I was born on May 8, 1933, in Reno, Nevada, just after the Great Depression started. My parents lost everything but managed to settle near Ashville, North Carolina in a small mill town called Swannanoa. I was an only child and used to being alone. I was quick to take my shotgun and dog away on weekends up in the woods. My parents were able to send me to high school in Ashville, where I joined the band and played the French horn. I endured two years of college at UNC Chapel Hill before I volunteered for the draft. The army sent me to play in New York City and then in the Sixtieth Army Band in the Panama Canal Zone. When my enlistment was over in 1957, the GI Bill awarded me four years of college at Boston University, where I studied horn with John Coffee and finished a BM degree in theory. I then went on for a master’s in composition under Hugo Norden and Gardner Read. I also minored in African studies, the beginning of an interest in non-Western music and, later, in ethnomusicology. I supported myself giving guitar lessons and working in the adult learning center (running the elevator, etc.!). My new wife was a music librarian. I was able to start work on a PhD before I landed a job at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, as chairman of the Music Department. However, W&J was a men’s liberal arts college, isolated from the resources of a metropolitan area and with few opportunities. I started experimenting with the new electronic music style and built my own studio instruments in the attic of my house. Also, I was able to study under Myron Schaeffer at the University of Toronto in 1964. In 1965, I received a stipend from Tulane University to come to New Orleans to build an electronic music studio for Composer Paul Epstein and myself. Paul and I gave many unusual concerts of the new music. I was able to complete a dissertation on electronic music and received the PhD in 1971. By that time, I had joined the faculty of the School of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. I started a major in electronic music with the famous Moog IIIp Electronic Music Synthesizer and also began classes and studies in ethnomusicology. In 1972, I was invited to travel to Malta with some friends from Tulane University, Drs. Norma McLeod and Marcia Herndon. Marcia had completed a dissertation on the folk singers there, and she and Norma were going back for a vacation and wanted to encourage my studies in some areas there. I settled on the ubiquitous church bells and their musical signals. There wasn’t enough time to cover everything, but it was enough to organize a few conclusions. Returning to East Carolina, I started a master’s degree in ethnomusicology and prepared a number of graduates for doctorial studies elsewhere. In the 1980s I began to enjoy singing and started voice lessons. In the summers, I attended classes and workshops with Robert Shaw and Sir David Wilcox at Westminster Choir College. We gave famous performances in New York City at Carnegie Hall, Riverside Church, and Alice Tully Hall. I retired in 1990 into a quiet, thoughtful life with a few hobbies and a lot of memories.