Quality Education: Why It Matters, and How to Structure the System to Sustain It

Gray Rinehart is the only person to have commanded a remote Air Force tracking station, written speeches for Presidential appointees, devised a poetic form, and had music on The Dr. Demento Show. Gray grew up on the coast of South Carolina, where he took the Gray Man, a famous ghost of Pawleys Island, as his "alter ego." He earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Clemson University. Gray retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2006 after a rather odd career. He began as a Bioenvironmental Engineer, became a project engineer, then became a space and missile operator. Over the course of his career, he kept rocket propulsion research operations safe, fought fires as head of a Disaster Response Force, trained Air Force ROTC cadets, refurbished space launch facilities, "flew" Milstar satellites, drove trucks, processed nuclear command and control orders as an Emergency Actions officer, commanded the Air Force's largest satellite tracking station, protected militarily critical space technologies, and wrote speeches for top Air Force leaders.Gray is a Contributing Editor for Baen Books, and his fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, and other venues, including numerous anthologies. He is also the author of a variety of nonfiction books, essays, and articles, as well as being a singer/songwriter with four albums that feature science-fiction-and-fantasy-inspired songs. Gray is married to the former Lisa Herrington of Georgetown, South Carolina. With his late wife, the former Jill Marie Briggs of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, he has two adult children, Stephanie and Christopher. They all make their respective homes in North Carolina. For more information, visit grayrinehart.com.