My first book is listed on Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My wife is on Facebook occasionally. We have a site on Facebook, but I have stopped using social media. Most of my friends and all of our family and places I still work do use FB. Currently I have several jobs. Only one grants me a paycheck and it ain’t much. It is mostly volunteer work. I am a cashier at the Good Neighbors Shoppe in Lenoir City. We give away over 80% of our gross revenue. Since the starting of that charity, 20 years ago, (and it was a slow start) we have given away over $2million to other charities in Loudon County! I also train new cashiers, as well being the janitor for the building. I still teach, and I’m a trustee at church. It keeps me off the streetcorners and out of the poolhalls. While working at Memorial Hospital, South Bend IN. I received the “Consultant of the Year” from Project Business, a division of Junior Achievement Inc. in 1984.

For about 20 years I smoked tobacco. Cough, cough. However, I quit about 35-40 years ago. While working in the hospital health field at Cadbury Assisted Living Facility in Cherry Hill, NJ I displayed my own handmade wooden smoking pipes I used for tobacco, in an art show. I won 1st prize.

Neither are super colossal awards but I’m proud of them anyway. Currently after turn 78 years of age I am still teaching. I teach Native American History at the Oak Ridge campus of Roan College. This is a part of our heritage we need to teach even though it gets such little attention. I was talking to a student once who said, “I didn’t know it was a thing”. It is a “thing”, an important one.

While still living in NJ I took a class on knapping stones to make arrowheads, etc. Our teacher was beyond excellent. He could tell by looking at the edges of a previously knapped stone if the hammer used was of wood or stone. If it was stone, he could tell which kind of stone. He has been called on by several museums and universities to help categized artifacts at digging sites.

I have also taught this subject at other facilities and for my classes at Roan College on American Natives, I write up my class notes. In class the students know they don’t need to take notes because I will pass the notes on to every student. I have a presentation on Sequoyah coming up at the Tellico Village Public Library. My notes are 93 pages long. My notes on the French and Indian War and its effect on the Natives were much larger. I have thousands of pages of neatly typed and foot noted class notes on Native American Heritage. My goal is to find a way to present our treatment of Natives honestly to the public in books meant for children. It is a gruesome history. I’m working on how I can say the truth and make it acceptable for that age group and at the same time not to send them to bed at night to have nightmares. Ask yourself this, can you name five or more Native leaders who made history, do you recognize the name “Sand Creek”, “Wounded Knee”, “Chota” (but not the street name in Tellico Village), or “Red Cloud”, “Attakullakulla” or “King Philip’s War”? Most people can’t.