I entered the University of Washington following high school in 1967. Between the Vietnam War and difficulties in our family, it was a very stressful quarter. I lost several friends in Vietnam that year, three just before Thanksgiving. By January of 1968 the Vietnam War was escalating at an alarming rate and student draft deferrals were being canceled. I decided to enlist in the Navy. I was trained in electronics, specifically computer guidance and control systems and I was assigned to the USS Long Beach. We were stationed in the Gulf of Tonkon near the demilitarized zone between north and south Vietnam. I was in the Orient for two years and spent time in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Kowloon, Satahip, Olongopo, Manila and several bases in the Philipines. I was fascinated by the culture and the peoples wherever I went and tried to get away from the tourist areas to better understand them. Several images etched into my memory and have haunted me ever since.

The streets on Hong Kong were quite amazing. One section of town was kept "westernized" for the tourists, business travelers and the U.S. military. The far side of town, visible from the waterfront, was very British with white colonial mansions climbing the mountainside. In between was the real Hong Kong. People lived in makeshift cardboard shelters wedged between buildings. Many families cooked on the sidewalk in clay pots and ate from handmade wooden bowls. There were thousands of people living this way and I could not understand. The image of an elderly woman, squatting near the curb cooking in a clay pot with several little children huddled around her is as vivid to me today as the day I stood across the street and tried to understand. Two blocks away was a brand new Hyatt Hotel in a cluster of high rise office buildings and towering banks. I could not fathom the contrast between these poor people barely able to exist against such opulence.

In the Philippines one only need to walk a block off the main street of any of the towns or villages to see living conditions that I could have never imagined to exist if I hadn't seen it. In Olongopo the only river supplying water for recreation, cooking and bathing was also an open sewer. The river flowed under the bridge leading off the Subic Bay Naval Base. Children were always below the bridge begging for us to through coins for them to dive for. I was often criticized for handing coins to the children at the end of the bridge instead tossing them into the water because I couldn't imagine diving into that water. The children would turn and throw the coins for someone else to dive for. It was their system of honor and again I couldn't understand how these people could continue to live this way.

The story repeated itself everywhere I went. In Thailand the images that linger include an older women wading behind a water buffalo in knee deep water with two children in a sling on her back plowing a rice paddy. On the side of the field was a mud and straw hut with barnyard animals running in and out and the rest of the family doing chores.

In Singapore it's the image of three families living together off of an alley in a one-room apartment with no windows, no plumbing and no electricity but with a beautiful Buddhist shrine against one wall. Ten or eleven people lived in the apartment. Jack, the elder of one of the families, was our driver while we were there. He was considered one of the better off, more fortunate because he had an old Ford that he could hire out to earn a living. These people were incredibly creative and industrious and had found a way to etch out a meager existence. They hosted two friends and me for a Sunday dinner of rice and roasted chicken. It was an experience I will never forget. I was deeply troubled that there were no opportunities for these people yet within blocks of them was a modern, Western style, thriving business district with modern hotels, tall office buildings, major banks and fine restaurants.

Following the Navy, I lived in Florida working as a consulting engineer. For the first nine years I worked for a consulting company that designed subdivisions and small municipal civil works projects (streets, drainage, seawalls, etc.). It was a small company that afforded me a lot of opportunities. I designed subdivisions, package water and sewer plants, and small control systems and ran an engineering testing division for several years. Eventually I went to work for another consulting firm and worked on large municipal water and wastewater projects. My assignments included design supervision, construction coordination of huge civil construction projects (Water Conserv II had a budget of $300 million, involved 11 major contractors with over 200 subcontractors). At one time I was coordinating the efforts of nine offices and over twenty departments. My immediate design team consisted of 12 engineers, technicians and drafters.