David D FermanRaised in a low-rent sector of Wichita, Kansas during the Great Depression, Dust Bowl and WWII, Dave and his brothers were unaware pf being financially challenged because everyone they knew was in the same boat. Although a high- school All-American i journalism, Dave paid his way through college by playing defensive end and kicking footballs, rough necking in the oil patch, painting airplanes at Boeing Aircraft Company, working as a 17-year old bartender and bouncer in a honkey tonk road-house, and eventually on the G.I. Bill. Disgusted with the makeshift athletic accommodations, Dave lived in a lean-to tent on a river bank outside of El Dorado, Kansas for several months while attending junior college without missing a stroke in the classroom or on the gridiron. Dave rejected a contract with the Boston Red Sox baseball farm system to maintain his college athletic eligibility.During the Korean War, Dave was a U.S. Marine automatic rifleman grunt, a military policeman, a drill instructor at the San Diego Recruit Depot while in the pipeline for Officers' Candidate School, and an intended career Marine pilot. After Dave crashed, burned and nearly drowned in 1955, he completed a tour with Sixth Fleet Air Intelligence attached to a clandestine atomic bomber squadron operating off the USS Coral Sea and the USS Lake Champlain aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea and on the ground in the Middle East and the Holy Lands. On temporary loan to the real spooks operating out of Beirut and Jerusalem without the blessings of the host countries, Dave roamed the deserts of Jordan, Israel and Lebanon and was shot at by both Palestinian terrorists and Israelis! Read More Read Less