Can you give us some biography background to include why you became interested in the Navy and Navy history in particular?

My dad was a Sailor and my grandfather was a Sailor briefly during WWII, although he never saw any action, so the Navy was present in my life from the moment of my birth in San Diego.  After my parents' divorce, I grew up on my step-father's farm in Indiana, so I didn't really have a Navy upbringing other than I knew it was in our family line.  I became intrigued with biographies, mostly military biographies and grew up very much a believer in the romantic view of heroism and the greatness of our nation and it's Navy.  I started out with World War II, and then just started going back from there in my interests and scope of research and was fascinated with the importance of living a life worth remembering. I am a true believer in the power of history to inspire others, just as it does with me every day.

Why pursue a doctorate and how was it that you accomplished that overseas?  Who are some of the scholars that served as your role models?

When I graduated from Purdue, I thought that my education had come to an end, but five years later I had a chance to go to the Naval Postgraduate School where I came under the tutelage of Prof. Claude A. Buss, a scholar on Asian history.  Claude, at 90 years old, was an amazing mentor and he ignited an interest in me to pursue history at the doctoral level.  I never followed the standard career path, but always found my jobs to be interesting.  I was always gravitating towards the realm of ideas.  I read the Naval Institute's Naval History and Proceedings religiously and became aware of the growing influence of first LCDR and now Admiral James Stavridis, who I knew had a doctorate.  I began to consider how to accomplish this goal while still executing some semblance of a career and a family life, and then by some act of God, everything just came together during my XO/CO tour with Tacron ELEVEN.  I was able to enroll at King's College (on the advice of NHHC's Dr. John Sherwood and with the assistance of Harvard's Prof. Akira Iriye) in dissertation phase and then completed most of my dissertation while at sea on deployment onboard USS Peleliu.