We moved from Chicago to start working at Aramco in Dhahran in July, 1981. I worked at the ITC (Industrial Training Center) and our children, Aaron and Jason, attended the Dhahran schools.
In 1987, we returned to Northern Virginia where I worked on a Saudi project for Bechtel and Patricia joined Merrill Lynch. We returned to Dhahran in 1991, I to the College Preparatory Center in Dhahran and Patricia to the Loss Prevention Department. I retired in 1995, and we returned to Virginia near Washington, D.C., where I began work for the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in the Watergate Building and Patricia returned to Merrill Lynch.
We basically lived in Virginia until I retired again from the Embassy in 2014 to settle in Port Washington, New York, near our sons.
Now, I am a private educational consultant, placing primarily Saudi students in all levels of higher education and advising universities on Saudi relations. I have been writing poems and stories since I was very young. The Crescent, The Sea, & The Long Sand: Poems and Stories includes perceptions, situations and realizations based on my experiences and those of my family in Saudi Arabia, Greece, Algeria, Zambia, Iran, Mexico, and Texas and other places in the States.
This book is comprised of poems and stories organized in reverse chronological order and also by the place composed, as noted in the appendix. In our free time, I still write and study poetry, classic literature and the arts in general, finance, genealogy, history, Middle Eastern affairs, and current events. The pictures are from Aaron’s wedding in 2010, about the time I finished compiling the book for publication, and when I was working in Iran in 1964-1966.