I received a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut in 1983, but I've been drawing, painting and building models of all kinds for as long as I can remember. With cardboard, paper and glue my brother Paul and I started making airplanes, tanks, spaceships, and what ever, back when I was in grade school. Our homemade toys probably outnumbered our store bought ones by about 10-1.When I was 8 years old my father bought me my first balsa airplane kit. It was a WWI SPAD 13. It took my dad and I over a year to finish it, but I was hooked. I haven't stopped building model airplanes since. I still build and fly RC airplanes today. Growing up in Connecticut, My family made the hour-long pilgrimage to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome to see Cole Palin's air show almost every year. Seeing his amazing collection of WWI birds take to the air every summer inspired many of the models I've built over the years. I did some hang-gliding in my college days but never got my pilots licence. No regrets though, because I've been able to fly every airplane I ever dreamed of... Just not full-scale...

Surprisingly, my involvement with Fiddlers Green did not begin with airplanes, but rather WWI tanks. I created my first FG model September of 2010. It was a French Renault tank. That was the beginning of an 8 tank collection. When I began that project I didn't even know that many different tanks were built during the 'Great War'. But that's the neat thing about Fiddlers Green! You always get an education while building these interesting models. I have had the privilege of creating a handful of pioneer aircraft for FG and hope to do many more, but currently I seem to have returned to a different part of my childhood. My first love. Dinosaurs... Seriously though, do you know any 5 year old boy that doesn't love dinosaurs? I live in Torrington, CT with my wife, Cindy, and children, Benjamin and Rebekah. I am a prepress operator at Eastwood Printing, and along with various free-lance jobs hope to one day publish a children's book.

Tyrannosaurus Rex Skeleton

(X ray T. rex)

I found out something interesting about our friend, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, when I went to his Wikipedia page. About half of the people I asked told me that T. rex lived ten thousand years ago at the beginning of time. The other half told me that he lived in the Jurassic Period, long after the beginning of time. According to the wiki, they are both wrong. The wiki says he lived in the Upper Cretaceous Period, and I realized by then that I probably had seen too many Hollywood movies.

I asked my friend, the 65 million year old paleontologist, why he had so many old bones all over the place. He told me that times have been hard and he wasn't able to afford any new ones! When I wanted to paint my model of T. rex I didn't know what color to make it. He said I could paint it any color I want to. I asked him, "Even purple with pink polka dots?" He explained that no one knows for sure what color T. rex was, so I was free to be as creative as I wanted to be.

I may have been a little bit too creative when I did my school report on the Tyrannosaurus rex. I wrote that science can prove that T. rex could jump higher than a 100 story skyscraper. Naturally, my teacher had to ask me how I could support such a statement. "That's easy" I said. "Hundred story skyscrapers can't jump!" She thought that was very funny, but she still handed it back for me to change.

At least she didn't make me change the picture I drew of him. I put a cowboy hat on him because he lived in many parts of the Western USA, like Texas, Montana, Wyoming and Utah. They even found some of his footprints in New Mexico, and that's the same state in which I found a cowboy hat. This doesn't exactly prove anything, but it does raises some questions. My personal research suggests that a full grown adult Tyrannosaur had something very important that no other dinosaur ever had...little tyrannosaurs!

If you like watching old reruns, you could watch these two videos from The Discovery Channel: