My first exposure to geology and mineralogy was while I lived in The Southwest around the time I was seven or eight years old. My family moved to Farmington, New Mexico, in 1959, located in the four-corners area, just south of the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Turquoise, fossilized dinosaur bones, and petrified wood were among the items in my first collections, and it was about this time that a curiosity to understand more about rocks and minerals first developed. I remember being fascinated by scenes in the movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in the early 1960's.

I was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1951, and moved west with my family, first to Colorado, then New Mexico, and finally to California. After graduating from High School in 1969, I chose a career in electronics that would last some 35+ years. Early in my career, I completed my undergraduate degree in business and spent the next 23 years with Panasonic and Sony. I retired from the world of corporate business as Sony Electronics National Account Manager in 2012 and have since been able to devote more time to expanding my knowledge of Western U.S. rare mineral species as well as continuing active field collecting.

Since 1998 I have been an integral part in the coordination of many BAM field collecting trips throughout the Western U.S. including the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. The main focus of my personal mineral collection is on Western U.S. minerals, especially those from Butte, Montana, along with several other classic localities including Tiger and Bisbee, Arizona, San Benito County, California, and Pershing County, Nevada. In addition to BAM, I am an active member of Northern California Mineralogical Association (NCMA), Mineralogical Society of Southern California (MSSC), and Crystal Gazers of San Francisco.