I was born in Pittsburgh, PA in Bellevue Hospital (which at the time was a place for those a little "touched") on July 7, 1958. We moved to Eau Gallie, Florida (Now Melbourne but always Eau Gallie for the early settlers) in June 1961 and settled into our lives at 1633 Mulberry Street. According to my baby book, I was talking incessantly by the age of 2 and by 6, was writing, though poorly. School came pretty easy to me and my interest in music began very early. In fact, the humanities interested me in grade school before I knew what the word meant. I played baseball in the little league and I mean little. My uniform looked like pants with a long sleeve shirt. You couldn't tell I had the socks on and my strike zone was about 3 inches high. I got walked a lot. I started surfing in the 9th grade, playing table tennis and tennis around the same time, swimming and diving, and hustling at pool. Really, most of the non-contact sports were my hobbies. It's funny, today the most athletic thing I do is jump to conclusions. I also started roller skating- yes, roller skating. I had my own skates, locker on site, tab at the concession stand, and a great bunch of friends. It was The Roller City on Aurora road and it is where I met Deb in 1973. We got together on September 7th, during a Friday night "Sock-Hop" and with the exception of a "Momentary Lapse of Reason" in 1977, we have been together ever since. As I write this, that's 35 years ago! Wow. I also took up the piano in around the 3rd grade. I stayed with it for several years, just long enough where I could reach the petals. It was great to finally hear all those notes sustained after a lot of staccato playing. By my junior year, I was living at the beach. Even on school days I would somehow end up in the surf. In a brave attempt at entering the establishment, I applied to the Walt Disney Company in the winter of 1975 and was hired as a "Custodian Technician". I cleaned up the trash all over the Magic Kingdom and loved all of it. In the fall of 1975, I auditioned for a new group of weekend Walt Disney characters and was hired. I spent the next 3 years in the company of some of the most important people in my life. Even today, those friends are among the closest I will ever have. I graduated from Eau Gallie High School in June 1976 and moved to Orlando in the Fall to work at Disney full time. I continued to travel back and forth to Eau Gallie to see Deb and enrolled in Valencia Community College in 1977. Deb and I did the long distance phone and trip thing during '78 and early '79, her in Tallahassee and me in Orlando. I joined her in Tallahassee in the spring of '79 (she had come up in June of '77 after she graduated from Satellite High) and we settled into an apartment life while I worked my way through school at Stereo Sales. Deb and I were married at Maclay Gardens on September 7, 1980 and I moved up a few blocks on Tennessee Street to a new business: The Stereo Store. I graduated in 1982 and became the manager of the store, then an owner in 1984. I did my first new construction, audio pre-wire in 1984 and Deb and I built our first home in the same year. Today it is our show home and the base of operation for Jim Gray Designs and Wildwood Days Publishing. In June 1988, I left Auto Audio and the Stereo Store to begin my own thing- a small custom design and installation business, which would become Jim Gray Designs. After over 20 years we are still at it. In July of 2008, I turned 50 and retired from Saturday's and my 70+ hour weeks. I had always had a job that required working Saturday's starting with Disney in 1975 and continuing through Stereo Sales and the Stereo Store and finally Jim Gray Designs. It has been an easier transition that I thought. The world does go on without me working Saturdays.