About The Author I decided to write and publish the book Phantom Hawks Over The Fence to chronicle a select collection of my experiences during my tour in Vietnam along with my early childhood and early adult hood. The audiobook has been created from my original copyrighted literary hardcopy. I retired after forty five years in Civil and Structural Engineering, Program and Project Management, and Construction Management and Construction. My life’s early journey began far from those future responsibilities. As a young boy and teenager, we lived in a small village on the shores of Lake Chapala, forty miles outside Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. After completing primary and secondary studies in private Spanish speaking schools in Guadalajara, I enrolled in an American high school for two years to strengthen my English and study American History, Civics, and Government in preparation for returning to the United States for college in the summer of 1965. I settled in Newport Beach, California when I was eighteen, , and began college majoring in biological sciences and mathematics with a pre med focus, while working nights in acute care hospital emergency rooms. At the beginning of my senior year, I met my future wife while working at one of the hospitals. we married in May 1969 and raised four kids. I served in the U.S. Army beginning in late 1969 as a Technical Observer (TO) and right seat crewmember in the OV 1 Mohawk. In June 1970, I deployed to South Vietnam for a yearlong tour, flying more than 160 aerial reconnaissance missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia. Upon returning stateside, I was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. After completing active duty, we returned to California and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Lake Tahoe where we spent most of our married life. I returned to college full time and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering and Construction Management. After completing college. I began flight school and obtained my pilot’s license and flew aerial mapping and photo missions throughout the western United States for federal, state, municipal, and private engineering and development clients. In 1982, drawing on my experience as a Technical Observer flying right seat in the OV 1 Mohawk, I joined the National Aeronautics and Space Association, NASA, Earth Resources Research Program at Ames Research Center in California. By sheer coincidence, another OV1 Technical Observer with whom I had associated with in the Army also joined the NASA 707 team at the same time. And, an OV-1 Pilot who was a test pilot for NASA’s Tilt-Wing research, joined the flight crew team as co-pilot. We participated in the program, under what became a two year stretch as a crewmember with a team of sensor systems specialists aboard NASA’s 707 C130 Earth Resources Research aircraft.