I have been collecting minerals since I was 10 years old. I was hooked by finding a quartz pebble with copper in western Massachusetts. I grew up in Hamburg, New York. My early collecting was in the dolomites of Western New York and the pegmatites of New England. In September of 1966, I joined the United States Navy and served until I retired at the end of August 1987. Most of those years were pretty lean collectin. In 1975 we were stationed in Hawaii where I was introduced to zeolites and micro minerals. From Hawaii we moved to Port Orchard, Washington just across Puget Sound from Seattle. Here I met Rudy Tschernich and joined the Northwest Micromineral Study Group. My collecting has expanded to include Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and British Columbia.