(Editors’ note: The following, while seeming to be no more than a chronological biography, has a deeper story to tell about overcoming adversity from early in life, and how, no matter how we fill our years, we inevitably grow older.)
- At age 16, I enrolled in college after dropping out of high school the previous year.
- The end of the Korean War interrupted my goal of a military career.
- While I was still in college, my first marriage ended in divorce.
- I was admitted to Harvard Business School and enrolled in September 1957.
- In November 1957, I was unable to continue school because of the Asian flu.
- In 1958, I was admitted to membership in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
- Linda came to work at the Utah State Capitol in 1958. That is where I worked.
- Linda and I were married in 1960 — the most important turning point in my life.
- In 1961, I was readmitted to Harvard Business School.
- Graduating with the MBA class of 1963, I went to work in the overseas oil industry.
- In 1966, I began doctoral study in business at the University of Illinois.
- I was ordained a high priest in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1967 and served on the high council of the church in central Illinois.
- In 1968, I graduated from the University of Illinois with a Ph.D. in business. Then I served 14 years as a professor and administrator at Brigham Young University.
- From 1969 to 1980, I was a member of the consulting faculty at the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
- From 1973 to 1975, I served as commanding officer of a U. S. Army Reserve strategic research unit for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
- 1975 and 1976, I was a visiting professor of management, Boston University in Europe.
- In 1982, I was appointed dean of the College of Business, Minnesota State University.
- In 1987, I was ordained a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- In 1994, I retired from Minnesota State University and returned to Utah.
- Linda and I served a volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Boston from 1997 to 1999, teaching religion classes at the Boston Institute of Religion, Harvard Business School, Wellesley College, Boston University, Harvard College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- From 2001 to 2003, Linda and I served another volunteer mission, preparing a leadership development program for 8,000 worldwide employees of the Farm Management Company of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- In January 2013, I began walking with a cane and obtained a blue parking tag.