Manager of The BIG EYE
and THE BIG EYE BLOG
After entering the first grade in New York City's public school, PS-42, I was "skipped" ahead one grade, and then two. School counsellors advised my concerned parents to enroll me in a private school, telling them that I fell into a "gifted" category. I recall being quite happy wherever I was placed. For grades three through six, I attended the Staten Island Academy that became known as the Staten Island Day School.
When the second World War ended in 1945 my parents moved for one year to East Aurora, New York where I attended seventh grade before they purchased a farm in Hudson, Ohio.
My younger brother, Robert, and I were raised by a mother and a father on the family farm in Hudson, Ohio thirty miles south of Cleveland and Lake Erie. For years, the nearest house was nearly a quarter of a mile away. Let me share with you some memories of long-gone happy days..
The Ogilby farm in Hudson, Ohio
In my early teens, after becoming certified as an American Red Cross Water Safety Instructor, I taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced swimming classes. I worked as a lifeguard one summer close to home and on a New York City beach the following summer.
The next summer the Red Cross director in Akron, Ohio, who had watched my progress, recommended me for the job of head lifeguard and waterfront manager at Tamsin Park, a new recreational resort only a few miles from our farm. Aware of the shocking statistics involving deaths by drowning, I am proud to have saved several lives.
In my senior high-school year the U.S government's bankers launched military actions in what came to be called "the Korean Police Action" (not "war"). After receiving a draft card in the mail at age seventeen, I enlisted into the Navy Air's O-2 training program at the Akron, Ohio Naval Air Station.
Back when I was eight years old, following the U.S. government's bankers' politically enginered Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor and President Roosevelt's schemes to involve the U.S.A. in a second huge war, I had decorated my bedroom's walls with pictures of Navy planes.
During my last few months at Hudson High School, I wore informal clothes, including my pale-blue Navy issued work shirts, before receiving a high-school diploma and entering boot camp.
Naval planes in which I flew included the PBY (Catalina flying boat), TBF (Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber), R4D (Gooney bird), SNB (Expeditor), and the SNJ (North American T-6 Trainer). Members of the F4U Vought Corsair, Squadron VF22 were sent to Korea. My multi-engine, Squadron VR-651 remained in the USA. We flew domestically from the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Virginia.
I loved to fly and wanted to earn my "wings" as a Navy pilot. College graduation was required for admission to the Navy's Pensacola, Florida flight school. My Commanding Officer recommended me for a Navy college scholarship which was approved. As an enlisted man "from the fleet", I was awarded a direct commission signed personally by Dan Kimball, U.S. Secretary of the Navy.
Ordered to report to the Captain at the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps unit within Ohio State University, at age nineteen I may have been the country's youngest commissioned naval man. (Students at the Naval military academy in Annapolis, Maryland receive their Naval officer commission when graduating college).
At the end of my second college year I was ordered to report for cross-training aboard the USS Iowa, one of the U.S. Navy's four huge battleships. After crossing the stormy North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland, I was able to visit Edinburgh Scotland, London England, and Oslo Norway.
News regarding the military police action in far off Korea was confusing. I began to realize, having grown up from age eight to age twelve during the Second World War, that my youthful military outlook resulted from four years of wartime radio news.
The draft board's "Seletive Service" shockingly discrimatory (racist?) law at the time provided a "2-S draft deferrment" to full-time college students. Many healthy young men, including those working and saving money for college, were drafted and sent to Korea where around 36,000 were killed over the next four years.
Military action in Southeast Asia resumed twenty years later with the deaths of 58,220 American "service" persons. Estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. Also killed, mostly by bombs dropped from American airplanes, were 275,000 to 310,000 Cambodian and 20,000 to 62,000 Laotian men, women, and children, all paid for by American taxpayers.
Back in those days war correspondents (journalists) were not censored. Reports of the civilian massacres by American troops reached the American public. That huge bankers' military escapade, "the Vietnam War" was finally stopped as a result of massive domestic protests by American students and outraged citizens.
Just as in the Second World War, American bankers and corporations financially and materially assisted those referred to in propaganda as our nation's "enemies". Find and read the books of Professor Antony Sutton, including the book reviewed here. Once available online, Sutton's well researched works have been removed, unsurprisingly, from this worlwide medium.
The major change from my decision for a military career occurred aboard the USS Iowa. When returning across the Atlantic via Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the Norfolk, Virginia Naval Base, I read books that I had bought from vendors at the entrance to St. Paul's cathedral when on shore leave in London. One was an English translation of Goethe's Faust, a paperback, stuffed in my pocket, that was ruined by diesel oil when refueling in rough seas. Another, a hard copy that I still have, addresses a dilemma involving idealism and personal ethics.
