Fifty years ago I was a young engineer from a small town in Alabama living in California. In 1973, I redesigned a launch pad at Cape Kennedy to accommodate a more powerful Delta Rocket. NASA used that facility to put larger and heavier satellites into earth orbit. That job led to me working on the Space Shuttle.

Fifty years ago as a new Christian I led a bus ministry. Each Sunday I brought maybe a hundred children from less affluent city families to Sunday School and church. At age twenty-three, I became like a pastor to many of those families. Observing the challenges those families faced changed my perspectives forever.

Fifty years ago I became an avid snow skier through a group of other young engineers at California’s Mammoth Mountain. I had never imagined the possibility of standing on top of high snow covered mountains in wintertime. Not long after, I also skied the most famous mountains in Colorado.

I’m old now and have no desire, nor the ability, to do these things again. But the memory of having done them gives me great joy. They have given me pleasure for a lifetime. I hope you too can draw a sense of fulfillment and gratitude from your memories.

These memories also give me a clue in understanding myself. What do these three memories have in common? In each case, I was like a fish-out-of-water and learned to enjoy that feeling. Putting our fictional characters in fish-out-of-water situations is a major theme running through every novel Kit and I write.