A career that encompasses both the United States Air Force and Theatre scholarship is fairly heterodox by any standard. But Sophocles was a general, so I'm in good company. I was a Master Navigator. Air Force navigators officially became an extinct breed in June 2005. New graduates from training are Combat Systems Officers. Some will still navigate, but they will not be Navigators but CSOs. Navigators have always been regarded by the DOD hierarchy as second-class citizens. The new designation doesn't sound like a step up. But in fact navigators of just a few centuries ago are, as a group, among the most important humans who ever lived. Pilots have existed for a little over 100 years, navigators for many thousands of years. In the western world for several hundred years maritime navigators have been called "pilots." Our planet would be a very different place without the navigation skills of the likes of Goncalo Cabral and Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus, the Pinzon Brothers, Panfilo de Narvaez, Vasco de Gama, Pedro Cabral, John Cabot, Juan Ponce de Leon, Ferdinand Magellan, Amerigo Vespucci and Giovanni da Verrazzano, to name just a few. In many ways they were my teachers. If we do not destroy ourselves, navigators may very well stage a comeback as we voyage into our solar system and beyond, to the stars. It's a great tradition, and a fundamental part of the human impulse, to go, to see, and to know. I was honored to be a part of it.All homepages are inherently narcissistic and this one is no exception. I created it in 1996 (and maintain it) because I was a freelance teacher. From 1983 to 2006 I taught in the Education, Theatre and Communication departments at The University of Colorado at Boulder. Before that I taught part-time at five other colleges and universities for 20 years. I have again retired, this time for good. As you can see, I'm an older person, and this picture was taken in 1983. Now I'm just elderly. There are two taken recently, attached to the page of my grandchildren. I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. There are airplane pictures in the Air Force section as well as on the EC-47, C-119, and C-130 pages. Those who are curious about what all those ribbons mean can click on this link. If you're really looking for airplanes, I suggest the Air Force Museum site. For more about my past or present, click on one of the items below.
[Portland] [Air Force] [Grad. School] [C-119 Missions] [C-130 Missions] C-141 Missions [ EC-47 Mission] 
We have a house in the mountains near Estes Park and a condominium near Denver. A good friend of mine, Mike Molloy, (he is responsible for the lovely graphic at the top of this page) has some excellent pages involving hiking in the Estes Park area. You will enjoy visiting his home page. We have two sons. The older is a Ph.D. microbiologist and Global Regulatory Manager with Syngenta in the research triangle in Raleigh-Durham. He recently received an award for his role in developing a hybrid corn seed developed to resist several worms that reduce yields.He is married and has three children. Our younger son, Richard, is married and is the Vice President of Digital and New Media at Turner Classic Movies, TBS and TNT in Atlanta. He recently received a Peabody Award for his work there. He has one son. We are very proud of both boys.
Granted, it's not a particularly distinguished career, and a somewhat anfractuous one, but I have modest goals. In April of 1967 we sat down and asked ourselves what we wanted to be doing in 25 years, and we decided being a retired lieutenant colonel teaching part-time at the University of Colorado and obstetric nursing part-time at a local hospital (Longmont United) would be nice. That's exactly what happened. Mary retired 32 years later, in March of 1998 and was appointed by then Governor Romer to the Colorado State Commission on Aging and was reappointed by Governor Owens. She suffered a stroke in 2001 and such misfortunes change lives in ways difficult to predict, but so far we're doing well. I have written a column for a monthly journal in Colorado since 1985, the Allenspark Wind and a book collection of my columns was published recently. In 2009 I was seleected by the Denver Post to be a columnist for a year and I enjoyed that experience.
I hope you enjoyed the tour. 
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since 18 January 2008
1 January 2010.
davidesteiner@comcast.net