When I returned from that training cruise, I legally resigned from the officer training program by exercising a clause in my contract. The Naval Captain, very angry at losing his top commissioned midshipman, reminded me that I was in the United States Navy. He told me that he was going to watch me carefully and, should I fail to remain enrolled in college at any time in the future, I would be immediately ordered to the front lines in Korea. No student ever had a greater incentive to remain in college.
With my Navy pay eliminated, I struggled financially, odd hours in various part-time jobs in order to obtain a college degree. By the time I received my BS degree the Korean "war" had ended. After forty months from my enlistment I was mailed an honorable discharge.
If I had the magic today to turn my age back to seventeen I would not enlist in the military. If drafted, I might have taken the trail blazed twenty years later by many of the brightest college students to avoid being obliged to turn Vietnam into a wasteland and a living hell for its farm families (Google "Agent Orange"), its other citizens, and the USA's poorly directed military.
Many students went to Canada rather than enable the bankers, the Pentagon's career military men, and corporations having lucrative war contracts, what retiring President Dwight Eisenhower called America's "military-industial complex". Its willfully blind participants support war criminals, including those who keep a low profile.
Eisenhower, a greatly admired major general, was personally responsible for the deaths of up to ONE MILLION men and boys who peacefully surrendered at the end of World War2. They were put in prisoner of war camps surrounded by barbed wire and open in the freezing winter weather, for which Eisenhower was responsible. He had those specific camps reclassified to prevent The International Red Cross from being involved with them! This shocking and unpleasant fact has been vehemently denied and covered up, protecting "Ike"'s iconic image. Any reader anxious to deny that historically well documented matter MUST READ FULLY THIS LINK*
* Sorry, that link was removed by unknown persons and replaced with an Amazon page! As a result, the closest data available online pertains to "court historian" Stephen Ambrose. Interested students, after "reading between the lines" might read O_t_h_e_r — L_o_s_s_e_s (title scrambled to protect from AI).
The ranking military man, my Navy captain, could have ordered me sent to Korea or elsewhere. He permitted me to earn a college degree, something that neither of my hard working parents, growing up through the depression years, had been able to do.
When I graduated and received a BS degree, the "war" (they had the gall to call it a "police action") had ended. I then worked for two years in highly interesting but low paying laboratory research jobs.
1957 GMC-620
Leaving laboratory work in order to to earn more money, I drove a large truck, (the GMC620, today considered to be a classic) over the road for exactly one year. After saving enough money, I returned to OSU in Columbus, Ohio and enrolled in graduate school.
Thanks to having a high under-graduate grade-point average, I was unexpectedly awarded a paid graduate teaching assistantship.
I taught basic biological science, an elective course, to undergraduates. The students in my classes did outstandingly well on the college's departmental examinations. For one full academic year I attended advanced courses and followed my advisor's recommended path of study, with independent research, designed to earn a PhD.
Together with the rapidly advancing science of genetics and brilliant speculations of Francis Crick, in 1960 I had difficulty in accepting a demanded total rejection of teleological concepts, especially with higher forms of life, and questionably observable even at microscopic levels. I recognized that many years of work needed to be done. Today, decades later, biochemical cytology, scanning electron microscopes, mass spectroscopy, supercomputer DNA code sequence analyses, physics' quantum theory, etc., are available to researchers. The issues touch on our own lives, consciousness, and our origins, subjects of little interest to most TV watchers.
When that school year ended, after considerable thought and discussion with my brother who was enrolled in graduate school, his college costs being paid by an employer, I decided to leave academia permanently, bypassing a teaching career in favor of greater financial opportunity. I realized that scientific curiosity could be continued throughout life which I follow today as a hobby.
It wasn't difficult, in those days, for a young White male college graduate to find a job offering training, a company car, and a steady paycheck. For the next twelve years I worked with corporations, learning as much as I could. Six years were spent with Lever Brothers Company, the U.S. division of Unilever LTD, one of the world's largest corporations.
After working with the company in Ohio for two years I was promoted to New York City. I spent the next four years with the company in key-account sales, sales scripting, new product introductions, and brand marketing. I was able to buy a house (mortgaged) in Cold Spring, New York above Hudson River's Bear Mountain Bridge. A trip to midtown Manhattan by train took an hour and a half each way.
After working for six years with Lever Brothers, my first corporate employer, I decided to move into industrial sales and tripled my income. For the next six years I carved out a strong career in the truck equipment industry, handling distributor marketing, customer product development, and direct sales to the nation's leading truck leasing companies (Hertz, Avis, Ryder, Leaseway, National). Spearheading sales for two major truck-body manufacturers, I was recruited to turn around Lyncoach and Truck Company, which I was able to do in less than four months, saving the employees their jobs. The company is prospering to this day.
