My dad was a car repairman and car inspector at the now long gone Michigan Central North Boulevard Yard. He had to take a medical retirement when I was about ten or eleven years old, but I do well remember a cab ride in a steamer from the circus grounds out to the rail yard. He noticed that I enjoyed taking pictures and when I was a freshman in high school he bought me a 35 MM camera. That was my camera for a long time and a lot of pictures. When one of my daughters was engaged to be married she and her fiancé came to me looking for camera information because he wanted to buy a better camera so that he could take better photos in the low light when he was deer hunting. That was when I decided that I also wanted a better camera. I bought a Canon AE-1 and then I joined the Photo Arts Club of Toledo where I became quite active and eventually served two years as the club's president.

In 1983 I was doing some work in my garden in Oregon, Ohio when I heard a whistle blow. I looked off to the east where I could see a plume of smoke. My god, I thought, it's a steam engine. I had not seen a working steam engine on the road since I was a kid. I dropped my hoe, grabbed my camera and went out to the Norfolk's Homestead Yard. It was a Friday evening and the NKP 765 had come to town to pull weekend excursions to Bellevue and back. That is how it started! That was my awakening!