Book excerpt: I hope this book will prove useful to all who read it. When you examine a life closely, the positive events clearly outweigh the negative ones. I want to share my story primarily with my children, grand-children and great-grand-children. My journey is a part of their history. This is a story of a “negro” as we were called at the time, brought up in poverty and motivated by the desire to make my parents proud of me and to attempt to reach my full potential in life as a citizen of the United States. My life will be divided into three major eras. The period from my birth in 1929 until 1948 when I went into the military, the twenty years I served on active duty in the United States Navy until 1968 and remained in the reserves until 1978, and the period of my civilian employment with a major defense contractor until I retired in 1991 and life in my retirement years.