Q9: Who are you and what shaped you into the man you are ?

Boy this could be a long dissertation on how I came to be me. Well as I stated previously, I was born 95 days into WW II so until I was 5 1/2 we were at war. I had two uncles serving. So when their letters arrived, we as children, sat quietly as they were read out loud. I also remember and feared the blackouts. Another thing that happened to me when I was about 2 years old, I fell down our cellar stairs and broke my nose. This plagued me with bad nosebleeds until  I was  around 17 years old and stopped growing so as to allow an operation to stop the nose bleeds. And lastly I was left handed.  So here is where I started, a left handed, nose bleeding boy, that was exposed to news from a battlefield, and scared stiff because of war time blackouts. But other than those things I was pretty normal and had a great family. My father was a school janitor and his oldest brother, John, was a Doctor. (The other uncle I had that served in WW II) .My Father's youngest brother (Ralph) was a Yale Music School graduate who would accompany the greatest opera singers in the world when they performed at Yale's Woolsey Hall. So as where I took off imitating my father, who was left handed as well, my brother Ron took after Uncle John and Uncle Ralph in educational and musical talent.  Now before I get further and someone says, Ah! Ah! Bob, a text book born loser, I will have to say "you will have to wait on that one". Ralph had a nervous breakdown in his late 20s and was institutionalized for the rest of his life. John was a WWII Battlefield Doctor during the Philippines invasion and his exposure to horrific casualties, cost him his faith in God. , He contacted Malaria, He never had children, and was never very happy. My father on the other hand was extremely happy, had two children, never lost his faith in God, and was loved my everyone that knew him. But the contradiction between him and his brothers remained and he pushed his two sons so as to not let them fall into the same contradiction. My brother immediately complied, but I resisted until later. Sadly my successes came after my Father's passing. What really drove my successes was the overcoming of my insecurity. I mean I could take care of myself but I avoided challenges. I was reactive not proactive. But when I had to react, I reacted well. I served in the Army National Guard, I played in my High School Band, I graduated from a two year Electronics School, and I worked from the time I was 15 1/2. Besides being literally hit over the head by a guy wielding a baseball bat when he and 3 of his friends tried to rob me, what really hit me was when my first wife cheated on me with someone I worked with. This led to a divorce which let me to get real with my failures, which led me to correct my life or end it, which led me to correcting my life. Only fair from here to document my successes since I bore my failures. So from there I remarried, had a beautiful daughter, went to work for Dow Chemical, went back to college, successfully started up Dow's and the world's largest  ABS Polystyrene plant in Joliet IL, (For this, I received a cash award from Dow for my performance. Note only 2 % of Dow employees ever received this.), I left Dow after 7 years, went on to Bristol Babcock where I started up their first fully computerized Distributed Control System for a water treatment plant, went on, by contract,  to design and implement an environmental  test chamber for AVCO Lycoming to test  the Army's M-1 tank engine and the Black Hawk Helicopter engine, and implemented many other projects during my 12 years  in the systems engineering  department. From System Engineering, I  took a promotion  to head up Bristol Babcock's Contracts and Estimating Department where I had 5 systems project Estimators reporting to me and 2 Corporate Lawyers assigned to me. My department estimated over 60 million dollars' worth of system business annually and booked an average of  20 million dollars of that business.  I also got involved with radio telemetry during one of my systems estimated projects and seeing it as the future and a natural interface to our existing computer controlled products, I convinced my company to purchase the company that I was working with. This proved to be a life savior for our company and we  became the leader in radio telemetry control. I was promoted to Regional System Sales Manager,. where I proceeded to get the largest private water company, (American Water Works),  in the US and 3rd in the world to standardized on Bristol Babcock products. This relationship with American Water Works continued for all  of my 12 years as Systems Sales Manager and beyond my retirement. I also had the largest 1 year systems sales bookings in the history of the company, a booking of 6.7 million dollars in new business. I retired at 60 years of age. Looking back now, I  like what I did and how I got there. To repeat my words that I relayed to Russ Lemmon on his retirement, I can look now in my mirror and say "Damn I was Good"