Most of my elementary education was taught to me by my father who was a grade school teacher. I started off in first grade with a young high school graduate teacher who would tie me up in my chair with rope and put masking tape around my face and mouth. She enjoyed punishing me at recess. She had quite a disliking to me and evidently to my father who taught in the same school district. She sent a letter home to my parents saying that I was essentially an imbecile moron. After that my father taught me and I became a top reader. This teacher told me to tell my father to stop teaching me as it was her job. My father instructed me to tell her to expletive. I believe her career ended early.

In third grade I wrote a book, “Why I Hate My Third Grade Teacher”. It had a cover and all. I wish I still had it.

In sixth grade I had a teacher Mr. Keys. He was very liberal with letting us joke around. My sixth grade class was very memorable. Also, I remember in sixth grade getting uncontrollable crush with June Coghlan who to this day I haven’t forgotten.

In Junior High School I excelled in math and science courses and became a top student in these subjects. In ninth grade I took a course called General Business which introduced me to bookkeeping.

My family moved to Chester County when I was in high school so I transferred to Kennett Consolidated in 10th grade. I studied Accounting 1, 2 and 3 and was on the “business track” rather than the “college prep” track.

A half-year after graduating high school I quit my full-time job working for Kaufman Brothers Furniture to attend West Chester State College majoring in accounting. Attending was difficult for lack of transportation and funds so I discontinued to go back working full-time in the food-service industry.

The first round of Del Tech was for data processing in the days of punch cards, main frames, COBOL and Fortran. I did a year but diverted to a food service career.

While working at Cokesbury Village as a cook and chef at an upscale retirement home I took a few months off to take a crash course in restaurant cooking.

I entered into Food Service Management having by now much food service experience. As I was taking a BASIC language computer course a professor, Ms. Tini, mentioned that I was talented at programming. About twenty minutes later a trigger went off in my head and I had a revelation of what I wanted to do in life. In mid-semester I changed my major against all advice. Still I did learn a lot about nutrition and food service management and researched the government program WIC.

Delaware Technical and Community College

I had attended DTCC in 1977/78 but only completed one year. As it was mainframe, punch cards, COBOL and Fortran, I was lost after a year and didn’t go back again until I decided to go back for Food Service Management in 1985. While taking food service courses, I was taking a course in the Basic language, that I had experience with as a hobbyist. The professor teaching the course mentioned to me that I had a talent for programming. Twenty minutes later a switch went off in my brain and I had a sudden clear revelation of what I wanted to do with my life. I had been contemplating this for months since I had left my chef position at the Greenery Too. I wanted to be a software developer. I asked the counselors to change my major. They discouraged me but said they would give me one chance. I got tutored to “catch up” but by mid-semester I was doing the tutoring.

Delaware Technical and Community College

The courses for Data Processing were Basic, COBOL, Assembler, Systems Analysis and other data processing courses. Also, there was accounting, English courses, mathematics courses and others.

At DTCC I also tutored accounting and programming and worked as a “lab tech”. At the time I was also working in restaurants.

After getting my associates degree, I wanted to continue at Goldey Beacom College majoring in Computer Information Science. I found Goldey-Beacom more focused on IT management, business courses, accounting and data management rather than just focusing on computer science. I studied accounting, law, data structures, software design, information organization and many other relevant subjects . Mathementatics was very focused on business uses particularly with Calculus, Statistics, Linear Programming, Finite Math and other courses. I also had three years of more advanced accounting courses. This degree was a good choice as a purely computer science course would not have given me the needed skills for the business world.

After getting my B.S. at Goldey Beacom College I wanted to pursue electrical engineering as I was working on some embedded systems with Rick Romano at Software Services of Delaware. I did well with electronic circuits and theory the first year but burnt out on attending classes, studying and working full-time and learning other skills for career so I did not continue. The professor liked that I had a lot of computer experience and tried to get me to continue but I was burnt out of night classes and full weekends of studying along with a full-time job.

Also, I took Spanish courses a few times for the sake of communicating.

Delaware Technical and Community College

The IT department at Rollins Leasing Corporation encouraged us to continually learn technology courses and subsidized a private technology school named Corporate U. Some technologies included, C++, Java, COM, Visual Basic, Microsoft Foundation Classes, SQL, COM and Active X and many others.