I understand the mindset of the El Paso shooter because I once wore his shoes

As with every other Baby Boomer in the United States, I grew up in fear of the savage invaders that were intent upon raping my mother and sister.

They drilled us in school – “DROP!”

We learned to hit the floor under our desks – instantly --because we believed that the "enemy," those communist killers, wanted us dead.

Our president, our parents and other officials demanded that we comply – for the sake of our own safety and the safety of our communities.

When I turned 18, as did hundreds of thousands of my peers, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on my own assault rifle and kill those invaders before they could get to my mother and sister.

A important pledge to my family and friends

Dateline: Burbank, California, Father’s Day, 2019.

I make this pledge to my family today, June 16, 2019, following a most incredible es equally stressful year.

My is not to kill two birds with one stone, but rather, to keep two long-overdue promises — one to my wife, and another to my loyal and too-forgiving friends.

More than 20 years ago, I promised my bride that I would give her a comfortable life and a bright future. For the past year or so, I promised to my friends that I would, in the form of an autobiography — a book that would pull a string on my life as it relates to fathers.

I am pledging to her, to my friends and anyone else who cares that I will have that book written, edited and ready for distribution and sale by Labor Day of this year — and probably much sooner.

Based upon the countless number of people who tell me that they want the book, and the media professionals who assure me that it has legs (people will want to buy it), I have promised my wife that it will generate enough to help us get back on our feet, and will become a continuing support to our later years.

I hope that you can see how this book will ensure that I keep both promises.

For those who haven’t been following my life story (and why would you have?), my early childhood had its challenges — most of them at the hands and shouts and insults and abuse if my first father.

When Mom could no longer take her share of the abuse, she divorced him.

When he broke the news to my sister and me, he was thoughtful enough to assure is that he’d be OK — he told us he wasn’t our father.

He even named the two suspects.

He died a couple of years later and probably smiled in his grave as his verbal time bomb would explode and re-explode as I would grow and understand the implications.

When I was ten, he died, not long after my maternal grandfather in Iowa took his own life. He had been a great father figure to me when we’d go there for the summers.

That same year, Mom remarried, and I spent the next eight years with a stepfather whose own demons would surface. I’m sure it was his demons that brought out his violent tendencies.

Today, thanks to years of therapy I understand why I struggled in school with dyslexia, PTSD, and ADHD, as well as learning and reading disorder.

My story will also describe the most remarkable skills I developed on my own to find astoundingly pclever ways to survive in school, in spite of my inability to read well.

I promise that you’ll smile and shake your head when I confess to some of the ways I came up with to survive exams and research assignments.

Those and other perception skills I honed as a child target would provide skills I’d use as an investigative journalist (without any need for cheating).

I enlisted in the Army to escape my stepfather, and ended up in combat in Vietnam. I know know that it only exacerbated the PTSD that was already a part of me.

Over the intervening years, I tried and tried to figure out why, in spite of being an award-winning, loyal, honest employee or team member, I never fit in, I’d repeatedly be falsely accused of horrible stuff — stuff I would never do.

Jobs never lasted very long — I just never fit in, or gained the confidence of bosses.

But all this time, on my own, with nobody to blow cigar smoke and tell me I couldn’t take on projects I would suggest, I would set out on my own to discover astounding stories.

I complete some of them, but many of them still sit in boxes awaiting completion as books and documentaries.

I now wonder if, had there been the right father in my life, I might have learned how complete stuff.

By the way, I latched on to many perspective fathers in my life — you’ll be astounded when you learn about them, and what happened to them.

I promise that the true stories and adventures I have to share will enthrall you.

In the last year, DNA had solved the mystery of who my father really was — and the earth-shattering discovery — 47 years late — that I fathered a boy.

His two daughters in their 20s are my granddaughters.

Needless to say, all of these parts of my life didn’t add up to me keeping the promise I made to my bride.

I’m promising her today, that I will complete this project — and that it will be successful.

People tell me I’m a good storyteller and above-average writer.

I hope you’ll stay tuned. 

"The Fire" -- a preface to Don Ray's book about his lifelong pursuit of fathers and father figures.

A fire that continues to burn in my consciousness.

 When I was six, I remember my parents' reaction to this newspaper story. For whatever reason, it had hit close to home for both of them.

It was a story about a fire that broke out in the Los Angeles home of a woman and her six children. I remember how it described how five of the children either jumped out windows or climbed down the stairs to safety.