaeological dig to Alaska's North Slope in 1967 before Alaska's oil was discovered. I became enamored with Alaska and returned after college, not knowing then that I would stay. I first worked as a dynamiter for logging road construction, then returned to college, this time in Fairbanks. I married a beautiful woman, became a chemist in a pulp mill, started a chemistry lab, and worked as an environmental engineer in public health. We finally moved off the road system. I have written about this, our greatest move, and my Alaskan experiences in the memoir On Flat Lake Time.
