I’ve had a good life. My parents stressed to me the importance of helping others daily. My career was highly successful, financially, spiritually, socially and in many other ways, and one of the reasons for success I believe was choosing to always be looking out for other people.

Finding ways to help clients, finding ways to help my boss, finding ways to help subordinates in the company grow in their own abilities, responsibilities and exposure. Helping sales people learn how to earn more money and be more successful for their clients. Helping prisoners in institutions around the US and in Africa learn how to establish a vision to help themselves whether they remain in prison or one day get out. Helping homeless people capture a vision for succeeding in life rather than the vision most had of only failure. Helping folks in the church understand the importance of scripture and the importance of interpreting scripture for themselves rather than relying on dogma and rules that other people placed on them.

I tried to raise my three children with the same view toward others. Kids can be very self-centered, my sons still laughingly remember me waking them on Saturday mornings saying it’s “Do something for somebody else day” today. They had to find projects to serve someone else, a neighbor, each other or the family. As my children grew older, I involved them in helping with the homeless feeding in our city on Wednesday nights. Feeding 200-300 people was life changing for them.

Later in life after being diagnosed with an incurable disease at age 62 that would significantly limit my lifespan, a turning point for me was volunteering. Due to a lung disease, I had to stop working and found myself in retirement at the 62 and very little to do. Sitting around, thinking about my health condition, tracking my symptoms and ruminating on all the things I could no longer do, I decided that maybe getting outside of myself by volunteering would be a good place to start.

I started by contacting the Salvation Army and they were quick to sign me up as a volunteer. I began by serving dinner on Monday nights in the food line at the Salvation Army men’s shelter in Bradenton Florida. Later I went on to be the announcer/ caller for Bingo Night there. I was often overwhelmed with gratitude when I saw men my age and even slightly younger, who were living at the shelter and had nothing. Getting to know them and understanding their life journey that led to that place was eye-opening.

While volunteering at the Salvation Army I met a fellow food line worker, an 80 year old woman who told me her story about being a hospice volunteer. It was like a bell went off in my head and I knew that was something I was called to do. She told me how to connect with the regional hospice organization which I immediately did, and I received their hospice aid training and I began a two year period of visiting and being with hospice patients in their final days, hours and moments of life.

Getting outside of myself and my own health issues began to do more to improve my own personal health. As a result of that during my time while volunteering for hospice, I began to exercise, walk daily and focus on a vision of health for myself. I created a plan and a vision and within 18 months of exercise, walking, good nutrition  and a new mental mindset and outlook I had achieved a remarkable recovery from what the doctors termed “end-stage” Pulmonary fibrosis. All my numbers were improving!

One of my physicians had seen me at my worst and saw the miraculous turnaround in my health and she recommended that I write a book about how I recovered.

So while on hospice duty every Sunday morning in the silence of the Bradenton Hospice House, I began to write down the ways that I was recovering my health through meditation, nutrition, natural supplementation, walking, exercise, and learning new breathing exercises. As a result, I completed a 50,000 word manuscript and published my first book, A Matter of Life and Breath in early 2023. It cost me about $12,000  to self publish, but my view was not to make money on the book but to help other people. My book rose to the number one best seller in the health category on Amazon within the first 60 days of publishing.

Today, there are people all around the world who contact me regularly telling me that my book and the methods that I used have changed their lives and given them greater hope, better health and better recovery from their own lung conditions. The book has never made any money for me, the royalties are very mediocre and may never cover the cost to publish it however, my goal is not to make money but to help other people. And that goal is being achieved daily.

The book has opened many doors for me so that my life is full and busy continuing to help others. It’s led me to be an Ambassador/ Spokesperson for two of the national Lung disease foundations, where I  often speak at medical conferences to patients and medical providers on natural ways to heal and improve our lungs. This has led me to become the (unpaid) CEO of a nonprofit organization that has zero revenue, but has an organization of volunteers that meet weekly on Zoom calls with small groups of patients  as they travel the journey of lung disease together and share their experience strength and hope with each other. This organization is creating an army of lung patients who are changing their own lives by learning ways to live full and active lives in spite of having a disease, and then taking this message to others.

This has all led me to share more of my methods of exercise and tips on healthy living and healthy aging on a YouTube channel I created called Life and Breath where I have self produced over 75 YouTube videos.  There have been hundreds of thousands of views of my videos and lung health podcasts and countless numbers of people who have contacted me telling me that I have motivated them and helped them in many ways to recover. Every day I wake up, I have emails and messages coming in from people in far away places like Indonesia, Algeria, Iceland, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Spain, Africa, India, the UK and of course South America and North America.

I never imagined that my simple story could reach as many people as it has reached and I am honored by the folks who have responded and have taken this message to others.

I have outlived the one to three year prognosis of the doctors, and I’m five years in and healthier and stronger today than I was in my 40s and I am now 68 years old. Yes I still wear an oxygen tank, and yes, I still have lung scarring, but I exercise in the gym seven days a week, hike, bicycle, paddle board and walk 3 to 4 miles a day with my pups. I live a life that feels like im having a positive impact.

One of my afternoon calendar reminders is the question: “who did I help today?”My goal is to try to help someone else in some way before 8 AM every day and life presents those opportunities to do exactly that although sometimes 9 o’clock rolls around before I get that accomplished. It’s like a snowball, rolling downhill, leading to an amazingly full life of new relationships punctuated by causeless joy. 

I may live another 20 to 30 years, or I may not wake up tomorrow, but either way it’s all good. I am totally cool with either outcome. Life is good! A life of service is even better.