The Journey of an Inquiring Mind:
From Scholar, Naval Officer, and Entrepreneur to Novelist

This memoir records, in great detail, my life of work during the 40 years before I met my wife, Joanne, and the story of our business lives together over the past 40 years.

My life of work included a wide variety of careers, jobs, sports, and hobbies that I mastered during the eight decades of my life. My first entrepreneurial endeavor was as a six-year-old merchandizer of eggs from my grandparents’ farm.

During my management training career, I created the term SKEs, standing for Skills, Knowledge, and Experience. These SKEs from my early childhood led to my career as a bait supplier for a local bait dealer during my two years in junior high. And the additional SKEs learned from being a bait supplier were the foundation for my successes as a Naval officer, as a businessman, and now as an author.

For the last 20 years -- Joanne and I have worked day and night writing seven books. These include the five, award-winning Cottonwood novels. These books are set in a small Michigan town during the last five seasons of World War II. Then Sea Stories – a true story of my 11 years as a midshipman and Naval officer during the Cuban Missile Crisis and other dangerous Cold War adventures. And now -- this book, The Journey of an Inquiring Mind.

And I wanted to publicly thank those who supported Joanne and me during the various phases of our journey, especially those who embraced my career as an author. In Appendix C of The Journey, are the names of over 220 persons who lent their support along the way. While some people are no longer with us, others are our friends and neighbors today.

The JOURNEY of an INQUIRING MIND

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE CUBAN MISSLE CRISIS, ENSIGN SLAUGHTER FOUND HIMSELF STARING EYE TO EYE WITH THE CAPTAIN OF A SOVIET SUBMARINE. ARMED WITH A NUCLEAR TORPEDO.

On October 27, 1962, the USS Cony surfaced B-59, a Soviet submarine. Gary Slaughter, a 23 year-old US Navy Ensign, studied the sullen face of Captain Vitali Savitsky at a distance of only 200 feet. Slaughter was the only officer on Cony trained to communicate with the Russian Captain. His objective was to dissuade Savitsky from launching its torpedo which - as Slaughter learned 40 years later - was tipped with a 15 kiloton nuclear device that would have precipitated an all-out nuclear exchange that most certainly would have destroyed the world.

Sea Stories: Memoir of a Naval Officer (1956-1967) brings this incredible true event vividly to life in one of the 60 vignettes that span Slaughter's naval service during the Cold War. Other vignettes depict his varied and rich Navy life:

• A boiler explosion kills two sailors aboard a destroyer where Slaughter served as Engineering Officer
• A perplexing situation develops in the Engineering Log Room when a naive Yeoman uses his initials FRT to reclassify hundreds of Navy documents
• In an apparent suicide attempt, a sailor, fueled by too many beers, jumps into the icy waters off the coast of Portland, Maine
  

Finding likability and humor in the people and situations he encountered during his Navy career, Slaughter brings his experiences to life with the same writing skills found in his series of five award-winning Cottonwood novels set on the World War II home front.

Sea Stories: A Memoir of a Naval Officer (1956-1967)