My Life Story -- Abridged

Life Story

I was born in 1970 my dad, Larry, was a wedding photographer at that time mostly working for his brother (My Uncle Gene), My uncle was well known for wedding pictures and school pictures. My uncle worked for a company called National School Studios, his wedding picture business was his own and my grandmother helped with the wedding business, my grandmother (Virginia) would show the finished pictures to the brides and collect payment. It went well like this my grandmother was working out of her house before it was fashionable, my uncle and dad decided not to have a studio but they had many friends with studios. I do not know any photographers today with studios, my dad new at least one person that was Noel Simmons, he was a good photographer with a studio and my dad had a friend with a developing house, he did know the people at Key Color but he also knew mr Larry Brown that had a photo processing center in Harahan it was called Photo Scope, my dad showed him the wonder of computers and medical billing.

So that story started off in 1970 and I forgot to mention what happened in 1972 my mother, Barbara, died of a fatal brain aneurysm and life change for me big time because I would no longer live on Richland with my dad but would live with my grandparents in Old Metairie for at least two years before my dad remarried and got back on track after the loss. In 1974 my dad, Larry, married Adele and they bought a house on Beverly Garden in New Metairie, or the newer part of Metairie which was closer to the lake then Old Metairie was. My grandparents were very involved in St Catherine Parish, but St Angela became the new family church and it is where Adele and Larry got married in 1974 and then had a reception at Howard Johnson on Metairie's Veterans high way. I have good memories of my dad getting married from what I can remember of it.

Once we were moved into Beverly Garden as a family I started kindergarten where my mom was a teacher at Green Park Elementary, this was my first school and I only went there for one year, and the next year for first grade I started going to St Angela for grade school. On my first day of school I was crying and did not want to go to school but the girl from across the street met me in the playground and told me school was going to be ok and I was going to like it, she put me at ease. By the time second grade came I was very bad in my religion class and in my music class but my behavior would get better by sixth grade when my homeroom teacher would make me a student of the year and I would be the cameraman for the school play that year for sixth grade which was "The Wizard Of Oz", that was a good play and I was the cameraman. The seventh-grade year was good because we did a research paper and I got to go to the University of New Orleans and research my space missions paper mostly concentrated on the Apollo Missions.

The 8th-grade year would start my first year at all boys, high school. The summer before freshman year I would go on a Catholic Youth Organization vacation to Freeport Bahamas. I would go there and sneak into bars since there was no drinking age. To get to Freeport Bahamas we flew on a chartered Braniff jet, these days I fly for Braniff Virtual and am very happy with that airline. I like all things, Braniff, these days. So the Bahamas trip was my first time being able to order anything I wanted at a bar and at that point I kind of fell in love with alcohol. We even had a bathtub full of ice and beer, so much for taking a bath. After going to the Bahamas I would come home and want to do nothing else on the weekends but go to bars and parties. I became quite the party animal and was able to still keep my grades good and be a competitive member of the track and cross country teams, I did play football for a while but that did not last long. At least in track and cross country, I get a varsity letter for participating four years in a row. In 8th grade I was not much of an athlete, football was a very hard eight grade year, and I did not like the coach very much.

By the time I was finished with high school I had gotten myself some scholarship money to attend the University of Mississippi in Oxford Mississippi but I was not able to keep my 3.0 GPA to keep my scholarship money coming in so I decided to switch to Loyola University, well my first semester at Loyola was a washout because I ended up in a 30 day treatment center or adolescent chemical dependency unit, It was my first time being locked up and it kept me sober for 11 years. after a few years at Loyola, I decided I could get VOC rehab to pay for me to go to the Univ of New Orleans. I was young and sober and life was good and I had many friends, mostly all sober friends. while a student at UNO I only had two serious relationships and one was with another UNO student and one was with a woman I met online who went to college in Chicago but was from Minnesota originally. After UNO I interviewed for a job with Electronics Boutique in Mississippi and I drove there to do the interview but decided I did not want to leave New Orleans. That was my second chance to get out of New Orleans and I did not take that chance, Ole Miss had been my first chance to get out of New Orleans, I took a job at Kinko's doing typesetting and that job did not last long and then I ended up living with my uncle before I moved into Catholic Charities living for the first time. I was living in Catholic Charities housing and I had been diagnosed as bI polar at that point but was working for a retail company called Service Merchandise. I met a woman named Christine and she was a nuclear radiation therapist and we went to church a lot, I did not realize how good I had it with her because I did not like her baby's daddy and his effect on our lives. I wanted her in my life forever but not him. She had a son that was about ten years old and he was very important to her of course, and then she got in trouble with her job and got depressed and had to have electroconvulsive therapy for her depression. I had moved on from my retail job and I started working at a company called ExecuTrain and when that did not work out I went to work for a company called CDSI or computer data systems Inc. When that did not work out I broke up with Christine and went back to living at catholic charities and after being on unemployment for a while I got a job selling eyewear in the mall.

The eyewear job lasted two years and then I took a job in Medical Record and then I took a job drilling, I thought a hard hat job would have fewer office politics to deal with. When I was drilling however I got really sick from my bipolar as I was doing 12-hour shifts in the August heat and then not sleeping so I ended up in a hospital for about two months. I had various jobs coming out of the hospital. One was working on Bourbon Street as the front desk for a hotel on Bourbon Street. At that point, I had 11 years sober and I drank again and lost my sobriety and got very depressed. I would spend some years living back with my mom and dad again until Katrina came in 2005 after Katrina I got a job in a spice warehouse and got married to Cindy and moved in with her. We dated for about a year were married for a year and dated some after we were divorced. The divorce was not that trying we had no kids to split or property to split. All I had was credit card debt to show for the year I had been married to her. After the divorce, I had to file bankruptcy. After the divorce, I also got a job working for a bank printing statement.








Did you ever think that maybe, God is an elected position? All the people in heaven vote for God for one year? Just an idea