This chapter combines the story of George's early beginnings and his incredible contributions to this field.

Excerpt: George Watkins was born on April 5, 1944, in Oakland, California. He had a pretty normal childhood but struggled academically in high school and college. School never interested him, and his grades showed it. “Why do they teach things you will never use,” he would ask, “and never teach things that you could use?” He was always at the rock bottom of the bell curve. In April of 1966, he was given the boot from college and headed north to Canada to become a staff man at a wilderness canoe camp. Then in August 1966 while he was working in Canada, Uncle Sam sent him a letter that with that one-word salutation every young man knew so well; the word that marked a rite of passage to another journey where he would never return to the place where he started out: “Greetings,” it said. He had been drafted into the US Army.