David D FermanWhile growing up in a low-rent neighborhood of Wichita, Kansas during the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the birth of Rock 'N' Roll, and World War II, Dave won All-American, All Catholic, and Quill and Scroll awards for high school journalism. Howeer, he worked his way through college beginning as a 17-year-old bartender and bouncer in several honkey tonk roadhouses, a cowboy on a trotting horse ranch, by playing smash-mouth defensive end and kicking footballs, roughnecking in the oil patch, painting airplanes at Beechcraft, bucking rivets at Boeing Aircraft Company, and eventually on the G.I Bill. Dave turned down two minor league contracts in 1951 and 1952 with the Boston Red Sox so that he could remain eligible to play varsity football and baseball on college scholarships.During the Korean War, Dave was a U.S. Marine B.A.R. Automatic Rifle Gunner, a Military Policeman (MP), a boot camp Drill Instructor (DI), and a pilot for 13 months until he crashed, burned, and almost drowned in a Florida swamp. Dave then served a tour with Navy Air Intelligence in the Mediterranean Theatre and the Middle Eastern Theatre.After graduation from college and certification as a high school English and science teacher, Dave finally realized that the defense industry were paid double his teaching salary. He joined BeechCraft to write military aircraft flight manuals, was promotedto Vice President at Stanley Aviation, extended his horizons to proposals and marketing with three Top Ten aerospace companies, and became a Program Administrator for the Lockheed-Martin Corporation (the largest Defense Company in the world) until he retired on the first day of 2000.Dave has published eight novels and has a couple more waiting to be written after this darned stroke goes away. Read More Read Less