H.C. grew up in Chanute and Atchison, Kansas. He attended Kansas University on a football scholarship and graduated from the University of Kansas Medical School in 1963. Following his first year of residency in internal medicine, he was drafted, along with 1500 other American doctors, to serve in the United States Armed Forces, and eventually served in Vietnam as a battalion surgeon with the First Infantry Division. During his medical career, H.C. was Team Physician for the 1973 USA All-Star Basketball team touring the People’s Republic of China, Chief Medical Officer for the USA team at the 1979 World University Games in Mexico City, and Team physician for the San Diego Clippers. He raised registered Polled Hereford Cattle for 12 years. He also held a private pilot’s license and logged over 550 hours before he left Liberal, Kansas to return to the Kansas City area. Retired from medicine now for five years, he has worked with veterans from Kansas and Missouri, helping them write to tell their stories. H.C.’s poems have appeared in many literary journals and the national on-line journals, Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He served as an assistant poetry editor for Narrative Magazine. His first collection, Feet of the Messenger, was recently published by BkMk Press and the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas. H.C. and his wife Valerie live in the suburbs of Kansas City. They have 11 grandchildren.