Dean A. James

I have been honored to have led a fulfilling and exciting life as a veteran of the Coast Guard, a truck driver, am ambulance EMT and also a firefighter. Life can take a person in many unexpected directions but who can tell what dangers lay down those paths until we run headlong into the unexpected.

There are very few things which can compare with the joy of being able to tell others about something that is near and dear to one's own heart. After all, throughout all of the many adventures that I have had over my 50 plus years, none of them could ever compare with the overwhelming degree of excitement, pain and terror that flooded into my world on the day that I lay alone, mangled and dying in the wreckage of my car on a country road during a winter ice storm.

Like most other folk, I assumed that I would die as an old geezer at home in bed...how was I to know that I would die at the height of my youth? By all rights I should be feeding the worms six foot down to this day but a miracle happened that night and...well, the worms are going to have to wait until my job here is done.