I should begin this bio at the point in my life that I left Norman, the town I have always considered the hometown of my youth. After my 9th grade year at West Jr. High my parents moved the family to Cushing, Oklahoma. Unfortunately for me, they insisted that I go with them. The next three years were the most unremarkable of my life.
After graduation in 1969, I attended college at what was known at the time as the Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts in Chickasha, Oklahoma. It was in my first week of college that I was given the nickname "Doc" which is the name I have gone by since.
After I left college I became a commercial printer for three years. It was also during that time that I married my first wife. I refer to it as my starter marriage and it lasted five years. Fortunately for both of us we did not have any children. I then spent a couple of years on the road as a professional musician. After concluding that poverty was not compatible with my vision of my future, I went into sales with a music store in Oklahoma City (Rock World).
In 1978 I left that job to go into media sales. I have remained in broadcasting/advertising/marketing for the last 30 years. I have lived and worked in Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Tulsa, Ft. Myers (FL), College Station (TX), Atlanta, and now St. Louis. In 2005 I started a new job with the Radio Advertising Bureau. The RAB is a trade organization that exists to support the radio industry with training, research, and sales information. My title is Academy Training Specialist. I travel about 3 weeks out of each month to train radio sales people in cities all over the United States. It is very exciting and very fulfilling.
While managing a radio station in Tulsa in 1996, I met the love of my life, Joanna. I was eventually transferred to Florida to manage some stations in Ft. Myers and Naples. While there we were married. We have 2 daughters, Samantha age 17 and Rebecca age 15. We currently live in a house on the lake in the community of Lake St. Louis, Missouri.
I have remained a working musician all my life. I have opened for, or actually played drums for, many respected recording artists including Jerry Jeff Walker, The Captain and Tenille, The Kinks, Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bo Diddly, Johnny Rivers and Johnnie Johnson. I have been playing drums for the past eight years for Butch Wax and the Hollywoods, an oldies band that has been a fixture in the St. Louis music scene for over twenty-three years.
I became a certified scuba diving instructor in the mid-80's while living in Oklahoma City, but I really don't teach anymore due to a lack of time. I've always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie and I have been scuba diving with sharks, bungee jumping, and I celebrated my 50th birthday by skydiving! I guess I'll never be conventional. I hope I am remembered fondly by all of my Jackson Elementary and West Jr. High classmates, even if I am remembered as always being a little "out there".
|