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Today's Featured Biography

 
Rodney Melsek

Can't believe it's been 50 years since FMHS. Wow. I guess I spent the 70s and part of the 80s in a fog--5 years in the Army after FSU and then odd-and-end jobs for a while. Some better than others. Surveying for oil exploration companies around the U.S. probably best of all (worked out of Salt Lake City for a few years and that was incredible). About 4 years at that till the boom went bust in the early-80s. So then I joined the Peace Corps, and spend the best years of my life working in a school in the very remote village of Kapluk in the Kerio Valley in Kenya. Awesome! I got the opportunity to travel throughout East Africa with my 'buds' and had an absolute blast. Even got to Moscow at Xmas and then some travel in Europe on the way home. That experience really opened doors for me. I got an offer to go to China to the Chinese Academy of Science in the northern Chinese city of Changchun, assisting graduate students prepare for further study America. Following that, I spent 2 years in South Korea at an institute pretty much doing the same thing. Then a stint back in the U.S. on the Sioux Indiana Reservation in South Dakota helping run an AmeriCorps program. Then back to China for another year in Shanghai working on the same project with Chinese students. Immediately following the Balkans war in early 1990's, I was recruited by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)to serve as an international observer in Bosnia Hertzegovina and then again following the war in Kosovo. That was a super time! Got to see a lot of the Balkans and was embedded into international peacekeeper forces, to include time with French, Swiss, Russian and American armies. It was an incredible adventure. I traveled to Macedonia and traced Alexander the Great's footsteps, and spent time in some incredible small villages on the Greek coast. Following my last assignment in Kosovo, I joined FEMA and have served with them ever since. I am part of a 32-person response team stationed in Sacramento, CA and working too hard at 67! I have served at every major disaster in the U.S. since the early part of 2000, and even got to Haiti with my team following the earthquake in 2010. I was in Orlando following the 'Florida 4 Hurricanes' in 2004, the one which caused the cancellation of one of our reunions. I heard some of our folks held up in hotel in Ft. Myers for Hurricane Charley (the first of the big 4). I was pre-positioned in Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina and spent almost a year in Jackson and along the coast. So that's pretty much my story. My question is, when will I retire? When I do I'd like to spend 6 months a year in Florida and 6 months a year in eastern Europe (I love Croatia and Bosnia--beautiful countries and the Dalmation Coast is incredible!) Don 't know yet when that will be, but I'd better not wait too long to enjoy. I hope all of you are enjoying life to the fullest and hope to see you again.

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