Since he was three and laying face-up in the back yard, Dale dreamed of being in the sky flying airplanes. A few years later, when he was fifty-five, he finally earned his license and acquired an airplane. In those intervening years he drew lots of pencil-on-paper pictures and grew up to learn to use cameras to make pictures. He first snapped hobby pictures and learned to "develop my own" as they used to say. Later he became a photographer in the U. S. Navy , followed by college days at Ohio University, College of Fine Arts, School of Photography. Later life brought two beautiful daughters, four great step-kids and countless loving grandchildren.