A Sea of Misfortune

About the Book

In 1503, upon hearing of these voyages and, later, studying charts of the 1492 voyages of Admiral Christopher Columbus and of his fellow Portuguese navigators Pedro Alverez Cabral and his fellow Captain Amigo Vespucci, who, in 1500, discovered Brazil, he was prepared to make his fortune supplying the new Rio de Janeiro colony with trade goods, building materials, seeds, and muskets. He was not interested in making further discoveries or of finding gold; he would continue to make his fortune in trade.

About the Author

After the service, I was part of the eleven million GIs who were discharged. I had intended to go to college and had an athletic scholarship to several colleges. I went to Manhattan College in New York City for two years, majoring in track and cross-country. I left when I realized my attention span was still tangled in my combat memories. I went to work in the Postal Service. I really liked the work, and after ten years, I was promoted through the supervisory ranks until I retired as manager of Time Square Post Office. I was married in 1951 to my wife, Dorothy, who was taken to heaven in 2014 by pancreatic cancer. This same cancer had taken my son Tom in 2007. My daughter and the youngest, Kevin, are my surviving children, who have given me six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In the last seven years, I have more or less self-learned to type, use the computer, and write. Two years ago, I joined a veterans writing class given by Fordham University. Some of what I have in my two books, I have polished up in that program. I will be turning eighty-nine on December 29, 2014.