As my ten year marriage was ending, I moved from the house that I had bought in Milan, Ohio to Lakewood (near Cleveland). I fell in love with a responsible beautiful and intelligent young woman, the divorced mother of two children. She was introduced to me by my landlady, her wise and creative mother. The time that we spent together was unforgetably magical.
I worked several sales jobs during my time in Lakewood in one of which a co-worker was a severe alcoholic, as I discovered after giving her a ride home to her plush apartment overlooking Lake Erie. Never having been much of a drinker, I did not handle it well. Terminating the friendship, I decided to never again drink alcohol. My excellent health today results largely from having abided by that decision for more than fifty years.
I spent many years treating my son and his two-year older step-brother equally while doing my best to cope with their mother's drugs related erratic behavior. After having taken the two boys to the Columbus, Ohio area with a politician, she flew to Hawaii to a retired airforce officer (as I eventually learned) totally abandoning her two sons whom I was monitoring.
Relieved that their unpredictable mother was finally completely out of the picture, I was anxious to return with them to my Lakewood friends, my amazing landlady and her two lovely daughters, especially the one whom I missed desperately. I had no way of knowing that she had become involved with another man until she told me by phone, while we were still in the Columbus area, that she was getting married the very next day.
Devastated, I knew my life would never be the same without her. I lost forever an unreplaceable friend. Even after fifty years the pain remains. When thinking of her and our wonderful friendship I still struggle to hold back tears. As close as we were, she never called me even once, as a friend, to ask how I am doing, creating overwhelming mysterious personal rejection. I have occasional happy dreams of magical days we had together. I will never forget those days for which I am grateful and I try not to think of what might have been. Emotionally I can relate to Ezio Pinza's sad South Pacific song, This nearly was mine. The love of my own life also "flew away".
I remember how terribly lonely I felt. Rather than take my two boys to Lakewood, I needed to create a home for them as quickly as possible and get to work. I met several persons through Parents Without Partners. A nurse practitioner whom I met at Worthington's PWP (just north of Columbus) was a twice divorced professional and the mother of three children, two boys, one my son's age and their older sister. After serious discussions we teamed up in a mutually respectful business-like arrangement.
Over the next ten years we worked together to raise her children and mine in a constructive and educated environment. My new living partner was smart, totally reliable, good looking, kind, and good company. I was never able to overcome her barrier to emotional or physical intimacy. I suspected that trait had played a major part in her two failed marriages. It was something that could not be discussed. I learned early to avoid the subject and we enjoyed a valuable friendship.
She often mentioned how much she appreciated my constructive help with her own children. As a result of our combined efforts they have done well in life. I am forever grateful for her kindness in providing a civilized home, far different from one that I struggled with for many years.
My son, Stewart, did not see his mother for six years. When he graduated from Worthington's high-school I bought him an airline ticket to Hawaii, letting him know that, whenever he might like to return, an airline ticket would be at the Hilo airport terminal. In around a year he returned having acquired an understanding of his mother's difficulties. He got a job and a wife. They have been married for over thirty years. I am very proud of him in the way he has managed his own life.
My older boy, who had been much closer to his mother, left me despite my best efforts. Bright but strangely troubled, he decided to go his own way. Later in life I was able to help him deal with a serious situation. On the road to emotional recovery, he died. Working at a seaside resort, he contracted a Salmonella blood infection when preparing seafood, lapsed into a coma and died. I grieved for the young man I loved who, in my opinion, would have grown to be a strong, wise, artistic, sensitive adult.
After getting an insurance sales license I read a shocking booklet about life insurance published by Consumer Reports Magazine. Needing to work close to home, I began a business by conducting two financial training seminars and one public seminar weekly. I created Unified Financial Services and Unified Data Systems. Through personal sales production, together with over-rides from agents, I qualified for MGA (Managing General Agent) commission level that today is reserved for FMO's (large Field Marketing Organizations).
Within three years my business grew into three offices with over thirty licensed agents. Each office was managed by an agent trained by me to be a General Agent. I wrote Financial Recovery, expanding the documentation presented by Consumer Reports and scores of other consumer oriented writers.
After my son was married, working, and learning an important business, in order to reconnect with my younger brother who had earned his PhD in geology (Dr. Rock), I moved to Sarasota, Florida. Bob lived in Tampa, Florida. We had ten years together again before he died from cancer. I miss him greatly.
For six years after moving to Sarasota I spent most evenings at the Cook Library of Florida State University's nearby New College until its 1:00 a.m. closing time for the purpose of acquiring a comprehensive self-directed liberal arts education, augmenting my science background. What I learned in those six years of self-study changed my life completely.
