I have been researching my family genealogy for many years now building on layers of research conducted by family generations before me. I especially enjoy contributing to a public Find a Grave memorial when I can fill in gaps from my own extensive research and help tell the story of the individuals that have gone before us so that their legacy remains.

As the son of a U.S. Navy Vietnam veteran, a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran of Baghdad city, Al Anbar and Helmand provinces myself, a direct descendant of Revolutionary and Civil War veterans and a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization I am especially passionate about contributing to memorials of military veterans and assuring their service and/or sacrifice are recognized and honored.

I am a compatriot member of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (NSSAR) and strive to conduct careful and detailed research of Revolutionary War patriots' service and seek to locate and document patriots' graves. This is a small part of a greater project of the NSSAR organization as our nation approaches the Semiquincentennial of the United States on July 4th, 2026.

I am a life long student of history through college, military and self education and where appropriate I contribute historical references to memorials that support as context their biographical information.

I am a strong believer of the collaborative nature of Find a Grave and hope that my contributions can lead to others finding out more of their ancestors or communities. In turn, I also benefit from the contributions of others.

Any contribution, or suggested edit, I make to a memorial has been carefully researched and verified by source documents so that I am confident I am contributing facts and not guesses or loose assumptions. I primarily use ancestry.com, FamilySearch and other online tools to review documents, obituaries, publications etc. I DO NOT accept as fact unverified information on ancestry.com family trees or SAR/DAR applications and will always verify against source documents. In the case of veterans I will also research organizational histories of units, ships, battles, etc. to which they belonged or participated to provide relevant amplifying information to provide context.

On subject of a veteran's rank as title I follow the protocol of only including a rank as title in the prefix box if the servicemember retired from a career in the military, was medically retired or died while in active service. Retired service members still have a DoD ID card with their retired rank on it, base access, military healthcare, military retired pay & benefits, are subject to recall from retired list, still subject to the legal UCMJ and enjoy the customs and courtesies due their service rank if not the authority. Non-career discharged veterans do not. I realize that US Code, Title 10, Sect 772 prescribes in federal law that any non-active service member that served honorably in a time of war may bear the title but there is also custom and tradition to consider and it is highly unorthodox, and in my view inappropriate, to provide a deceased veteran a title of rank they held fifty years in the past temporarily during a single enlistment. That service and rank should absolutely be acknowledged in the biography box however to honor their service. Find a Grave has an incomplete prefix drop down menu so it is necessary to write in the correct rank prefix to assure accuracy to era served, branch of service, etc.

A native of southeastern Connecticut and resident of Virginia after retiring from a 25-year military career that brought me all over the world from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at sea on U.S. Navy ships, training missions in West Africa, five amazing years working and traveling across Asia while based out of beautiful Okinawa, Japan, working with our European allies while assigned to a NATO strategic level command and domestic assignments at the White House, Pentagon and historic Marine Barracks "8th & I" while in our nation's capital. I enjoy visiting and studying battlefields around the world with highlights visited being Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Hiroshima, Khe Sanh, Hue City, Normandy, Belleau Wood, Little Big Horn, Gettysburg and Yorktown.