The author graduated from Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City in 1966. After retiring in 2003 from the education field, he now begins a new career. Though he was trained for combat duty in Vietnam in a basic training program at Fort Dix, New Jersey in the early months of 1965, at the same time as President Lyndon Johnson was sending a Marine invasion force to Vietnam, he was not sent there. He wrote this book, in part, to honor those who died and suffered injury in Vietnam, both Americans and Vietnamese, from 1945 through 1975.