Me

Me
By: Kevin Bryant

The other day I was at work and thinking that “WOW”, I just sent Al my 20th op-ed piece and he has published all of them. I have even gotten comments on about half and none of those were negative, so it would appear nobody out there dislikes me. I am sure that at some point, a lot of you have disagreed with some of my way of thinking, logic or just the topics that I choose in general.

I know that Al lives somewhere in the vicinity of Baltimore, but I have never actually had the pleasure of meeting him in person. We met online though a mutual acquaintance that happened to still believe that Bush stole the 2000 & 2004 elections.

So, now that I have been spitting out pieces here and there for some time now, I thought I would tell you a little about myself.

I’m 44 years old and live in Lee’s Summit, MO, which is about 25 minutes outside of Kansas City. I am a materials coordinator for engineering and design firm based in Overland Park, KS and have been since the latter half of 2005. I’m married and I have three kids, ages 21, 18 & 18 (yes, they are twins).

I was born and raised in Northeast Arkansas. I have one brother and one sister who are both older than me and I graduated high school in 1983. While I lived in Arkansas, I installed septic tanks, storm (tornado) shelters, roofed houses, poured and finished concrete, laid and repaired water lines for rural areas of the county, worked for a Dr. Pepper bottling plant and was a member of the Arkansas National Guard.

In 1985, I was working for a construction company out of Tyler Texas while still in the National Guard and I quit it all and transferred from the guard and went active duty Navy. While in the Navy, I completed Basic Supply School and Independent Duty (Enlisted) Supply Officer School.

I have been stationed on 2 ships, the USS White Plains (AFS-4) out of Guam and the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) out of Everett Washington. I was also stationed at Naval Air Station Fallon Nevada, Naval Submarine Base Banger in Silverdale Washington and assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Three based in Port Hueneme California.

After 20 years of being in the Navy and not wanting to return to another ship, I elected to retire after 20 years in 2005 after doing 19 months at Naval Recruiting District Nashville where I was the Assistant Supply Officer

I got married on Guam in 1986 and had my three kids with my first wife. For reasons I still don’t completely understand and probably never will, I returned from my very last deployment I was to do and was greeted with those words that every sailor dreads to hear: “I want a divorce”. Our divorce was final in January 2003.

In September, 2003 while driving from Washington to Tennessee, I met the woman who is now my wife. We got married in July 2006. She is the reason I live where I do. I had another job lined up back in Arkansas for when I got out in 2005, but instead of doing the safe thing, I came to Missouri chasing her.

I grew up in a home that was hard line “Democrat” until this past election. My father, mother and sister had never once voted for a republican. How my brother and I turned out to be conservatives after being raised there is still a mystery to this day. Perhaps it’s because we both like to reserve judgment until we hear both sides of a story and then freely offer you our opinions whether you want to hear them or not.

Anyway, that’s my story, or at least as much as I feel like sharing. I am a private person by nature when it comes to particulars about me. I used to write my email address at the bottom of each piece I would write so that you could make comments to me directly, but Al kept removing it. I never asked him why, but I am sure that he has a valid reason and I respect his judgment.

So, until next time, everyone take care and remember to use facts & reason when debating a liberal, they hate that.

Kevin

A special thanks to Kevin for his opinion pieces, his email address now appears at the top of the blog........Al