Advancing information technology has historically been the catalyst for dissemination of ideas, knowledge, and progressive social values. Torture of intellectuals and emerging scientists whose findings questioned religious dogma was challenged by the invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing of books became too popular to remain controlled by the priest-police power of the Vatican.
Ancient wisdom, formerly laboriously copied in monasteries, became available as printing businesses proliferated throughout Europe, particularly in Italy. The Western world's classics, the Hebrew Bible and later, writings by Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Robespierre, Paine, Jefferson, and others accompanied revolutionary social changes.
Will a failure to totally control and censor the Internet result in the next major revolutions, freeing humans from top-down manipulation and exploitation? Individuals who succeed in controlling governments never cede control gracefully due to their dominating inner compulsion for power. Throughout history, in the absence of rare philosopher-kings empires collapsed catastrophically into life threatening turmoil and increasingly repressive governmental actions.
I have no illusion about the critical thinking ability of the overwhelming majority of homo.sapiens. It is to only a portion, referred to as its "saving remnant", the portion that recreates civilization following its inevitable destruction, that intellectuals direct their thoughts. For that enlightenment I am indebted to Mr. Albert Jay Nock's unforgettable book, The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man. It was one of the earliest ones that I read after moving to Sarasota. It has had a huge impact on me. In addition to introducing me to interesting books by the architect, Ralph Adams Cram, its many explanations and views are remarkably calming and satisfying by eliminating unrealistic goals.
I realized that in order to coherently share my own interesting discoveries I needed to develop my own writing skills. I read and re-read works of writers whose written language I most admired. There is an easy limpid style in the prose of Randolph Bourne (analogous to Beethoven's musical "lion's paw") exemplified in his famous essay, War is the Health of the State. I love the humorous sarcasm of H.L. Mencken in his famous essay about democracy, and the cool rational analysis within Albert Jay Nock's masterpiece, Our Enemy, The State.
When the public digital information revolution arrived in 1992 I bought a Personal Computer and spent hours figuring out how to operate it. Studying the book, DOS for Dummies, I created the earliest online social networking resource, The Email Club, for more than four thousand persons in over fifty countries.
Following the six years of independent study I decided to create something of educational value by using the new digital resource, the internet's Worldwide Web. After teaching myself to write HTML code I constructed The Big Eye, an educational website.
I read biography to research history and to discover the authors' writings, values, ideas, and their associates' own biographies. My country has produced brilliant responsible men and women. Even the best schools I had attended, which my parents struggled financially to afford, taught me little or nothing, over years, about their lives and writings. Most of those whom I discovered and admire appear on a page of the Big Eye.
When the Netscape web-browser arrived, The Big Eye was listed in Newsweek Magazine's November 20, 1995 issue. It received even greater publicity as the result of a full page St. Petersburg (Florida) Times article that was syndicated by Scripps Howard to the major newspapers throughout the country.
I changed The Big Eye's original URL after selling the domain name. Today "The Big Eye" can be found at WWW.BIGEYE.ORG. There appears to be considerable effort by Google to mis-direct Bigeye searches to the .COM pages. It is important for viewers to specify Bigeye.ORG instead of the .com address.
Sadly, after retiring from her exemplary nursing career as oncology nurse specialist at Ohio State University Hospital, my former Ohio partner died, ironically, of cancer.
Easily passing FINRA's Series65 examination, I registered Wisebird Financial, LLC. Having studied Henry Abts' book, The Living Trust, and working with the business he founded, I placed online Estate Planning Documents
By studying Google's algorithms I was early to grasp what soon came to be called "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization). Promoting several product lines, I developed profitable affiliate marketing.
Using The Big Eye website and traveling throughout Florida, my assistant, Sherri, and I trained mortgage brokers for four years explaining HUD's HECM reverse mortgage to many financially struggling seniors, saving their homes for them from greedy "line of credit" (2nd mortgage) banks, and relieving them of disheartening lifetime financial struggles.
When the real-estate market crashed in 2008, I bought a tall-rigged sloop and spent the next four years day-sailing with friends. Although I enjoyed the friendship of younger women, I never found one even slightly comparable to the one in Lakewood, Ohio, that I surprisingly lost. In the evenings I enjoyed reading, as usual, and worked on improving my writing skills.
As a consequence of certain articles written by me and placed on The Big Eye website, I was overwhelmingly flattered, recruited by Gordon Duff, the Senior Editor of Veterans Today, to write as one of their columnists.
Over ten years (2007-2017) that popular website published thirty-four of my columns. After many columns that I wrote for Veterans Today, including those written by others, were oddly deleted, I retrieved several of mine and placed them on a "sister" website that contains my personal and other esoteric articles, located at BigEyeBlog.com
My 80th birthday party, May 14, 2013 (archived by Google, wait for pages to load)
100% RETIRED, May 14, 2025 |
