The Author
Garry White holds a master’s degree in psychology and a doctorate in computer education. Over the past thirty-plus years, he has attended many training sessions for fostering and adopting. Many home studies have been done on him for the past three decades. Experiences include being a single foster parent and an assistant Scoutmaster at a youth correctional facility. Currently, he is a tenured university professor who authors and publishes research articles for academic journals.
In 2008, he hiked across the Grand Canyon with three boys at the age of 58.
Get to know me
My name is Garry L. White. I was born in California in the early 1950s. My dad was very involved with my twin brother and me. We took many family vacations, and Dad was our Cub Scout pack master. Once, when we were driving to the Grand Canyon, Dad told my brother and me to prepare to see something we would remember for the rest of our lives. When I saw the Grand Canyon, I promised myself that one day I would hike to the bottom. Upon college graduation, I did just that with a college fraternity brother.
School was a problem. In the fourth grade, I was in a special class for slow learners. Two high school teachers told my parents that my brother and I would flunk out of college our first semester. We both are dyslexic. I have the most severe form of dyslexia. Audio-visual teaching methods didn’t work. By the time I reached the ninth grade, I was reading at a third-grade level. When one of the nuns at my high school noticed that I was good in algebra but poor in history, she took action. Through her, kinesthetic and tactual methods were used. One of the methods was tracing letters in the sand. I learned to read and write.
Today, I am a university professor with a PhD and two master’s degrees. My brother has two master’s degrees in engineering. My high school teachers were wrong. Thank God for that Catholic nun who saw what my brother and I were capable of. We just needed a different method of instruction.
From college on, I have had an active social life. Right after college, I hiked the Grand Canyon twice with college buddies. I will always remember, on my first trip, meeting a Boy Scout troop hiking out. When my college buddy and I turned around to see them hike out, we saw a big backpack with two little feet bobbing up the trail.
My brother once said I have more lifelong friends than anyone else he knew. All of my college apartment roommates moved out on me because they got married. After thirty years, all of those apartment roommates are still married to their first wives. We joke that they would rather live with their wives than move back in with me. They all have children, and some are grandparents.
I am single, not by a conscious decision, but by how life has turned out for me. As I have seen my friends with their kids, I have sensed a void in my life. I wanted to be a dad just like my dad was.
My book is published through Tate Publishing, a mainline publishing house dedicated to working with aspiring authors and giving their book its best chance in the marketplace. If you’ve ever thought about publishing a book, you should visit www.tatepublishing.com.