Occupation(s), Career Details
After SPHS, Don Kronenberg and I spent the summer working for a mortuary accommodation service picking up dead bodies. We still have those stories to tell! I went to USC and Don up to UCSB.
Through college I worked as a musician playing bass guitar for a band called Shazam. Best gigs were Hollywood Palladium and Ontario Motor Speedway with Rare Earth. Most pay was Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. $200.00 per week. Is that a career?
After graduation from SC, I drove up to UCSB, got a cap and gown and went through graduation with Don. Did we have out bathing suits on under those robes? Don headed north by train to Alaska and I headed to the beach in Oxnard where hippies built campfires, played guitar and a Harley Davidson biker with a One Way Jesus vest led me to Christ. Contemporary Christian music was just getting started with guys like Larry Norman (whose drummer lived next door to me in So Pas) So I started playing music in church while working for Dial Finance company. Adulthood started around 1978 for me.
Headed up to San Francisco to study music and became a Youth Minister in a couple of Southern Baptist churches...fired from both! I rarely got the hang of church politics but tried real hard.
Then I headed to St. Louis to serve as a Youth and Youth Music minister (yes fired) But learned a lot the pastor there mentored me for decades.
Now let's try Pastor. Headed to seminary in Kansas City and a full-time pastor job in Stewartsville, MO. pop 684. Loved it! If I had it to do over again, I would stay there. Still in touch with the teenagers there I took to church camp who are grandparents now! What a gift to live in a small town in the country with farmers etc. Don came to visit me here.
Around this time or a pastorate or two later, I went to Brazil on a mission trip with my guitar. Loved it. Tried to become a missionary several times so I could move my family to a foreign country (what was I thinking?) God said no, then no, then hell no!
I also followed my Dad's footsteps in sales and while I pastored, I sold copiers for Modern Business Systems in MO, then Ikon Office Solutions in MO, IA, then TX. Seems l like doing two things at once..music/preaching/copiers...oh make that three. I should be rich. No wait, I had 5 kids and lost a bunch of money trading options while trying to get enough money to move to Brazil...remember that story :) Tenho muito saudade do Brasil.
2000 - TX - music/preaching/copiers in Allen, a church in a strip mall, 150 teenagers showing up on Wed nights...very cool. It could not have gotten any better than this. Edgy, contemporary, unique, a church for people who don't like to go to church or been burned in church. Great vision, great people, family happy...I just did not have the skill set to sustain it...the band we put together was just kicking it, the music drew the people, then we got in a band fight just like the old days with Shazam. Egos kill bands and churches too.
2007 - became a sailor...yes...put together international sailing vacations for people. Let's go to Croatia, Italy, Greece, Spain, BVI's, Egypt, Turkey!
2017 - Remarried - in Houston with a 12 year old step-daughter. Yes, I still drive a kid to school at 65! Selling insurance on the phone.
2022 - I think I am retired for good from all my careers. Jennifer is a hospice nurse so that may come in handy. My step-daughter is a Sophomore this year. Jennifer and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and we serve in the Temple among other things. It's really been a new life for me the past 5 years. I feel happy and sad: Happy with "now" but sad with all the things I missed having only one life.