Memoirs Of A Smiling Rebel

About the Book

These memoirs are written by an 85 year old optimistic young man who grew up in Minnesota, worked on the Alaska Highway in 1943, enlisted in the Navy after turning 17 in 1944, was on Okinawa during the fighting there, then spent eight months in Japan in 1945/46. Worked in Greenland in 1955 and 57 and worked and lived in North Dakota, Wisconsin and California before moving to Sedona, AZ in 1990. In the meantime, led canoe trips in Minnesota and on the Green and Colorado rivers and extensively hiked the mountains of California and Wyoming. His lifelong philosophy could be summed up by his auto license plate reading WHO SAYS.

About the Author

Keith Oswald is a now 85 year old born in New Ulm, Minnesota on January 23, 1927, a predominantly German city founded in 1855 by a group of men dedicated to a philosophy of free thinking devoid of the boundaries associated with religious thinking. His maternal grandfather, son of one of those founders, himself a lifelong believer in those principles, introduced him to a wide range of books supporting those beliefs including freedom of thought coupled with an ability to go wherever careful evidence leads. Always a bit of a rebel, he nevertheless came to believe that people were best served by a caring nature which included a philosophy of concern for those less able to earn an adequate income for themselves and their families. Now at 85, one who stuttered badly in early life, he is finally comfortable with who he is at a level which allows him to ride through the kind of disapprovals, real or imagined, most of us face throughout life. This is his story.