I was born in Bad Aibling, Germany on 16 April 1946.  My dad was born and raised in Futok, Yugoslavia as was the rest of his family.  My mother was born in Vienna, Austria.    My parents, along with my father's living family (Sister, Father, Mother and Grandmother) traveled to the United States in 1947 with me in tow right after my birth.  We embarked for the U.S. aboard the SS Ernie Pyle, a converted troop ship, but the ship broke down halfway across the atlantic.  We were all transferred to another vessel (don't know the name) and arrived at Ellis Island on 01 April 1947.  My family settled in the Bronx, New York City where I grew up.  I attended Our Lady of Solace grade school and Mount Saint Michael Academy High School, both in the Bronx.  I then began a degree program in Electronics at Bronx Community College.  I dropped out of college in 1964 to take a job with New York Telephone Co.  I served as a Frameman, Test Deskman and an Installation and Repair Technician on Times Square, NYC.

 I lived in NYC until I was drafted into the U.S Army on 24 December 1966 (Greetings: Merry Christmas ! ).  The Army sent me to Fort Jackson, SC for induction station, then on to Fort Hood, Texas for Basic and AIT Training.  It turned out I spent the entire 2 year draft enrollment at Fort Hood and was trained as a tank crewman on the M60-A1 battle tank.  I qualified as "Expert" on all tank weapons as well as the standard tanker sidearm, the M1911-A1 .45 cal automatic handgun. 

I permanently moved to the Central Texas area in January 1971 and have been here ever since.   I applied and was hired as a frameman (at $2.37 per hour) on 25 January 1971 with Mid-Texas Communications Co. in Killeen, TX.  The company was later bought up by Central Telephone and Utilities Corp (CENTEL) and then by Sprint Corporation.  I later served with Centel as a C.O.E. Technician on Step-by-Step mechanical Central Office Equipment (Stromberg-Carlson XY and ITT SXS) in Copperas Cove, Florence, Lometa and Kempner, TX.  Then spent a couple of years as a Central Office Engineer responsible for converting all Centel offices in South Texas to Northern Telecom (NorTel)  DMS-100 Digital C.O. Equipment.  I joined Centel's Computer Department when it was formed in 1981 because they found out I had a Radio Shack Model I at home. I have personally built and configured many hundreds of personal computers, both IBM and clones.  My last position was as a Data Network Administrator for Sprint Corp. with primary responsibility for building, configuring and maintaining 58 network file servers in 5 states.  I also had co-responsibility for virus control on over 1,000 network file servers across the country.

I spent my evenings for 3 years (1995-1998) as a disc jockey at several Country & Western Dance Halls (Honky-Tonks) in the Central Texas Area.  This was done after my regular job from 7PM until 2AM several days a week.  In that time I've aquired several thousand C&W Music CD's.  I loved the work but dropped the after-hours profession shortly after Justine and I were married.

I went through two wives before meeting Justine in 1997, but those days are best forgotten.

I suffered a stroke at 2AM on 14 April 2003 and have been in a wheelchair since then.  As a result of the stroke, I was forced to take early disability retirement from Sprint Corp on 01 January 2004.  We'll have to rely on disability and whatever meager income we can make with the chickens in the future.  Justine can't take another job because she has the responsibility for all our livestock since my stroke, and that's a full time job.

Justine:

Justine was born on 01 July 1975.  I'll leave her early history for her to complete at some later date, but...

She spent 4 years in the U.S. Army as a Communications Specialist  (MOS 74C). She did a one year tour (Jan 96 - Jan 97) in Korea assigned to the 169th Signal Company, Taegu, South Korea.  She then finished out her time at HQ Co. USAG Communications Center in Ft. Detrich, MD where she ETS'ed in August 1998.  We met in October, 1997 and were married on Valentine's Day, 14 February 1998 in Frederick, MD.  She spent a year or so in the Army Reserves at Fort Hood, Texas after that.

After the atrocities of September 11, 2001, we felt obligated to add several American Pride and Patriotism Pages which we have been regularly adding to. 

The Patriotism section of Poultryhelp.com was growing so fast, that on 25 September 2003 we registered the domain name USPATRIOTHELP.COM and moved those pages to the new site.

On 16 September, 2004 we joined numerous WebRings dealing with American Patriotism and added a page to this site to list these webrings and be the Home page for WebRing Visitors.  There are over 50,000 Webrings in existance containing over 900,000 member sites which generate many millions of website visits per day.  Visit the WebRing Hub Site for more information about Webrings.

This site will continue to grow at a fairly rapid rate from this point and any suggestions would be most welcomed.

The only "advertising" you'll find here is the AmericanFlags.com banner.  We have entered an affiliate program with them to help support this site since we do not have other commercial banner ads and it DOES cost us money to keep this site online free.  We get 50¢ each time someone orders a FREE 3x5 ft U.S. flag (pay only $5.49 s&h) from their site and a small percentage of other flag orders.  We have purchased flags from them and the quality is excellent or we wouldn't have affiliated with them.  Their Flags are Made in the U.S.A.

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ATTITUDE:
No cold corporate contacts here.  We're "down home" folks.  Our staff is made up of Justine and me - That's it.  We are warm, friendly country people and we treat our visitors as our friends.

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT:
We try very hard to respect copyrights.  Credit is given, either by text note at the top or bottom of the page or by "mouse-over Alt Tag" for all Documents, Graphics, and Clipart posted and/or used on this website.  If no credit is indicated, the item was assumed to be in the public domain.  Anyone with information to the contrary is asked to contact us immediately so that the matter can be immediately corrected.