"I have not been a perfect person during my life. Far from it. As a young person, I did things that I now wish I hadn't done. Given my upbringing, I could have turned out with a hard heart, but somehow I managed to gut it out, grab myself by the boot straps, and pull myself up. Life does not allow one to go backward, only forward. "That said, one can look back, and sometimes it's important to do just that. This is the story of my life journey, with a brief history of my mom and pop and their families. In some instances, I try to put our story in historical context. Mostly, this is a short memoir for my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I hope the readers find this story interesting and that, in some cases, they can relate to it in various ways. I may offend some persons and for that I am sorry, but this is as honest a story as I can put together. Anything less than honest would be worthless to readers." The story of Bob's young life is not an easy one. His parents, bless them, were broken human beings who themselves had been poorly parented (to put it mildly). As a result, they were unable to provide Bob with any sort of a blueprint for successful living. Worse than that, they were incapable of showing him any affection. (Bob can't remember being hugged as a child-not once-not ever ) Additionally, Bob's parents treated one another with great disdain (again, to put it mildly) which meant that Bob was forced to grow up in a chaotic household brimming with hatred and constant fighting. All the while, Bob was ignored, unsupervised, and worse. By the time Bob was in elementary school he was, understandably, an angry and sometimes destructive child. But somehow, against all odds, Bob was able to "pull himself up by the bootstraps," as he puts it. Recovering from a well deserved nervous breakdown at the tender age of 18, he started married life with $28 in his pocket and very few skills. And even though he had no formal education and precious little encouragement from anyone, he went on to build a business that was worth millions. As it happened, through no fault of his own (you'll read about this story in the book), Bob lost everything in his middle years and went on to build a hugely successful business yet again. In his mid-1950s he started over completely, and now runs three lovely assisted living centers in Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey.--Sara Sharpe, Life Coach, Nashville, Tennessee