David A. Woodbury is a native American — an individual born in the USA, who also has putative aboriginal ancestry. Born in Sarasota, Florida, to a man and woman who met on the beach there and married a good six months before he was born, he grew up in Gomer and Lima, Ohio, and in Farmington, Maine, eventually surrounded by five younger siblings and others who adopted the family as their own.
In His Own Words
My father, Victor, who grew up in western Maine, was totally deaf but functioned more or less normally using a bone-conductor hearing aid. My mother, Dorothy (née Miller) even though she lost her parents when she was sixteen, became the first in her family ever to graduate from college (Otterbein) and became a school teacher. Victor spent eleven years going to college part-time (Ohio Northern University), from the time I was five years old until I was sixteen, and worked two jobs at a time throughout that period. Victor, too, eventually became a teacher.
My conventional education included two years each of Spanish, Latin, and French in the public schools. As a private student of piano in Lima from the age of six, I anticipated a career as a classical concert pianist. At 18, though, in an accident at an after-school job, I nearly severed my right index finger near the palm. In spite of the damaged finger I was accepted at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with a piano concentration, where I took a year of college Russian as an elective. The finger would not behave, though, and the career as a pianist was cut short.
Army and College Degree
The following summer I signed up for four years in the Army during the Vietnam police action. The Army sent me to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, for a year of intensive Russian, followed by training and service as a Russian-language cryptanalyst in Augsburg, Deutschland, a.k.a., West Germany.
When I resumed college, I completed a B.S. in Wildlife Management at the University of Maine with a major in wildlife ecology — the science of ecology, not the politics of ecology. After college I spent 23 years at Great Northern Paper Company in Millinocket and East Millinocket, Maine, and 13 years after that in health care administration, also working as a freelance Registered Maine Guide in fishing, hunting, and recreation, following the lead of my cousin, Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby who, in 1897, was issued Maine Guide license #1 after she lobbied the Maine legislature to set some standards for guides. As a result, by the time I came along and tested for the license, Maine had established the most rigorous testing in the country.
Besides having lived for a year or more in Florida, Ohio, California, Maine, and Deutschland, I have also traveled solo throughout western Europe and in Russia and Ukraine and with my family in Ireland, Canada, and Aruba.
Writing and the Rest
I began my first novel in 1972, which will remain unpublished unless I can seriously revise it. However, it was solid practice for what I have written since then. Go to DamnYankee.com to see all of my published work — books, articles, family history stuff, links to a couple other sites with articles on site-specific topics.
Since 1977 my wife and I have made our home in Penobscot County, north of the 45th parallel. Our children and grandchildren all live in Maine as well. I am immersed in hobbies from model railroading to beer making and from woodworking to collecting historical documents. I like to read the classics such as O. Henry and Charles Dickens, modern authors such as Ivan Doig and Louis L’Amour, non-fiction by authors such as Simon Singh, John McPhee, and P.J. O’Rourke, and the works of the early Christian theologians, who add dimension to a life of faith. I have compiled a list of 80 favorite books for anyone who wants recommendations.
Email me at coldmorningshadow@gmail.com, even if only to say Hi. An author finds it reassuring to learn that someone is reading his or her stuff.
(For a different perspective on this biography visit “THE AUTHOR“ at DamnYankee.com and more about the life of a Registered Maine Guide.)
the novel 