This hardly constitutes the kind of autobiography that catalogs every minute detail of my existence. My contributions are not consequential enough to require such an account. I have had an interesting life, though, some of it worth recounting, and I shall endeavor to set forth information about my family background and the events that had an impact on my development. Aside from an admittedly vainglorious attempt to explain myself, I would like my daughter, other family members, and my posterity to have some of our family's history as best as I am able to tell it. With that said, I shall continue to withhold a couple of things, for I must protect others who would find some disclosures discomfiting. I doubt most people are willing to divest themselves of all their secrets, anyway. As it is, relatively few of my secrets remain; and at this juncture, only those necessary to protect others. Autobiography is at once the ultimate form of self-expression and also of personal vanity. With that said, reconciliation with the facts of one's life is also therapeutic. One hopes that it might even have some benefit to posterity.