I was born in Germany in 1961. My mother worked for the German Phone Company and my father was an airman with the U. S. Army. I came to the United States about a year later.
My first contact with fountain pens was the Sheaffer School Pen when I was in the fourth grade in Texas. We could finally use pens instead of pencils, and I rather hated the BIC pens that we were using at the time, so a trip to the drug store netted me my first fountain / cartridge pen. I used these on an off through High School and into college, where I was studying to become an Aircraft Mechanic. I graduated from SIU-C with my AAS and my Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic License in 1981, and married my wife Karen whom I met while working for the Southern Illinoisian Newspaper. We moved to St. Louis to face unemployment, and then to Wisconsin where I worked as a machinist at the Muskeegon Piston Ring Company until I landed a job as a mechanic at the Point Beach Nuclear Plant. There the regulations required the use of ballpoints, so I started using the Parker Jotters and the Sheaffer cartridge pens were left for use at home. Around this time I acquired a Sheaffer No-Nonsense caligraphy pen. After transfering to Operations at the plant, I put in another seven years. Three sons were born to Karen and I in Wisconsin, my oldest Joseph in 1984, Thomas in 1986, and Matthew in 1989.
Shortly after the birth of Matthew, we moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where I began work at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station. By this time, even our cheques had carbons, so I had completely gone over to ball points. Thankfully, the computer age was the death of the carbon copy, and I once again started using fountain pens. Most of my old Sheaffers had disappeared by this time (except for the No-Nonsense), and I purchased a Lamy Studio as my first real "fountain pen". I now use a bit of everything from vintage Sheaffers (I will always have a soft spot for these), the Lamys, a range of Pelikans (my most used), and my favorite pens, my two Dupont Olympios.
Other interests:
Theology, History, Firearms, Cigars, and about anything else that I can learn from.
Blog or Homepage:
www.kendowdy.com
Links:
www.top25cigar.com
www.orthodox.net
www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws
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