My River: A Memoir (Paperback)

My River is a poignant recollection of growing up next to a river that enabled the author to fish just about anytime he felt like it. And thanks to his uncle who got him hooked at the ripe old age of five, that was most of the time. When he graduates from high school and realizes he needs to be more than just a trout bum, he joins the Air Force, receives two engineering degrees and is recruited into a super-secret national organization whose name will remain classified for thirty years. The technological challenge surrounding our Nation's fledgling spy satellites keeps him occupied during the dangerous years of the Cold War-but not so much that he forgets about fishing. He returns to My River to fish whenever possible, but over the years, and through top secret satellite imagery, witnesses her demise from the effects of merciless logging. While writing this memoir, he struggles with his own mortality in the form of prostate cancer whose wrenching story parallels that of My River.