I was reared on a farm in middle Tennessee and graduated from Morrison High School.  I studied physics and mathematics at the University of Tennessee, receiving the B.S. degree in engineering physics in 1966 and the M.S. degree in physics in 1968.  My career spanned 42 years at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee facilities managed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

While at Oak Ridge, I served as Coordinator for Honors and Awards during the last 24 years of my career, directing efforts to gain recognition for staff through nominations for both internal and external awards. Before this, I was a Research Associate in the Fusion Energy Division, performing Thomson scattering and laser induced fluorescence measurements on magnetically confined plasmas in tokamaks, and prior to that was a Development Associate in Y-12’s Development Division, specializing in holographic interferometry and non-destructive testing.

I am currently a member of the American Physical Society (APS) and a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Society for Information Science (ASIS), and the National Management Association (NMA).  My honors societies are Tau Beta Pi (engineering) and Sigma Pi Sigma (physics).

While at the Oak Ridge facilities, I served as Executive Secretary for the ORNL Executive Committee for Honors and Awards, as a member of the national ASIS Awards and Honors Committee, as Chair and Co-newsletter Editor for the ASIS Special Interest Group for Information Analysis and Evaluation, and as Co-chair of the NMA (Oak Ridge Chapter) Awards Committee.

Coming from a fundamentalist Christian background, my worldview has evolved to a naturalistic, secular philosophy.  I presently am a member of the Rationalists of East Tennessee and have served as President and Treasurer of that organization. I have been a long-time member of Amnesty International and The Nature Conservancy and a past member of Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth).

I live in West Knoxville with my wife, Sharron (who also graduated from the University of Tennessee with a B.S. Degree in mathematics and worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for more than 40 years).  We have two adult sons (Philip and Adam) who live in Asheville, North Carolina and Los Angeles, California and are proud of five grandchildren (Brandon, Adam, Samuel, Chloe, Memphis and Preston) who live in Greensboro, Toronto and Los Angeles).

My hobbies in retirement are sports (Tennessee Volunteers and Los Angeles Dodgers – since 1955 when they were in Brooklyn), gardening, philosophy, and family genealogy.