BEDROCK

The five short stories that follow are based on the lives of the author's father and maternal grandfather. Most of the events in these stories really did happen according to family lore or as observed by the author himself. However, the circumstances surrounding these events are created by the author to reflect the principles by which these men lived their lives. Their determination and ambition, their love of family, and their sense of duty and honor were not only reflected in their lives but were the bedrock of the American culture at the turn of the twentieth century.

The five short stories that follow are based on the lives of the author's father and maternal grandfather. Most of the events in these stories really did happen according to family lore or as observed by the author himself. However, the circumstances surrounding these events are created by the author to reflect the principles by which these men lived their lives. Their determination and ambition, their love of family, and their sense of duty and honor were not only reflected in their lives but were the bedrock of the American culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Both men grew up on homesteads on the Great Plains…Skillman in west Texas and Hartmann in western Kansas. Skillman was a young cowboy and participated in the last cattle drives to Montana but circumstances took him back to his birthplace in Ohio. There he enlisted in the army to fight in the Spanish/American war. Hartmann ran away from home at about the age of eleven. He finished elementary school but opted for a tool-making apprenticeship instead of high school. However, his mentor died before he awarded Hartmann his papers. The widow gave the boy her husband's tool kit, so Harold moved east to Memphis and hired out as a tool maker. Eventually, Hartmann migrated to Dayton, Ohio, where he rented a room in a boarding house owned by Skillman. Both men started their own businesses. Skillman began a foundry, and Hartmann built a manufacturing company. Their stories are the quintessential story of twentieth-century America.

Robert Wesley Faulkender followed up his twenty-year army career by becoming a small business owner, which led to business consulting from Atlanta, Georgia, to Cairo, Egypt. Never quite retiring, Robert continued as a college professor for ten years, which morphed into a writer/lecturer. In every endeavor, he strove to meet the three imperatives of West Point... duty.honor.country. Robert accepted his commission in the Infantry. He qualified as Ranger and Airborne at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and joined the 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Battle Group, 15th Infantry. While Bamberg, Germany, was home for the next three-plus years, a bachelor 2d lieutenant drew frequent TDY assignments. One event took him and his honor guard platoon to Kabul, Afghanistan, to participate in the 1000th-year centennial of the Afghan Monarchy. His service career included two years in Vietnam. In 1964, he led a five-man advisor team into a small district town in the Mekong Delta where they lived and advised the District Chief on military and civil actions. In a split second, a land mine earned him the Combat Infantryman's Badge and the Purple Heart. Notwithstanding, it was the most rewarding year of his life. As the United States became more directly involved in the Vietnamese struggle, Robert returned in 1968 as a member of the 1st Infantry Division. He was the executive officer of the 16th Infantry battalion and found that his German training served him well in combat troop-leading procedures. Between tours to Vietnam, Robert achieved his master's degree from Georgia Tech in Operations Research/Systems Analysis and joined the Army Management School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. The mission was to develop and teach a course on Systems Analysis, which familiarized upper management representatives from all services with Operations Research and Systems Analysis techniques. After his second tour in Vietnam, he returned to Ft. Benning, where he commanded the 29th Infantry Battalion in the 197th Infantry Brigade. Attendance at the Armed Forces Staff College followed. Robert retired from the Army as Chief of Management at Forces Command, Ft. McPherson, Georgia. He made his transition into civilian life as the owner of a small home healthcare company, which was insolvent at the time he purchased controlling interest. He turned the company around and, five years later, sold it to a small publicly traded company. Duty was more than a military concept. He launched into the expatriate world. His years as a business consultant took him to Cairo, Egypt. For two years, he worked for a Project Management firm out of Atlanta whose clients were five of the largest construction firms in Egypt. Subsequently, he and the greatest love of his life, Luanne, formed a small financial brokerage company in Atlanta, Georgia. They helped small businesses raise capital. In the capacity of contract Chief Financial Officer, he assisted in the start-up, shutdown, refinance or stock offering of over 50 small businesses. Nothing was more challenging to his ethics than the small business world. For ten years, Robert was an adjunct college professor in International Business. He taught courses in Management and Leadership at American InterContinental University (AIU). Underwriting every course was a patriotic thyme. He instructed at the two AIU campuses in Atlanta and spent a summer teaching on the AIU-London campus. In later years, he published two books: a memoir about his advisor's year in Vietnam and a booklet about free enterprise. He is retired and lives with his wife of forty years in Viera, Florida.