Upon graduation from the Naval Academy in 1973, where he also was on the Regimental Staff and an elite athlete, he was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy. He served eight years of active duty on destroyers and gunboats and commanded a JAWS POW Retrieval Team. He was selected to go to Graduate School and received a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California., prior to running the Navy’s largest computer center in Washington, D.C., where he was promoted early to LCDR, and received the Federal Records Management Award from then President Carter. He was the only military person to ever receive this award.

Upon leaving the Naval Service he was a consultant to the U.S. Government putting his computer knowledge to good use in highly classified military programs as well as the federal medical community. He received national recognition for his artificial intelligence expertise and served as the International Chairman of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Technical Committee Expert Systems Applications for three and a half years. He led an international team of 2000 computer scientists developing technology standards in use today.

He was the founder and chairman of HMS TECHNOLOGIES INC., which was the most decorated Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Company in America. He won many awards including the Small Business Person of the Year in West Virginia and the Entrepreneur of the Year for the Eastern Region of the United States. The company supported the Federal Government and created thousands of jobs for veterans over the 20 years he owned and managed the company until he sold it in 2020.

He collects antique baseball cards from 1909, antique guns, and banks. He has two children, Eva and Sloane, and one granddaughter, Brennan. He is now retired and living with his wife of 30 years, Wendy (Coast Guard Veteran), and two Great Danes, Gus and Toffee in the mountains of Georgia.