A graduate of Long Island University-C.W. Post Campus with a summa-cum-laude BA Degree in Comparative Languages and Journalism, I have subsequently earned the Continuing Community Education Teaching Certificate from the Nassau Association for Continuing Community Education (NACCE) at Molloy College, the Travel Career Development Certificate from the Institute of Certified Travel Agents (ICTA) at LIU, and the AAS Degree in Aerospace Technology at the State University of New York College of Technology at Farmingdale. I have also completed some 30 hours of Private Pilot Flight Training in Cessna C-152 and 172 Skyhawk aircraft.

Having amassed more than a quarter of a century in the airline industry with Capitol Air, Midway Airlines, Triangle Aviation Services, Royal Jordanian Airlines, and Austrian Airlines, and their Delta, Atlantic Excellence, and Star Alliances, I have accrued experience in the areas of Passenger Service, Ticket Sales-Reservations, Local Training, Passenger Service Supervision, Ramp and Baggage Room Supervision, Operations-Load Control-Aircraft Dispatch, Station Administration, Passenger Service and Operations Training, and Station Management, during which time I have had working affiliations with Icelandair, Delta Air Lines, Swissair, Sabena Belgian World Airways, Malev Hungarian Airlines, SAS, Lufthansa, and United Airlines. I have created and taught airline training programs in Atlanta, Cancun, Chicago, Montreal, New York, and Toronto, and have managed the New York-JFK and Washington-Dulles stations. During some 25 years of initial and recurrent training at the respective US and European training centers of Capitol Air, Austrian Airlines, Swissair, Lufthansa-German Airlines, and United Airlines, I have earned numerous ground operations certificates and licenses.

An Aviation Advisor to Farmingdale State University of New York, I advised the aviation department about airline industry trends in a series of individual and full advisory committee meetings and suggested course and curriculum creations and re-directions based upon them; adapted airline training programs and devised original courses and lectures into university-level offerings; experimentally taught them to aviation faculty and Aviation Administration Degree students; familiarized potential enrollees with the university's aviation degree programs; pursued a series of aerospace museum research trips; and created a university-airline industry employment bridge; all of which culminated in the Airline Management Program Blueprint.

In 2006, I created the Airline Management Certificate Program, comprised of a pre-program, four university-level courses, and an airline industry internship, and this had been accepted by and offered at the Long Island Educational Opportunity Center at Farmingdale State University in 2007. It had also been explored as a stand-alone certificate program and the core of Associates and Bachelor degree programs at Empire State College.

A frequent lecturer, I gave presentations at the Farmingdale State University Student Aviation Seminar, the Liberty Partnership Program/Summer of Aviation at Republic (SOAR), and the Aerospace Education Corporation Aviation Career Fair Programs. I have been invited by Cunard to lecture on its transatlantic liners: the Queen Elizabeth 2, the Queen Mary 2, and the Queen Victoria.

A freelance author, I have written some 70 books of the short story, novel, nonfiction, essay, poetry, article, log, curriculum, training manual, and textbook genre in English, German, and Spanish, having principally focused on aviation and travel.

Fluent in English, German, and Spanish, with secondary knowledge of Dutch, Italian, and Latin, I have traveled globally and extensively, having completed some 300 lifetime trips by air, sea, rail, and road to Canada, the United States, Mexico, the Atlantic, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Greenland, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. This travel has facilitated considerable freelance aviation and travel photography.

I have maintained professional affiliations with the Nassau Association for Continuing Community Education, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the Rhinebeck Aerodrome Museum, and the National Air and Space Society, and I am a Cradle of Aviation Museum Aerospace Honoree and a National Air and Space Museum-Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center sponsor.

I have attained some 35 academic, employment, and travel honors and awards throughout my career.

My life goal has been to creatively interrelate my educationally-developed and subsequently-practiced talents within the six fields of aviation, education, journalism, foreign language, travel, and photography. Aviation, the field around which the other five revolve, has provided their core of connection.

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My passion is ...

Aviation, writing, teaching, travel, foreign language, photography.

I know too much about ...

Aviation, writing, teaching, travel, foreign language, photography.

My parents always told me ...

Be yourself! Write about what you know.

My childhood ambition ...

Aviation, writing, teaching, travel, foreign language, photography.

My favorite memory ...

All 325+ global trips.

Why I write ...

To fulfill the purpose for which God created me.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Anything aviation- and travel-related.

My first job ...

University.

My inspiration ...

All internal fulfillments serve as inspirations to reconnect me with my forgotten, but intended life purpose.

Creative Writing > Memoirs Memoirs: My first cross-country solo flight

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Parked in a meticulous, seemingly-measured row, and angled away from the wooden fence on the rolling grass field of Bealeton's Flying Circus Aerodrome, the N2S-1 and 3 Stearman, Fleet, and Waco biplanes, all accommodating single pilots and either one or two passengers, had been poised for imminent flight, deluding me into believing that I had somehow stumbled into a barnstorming era scene frozen in time. Fully slipping through its cracks, I would take to the sky in one of these 1930s-,open-cockpit, single-engine, fabric-covered biplanes on this clear, blazingly hot August afternoon in cent...

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