I began a writing career after I left the Office of the President, University of California, 12 years ago. My Human Resources career spans nearly 50 years, first with Ford Motor Company Ltd. (UK) for 12 years, then with Bank of America for 22 years. I directed the Staff Human Resources function at Stanford University and worked in the system-wide office for the University of California. Retirement is good, although I strive to keep myself physically and mentally alert.
Why did I start writing? It began as a way of keeping my mind active, although the story my mother told several years earlier about my birth, plus what I discovered subsequently about my father, made me want to write down my personal story. It was an emotional time. Unplanned emerged. After my mother died, I traced the family of my biological father and discovered I possessed another series of relatives. When my mother first told me about my birth, she stressed I should tell no one while she was still alive. After 60 years, she was ashamed of what happened.
That story inspired me to write another about a Jewish family living in Berlin, Abandoned in Berlin. This is a true story about a family that lost everything in Germany, fled to Austria, was chased out of Vienna in 1940, spent the war and a little longer in Shanghai, emigrated to the United States in 1947, and then sought to recover what the Nazis took from them. The initiative to write came from their daughter living in Novato, California.
My third novel, She Wore a Yellow Dress, reflects my early years, career, marriage and arrival in the United States. It also features birds, hence my current author brand of “birdwatcher”. It was an all-consuming hobby during the 1950s and 1960s but died away when my children arrived, and I focused on my career. Vacation was the time it reemerged, with visits to Panama, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, as well as places in North America. In truth, the hobby never went away, and COVID-19 regenerated it. My new novel, 1914 – 1918, A Time to Remember, also references birds. November 2025 is the planned publication date.
I grew up on a remote moorland farm near York, England. I attended Upper Poppleton Primary School, then Nunthorpe Grammar School in York, and Hull University accepted me as an undergraduate in 1963. My birdwatching hobby was officially launched in 1954 when my mother gave me a bird identification book, British Birds by Kirkman and Jourdain, with the scribbled message inside, “From mammy with love”. Its timing coincided with a new British law prohibiting killing wild birds and taking their eggs. Until then, I had collected birds’ eggs, traded them at Primary School, and assembled a bird eggs collection in my bedroom.
In July 1966, the university awarded me an Honors Degree in Geology and Geography. I chose to join Ford Motor Company Ltd. (UK) in Brentwood, Essex, as a graduate trainee and Bank of America in London hired me in February 1978. My family and I moved to the Bay Area, California, in the summer of 1979. I lived in Los Angeles from 1981 to 1983, and after three more years in San Francisco, I returned to London for a three-year assignment. We were back in San Francisco in early 1990, and we decided to obtain United States citizenship. Thanks to my mother’s disclosure, I still have a family in York, and a new family living in Shropshire.
I look back with joy. I was married to a wonderful woman for 43 years, and I have two delightful grown-up children and their families. A lady called Nancy takes care of me, and I am in good health so far. I intend to continue birdwatching and will continue my Bird Blog if I have something to report.
