I
left California after graduating from San
Francisco State in '63 and going into the Army. I was lucky
enough to be stationed in Paris at United States European Command Headquarters
for 2 ½ years, and also spent time elsewhere in Europe and in Israel on a
kibbutz on the Gaza Strip before returning to this country. I had been away for
almost 4 years, and when I landed in NY in April of 1968, it was to a wildly
different culture. One that I thoroughly enjoyed, by the way, having
grown up in the repressed 40's and 50's!
I attended the two year
course of training at the American Musical & Dramatic Academy in
NY where, unbeknownst to me, I met the girl who was to become my second wife,
45 years later! After graduating, I embarked
on a career in show business as an actor and singer for about 10
years. (Thanks, Don Ralston, for introducing me to my occupation!)
I performed on Broadway in ‘’SHENANDOAH,’’ in the First National Company of
‘’ANNIE,’’ off-Broadway in ‘’Little Boxes,’’ in regional, stock, and touring
companies throughout the nation through the ‘70’s. Along about 1977 I was introduced to Shaklee natural
food supplements, and my love of them led to the creation of a large
organization of my own within the company, allowing me to pursue my performing
career while receiving a full-time income from the part-time Shaklee enterprise,
which we still have to this day.
In 1986 I married Amy
Ober, a psychotherapist and head of the Trauma Treatment Program at The Karen
Horney Clinic in Manhattan. We
lived in a farmhouse in the Pennsylvania countryside, then in a house built in
1765 in the dairy and orchard country of the Hudson Valley of New York. In both locations we created large organic
gardens, always producing enough to share with our intrepid, wild, four-legged
relations. Amy died suddenly in
2012.
I had met my current
wife, Anne Tarpey, while attending the American Musical & Dramatic Academy
in 1968. After a brief, but
long-remembered romance, life events intervened and we went our separate ways
for over 45 years. I was happily
married, and Anne was happily single and enjoying a successful executive career
in health care with major medical centers.
As destiny would have
it, we crossed paths in 2013, and it was as if 45 years had never
happened. Our love quickly rekindled,
and we married that December. We are now
living happily in the home of our dreams on the beautiful Connecticut
shoreline, and performing our own ‘’Lost and Found’’ love story concerts,
weaving in gems from the ‘’great American songbook’’ to tell our story.
