Smith, Thomas L.

There were five children in my family, along with a dog, a cat, two horses, twenty chickens, a boa constrictor, a parrot and a monkey. In my late teens a fairly normal childhood was interrupted when our parents died in a plane crash on the way to a party. A few years later, after a suspension from college, the army drafted me. Life seemed to be going from bad to worse so I tried to turn it around by learning to fly helicopters while I was in the service. That didn't seem like such a good idea after I got shot down and seriously injured in Vietnam. However, when I moved to Alaska things got bet...