My River: A Memoir

My River is a poignant recollection of growing up next to a river that enabled the author to fish just about anytime he felt like it. And thanks to his uncle who got him hooked at the ripe old age of five, that was most of the time. When he graduates from high school and realizes he needs to be more than just a trout bum, he joins the Air Force, receives two engineering degrees and is recruited into a super-secret national organization whose name will remain classified for thirty years. The technological challenge surrounding our Nation's fledgling spy satellites keeps him occupied during the dangerous years of the Cold War-but not so much that he forgets about fishing. He returns to My River to fish whenever possible, but over the years, and through top secret satellite imagery, witnesses her demise from the effects of merciless logging. While writing this memoir, he struggles with his own mortality in the form of prostate cancer whose wrenching story parallels that of My River.

Richard Kenneth Stearns was born and raised in a farming and logging community known as the Boistfort Valley in Southwestern Washington State. He fished, hunted, trapped and did all the kid things to do while growing up with a river as his playground. He joined the Air Force out of high school and went on to become a scientist/engineer for the National Reconnaissance Office. Now retired from over 35 years with the aerospace industry, he enjoys a round of golf, travel and fly-fishing. He is past president of the Washington Fly Fishing Club of Seattle and is a Federation of Fly Fishers Certified Fly Casting Instructor. He received a BS and MS in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State and San Jose State Universities, and lives with his wife DeVonne Wells in Allyn, Washington. My River is his first book. His next book My Mermaid is slated for completion in 2008.