- I was born when Sputnik 1 was orbiting the earth making that infamous bleep
- My father was a navy doctor on a destroyer during world war two. He witnessed the battles of Tarawa, Iowa Jima and Leyte Gulf. Once his ship sunk a japanese submarine and there was just one survivor who was pulled aboard. My father saved his life by amputating the poor guys leg
- I met my wife in Balestrand, Norway and fell in love with her instantly. After a romantic few days it was time for me to leave forever, but I couldn't bear leaving her. I asked her what I should do and she said just to leave, it was fun while it lasted, just leave. Feeling bummed I packed up my belongings and went down to the port. When it was time for the ferry to leave, I hesitated and at the last second jumped back onshore. Since then we've been together for twenty-eight years
- I've been living in Holland since 1981 and still wonder to this day what my life would have been like had I decided to stay in the States. Was it the right decision, did I make a mistake?
- I was named after Kiffin Yates Rockwell, a famous world war one volunteer pilot with the lafayette escadrille who gave his life for freedom fighting the germans. He is buried in Luxeuil-les-bains France and I've paid tribute to his final resting place twice, the first time with tears in my eyes
- As a teenager I used to be a one handicap golfer and thought I'd become a golf pro someday. I would have played on the university team except that I was afraid I couldn't play golf and get straight A's at the same time. The ironic thing is that I gave up golf for medical school which I never even attended
- My mother was born in Paris and came to America after the war. That makes me half American and half French. When I went to kindergarten no one could understand me because I had this thick French accent. After many sessions with a logopedist I finally learned to pronounce the 'th' and 'h' sounds. Even to this day some people say I talk kind of funny
- My favorite subjects at school were always math and science. In second grade I went through the class workbook so quickly that my teacher Miss Bell introduced me to the fascinating world of long division. I looked at the divide symbol and went crazy
- I bought the first TI calculator that could do square roots and a fun game for me was taking random numbers and seeing how close I could guess what the square root would be
- During my algebra class in high school I was always very disappointed when the bell went off
- I almost drowned once while on vacation in northern Crete. I wanted to show off to my wife what an athletic swimmer I was and dove into the stormy waters, not seeing the line of red warning flags. The tide pulled me under water and I thought I was going to die. I remember vividly seeing my wife in the distance and me waving my hand trying to holler help
- As a kid when I went to bed I could close my eyes and make my bed float and spin every which way by just thinking about it
- Even though I've played golf my whole life I still have not had a single hole-in-one
- I once attended a concert with Fleetwood Mac, the Doobie Brothers and Boston, and from then on I became completely infatuated with Stevie Nicks
- The first time I got drunk was when I shared a fifth of Jack Daniels with a friend, ran outside and jumped into the university fountain, and being completely sopping wet slogged through the freshman library in search of the girl I had a crush on. I must have really made a great impression on her
- I attended a Stanford vs. USC football game with my father and afterwards got O.J. Simpson's autograph. I was just a kid and he towered over me
- I was in the car with my sisters and mother driving south on highway 101 when it was announced on the radio that Niel Amstrong had stepped on the moon
- After having graduated from a university two times I vowed never ever to study again. Since then my life has been nothing but one study after the other non-stop
- I originally wanted five children but after the fourth my wife had had enough
- I keep dreaming about Stanford almost every night. In the dream it's my nth year there and I still haven't graduated after so many years
- After having built up a career in computer technology and having assumed various positions and roles, I still have the most fun when I get to develop and debug computer programs
- I first started to get bald when I was twenty, I looked in the mirror and panicked. Fortunately it still took thirty years after that before my baldness really is starting to show through
- I started biting my nails and cracking my knuckles when I was six and haven't been able to break those habits since then
- One late evening I wasn't paying attention and my car started swerving out of control, spinning around two or three times and finally skidding into the other lane. If another car had been coming from the other direction I probably would have been killed
- When I grow up I still want to become an astronaut
