Gender

Male

Location

Floral City, Florida

Graduating Year:

1960

About Me:

Born and raised in Tampa, I attended Desoto Elementary, Buffalo Ave Elementary and Washington Junior High before my family broke up and I moved to Miami with my mother at age 12. I attended four different schools during my 6th grade as my parents moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Florida. In Miami I attended Miami Edison. During that time, Edison and HHS ruled the state sports scene. I played football at both schools. Half of the 1962 Gator team were Edison Red Raiders, and the other half Terriers. I left my mother in Miami at the age of 15 to live with my sister (Class of '56) in Tampa so that I could attend HHS and have been 'on my own' since then! I met Annette Williams on the first day of my senior year in an experimental TrigX class taught by Mr Edwards. Others in our class: Jim Woodworth, David Denslow, Kenneth Alonso (others?). We married the last weekend of our senior year on Memorial Day weekend and moved to Miami for a year, then returned to Tampa so I could attend the charter class at USF. "Til death do us part" - Annette and I were married until she died with lung cancer in 2000. We had three children, Don, Jr., Donette, and Danny, all Terriers! I now have seven grandchildren and one great grandchild. I got a BA in Accounting, and later added Elem Ed to my resume. I also took every computer/programming class available at USF up to 1983. As a child I always wondered how my dad could be satisfied working in only one profession his entire life … a milkman, later a manager. I went the other way and have had the opportunity to try many different things. You don't get rich doing that, but life has been extremely interesting. Some of the things I have done are: ladies shoe salesman, door-to-door vacuum cleaner, magazine, and bible sales, life insurance agent, computer operator, truck loader, over-the-road semi truck driver, bill collector, milkman, welder, breakfast cook and counterman, dishwasher, newspaper distributer, rural mailman, cost accountant at Mobile Chemical, Treasurer/Manager of a statewide federal credit union on the crest of the wave of credit union development in the late 60's, HS football coach and baseball coach, math teacher, math teacher in a prison, newspaper sportswriter, private investigator, tour director (Caribbean and Mexico), Wal-Mart night stocker and Department Manager (current), owned four businesses: La Cantina (a daily home delivery catering service), an Amway distributorship for four years, Statewide Process Service - 23 years (a detective agency and Florida's only statewide legal process service), OuiShare.com (also FullSeven Technologies), founded by myself and my two sons, it was the developer of software producing interactive email with hyperlinks and images BEFORE email had either!!!! In retrospect, however, maybe I should have gone ahead and joined ‘The Corp’ with John Mintz when we first talked to the recruiter together! I would probably be retired now...LOL! Also coached little league baseball for 15 years at NSLL. Hobbies and special interests: My sons and I formed the Gasparilla Memorial Fantasy Baseball League 19 years ago and it is still going strong. (Half of the owners are HHS alumni). My team, 'The Lickity Splitfingers' has won the championship three times. I have a collection of over 20k baseball cards of Hillsborough County athletes who have gone pro, and developed a web site of all the athletes in all sports from Hillsborough county who made the pros or went to the Olympics. I love all animals ... especially dogs. I have four and have had as many as eleven (house dogs!) I left Tampa in 1993 because of the crime there. After 30 serious incidents over 10 years we decided it was time to get out of Tampa. I bought a 20 acre farm in Floral City where my wife Lyn (Roselyn) and I currently live. In 2007 I went to the Philippines and met my young beautiful Filipina wife. We courted online for a year and married in July 2008. Lyn and I currently share our home with four dogs: Champ, Booger, Tater, and Angel ... two sweetheart horses, Ruby and Katie, and the prettiest cow east of the Mississippi, Hillary. My dream ... To sell the farm and buy a smaller place big enough for my pets and live here from March thru October, and in the Philippines in a Nipa Hut beach house during the winter months.