After receiving a "draft card" from the government at age seventeen I enlisted in the U.S. Naval Air. That link opens a page of my archived 2013 BigEye website that pictures the types of propeller driven planes in which I was privileged to fly. Within two years, upon recommendation by my squadron's commanding officer, I was commissioned directly from the "fleet" by Dan Kimball, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, making me, perhaps, the youngest commissioned man in the Navy (Annapolis students are not commissioned until graduation).
Expected to move ahead through the ranks of commissioned officers, I was led to believe that I was destined to eventually become an Admiral. However, as my education and experience progressed I decided against a military career. I voluntarily resigned my commission (as permitted by contract) several months prior to earning an honorable discharage.
Attending Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, supported by Navy money and some part-time work, I graduated with a BS degree followed by two laboratory jobs. My first real job, begun less than a week after earning a degree, was conveniently within walking distance of the campus. With a Top Secret security clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission that I couldn't even mention, as a Senior Lab Technician at Battelle Memorial Institute I assisted in the absorbsion of atmospheric gases by various metallic alloy samples in high vacuum and at high temperatures. The cooled samples were then sent to the metallurgy lab for analysis. Although unknown to us in the nineteen fifties, we were developing space-shuttle re-entry heat shield material years before the Apollo project became public. After I saved some money I took a bus to New York City.
My next job involved working with Sylvia Itkin and Dr. Hylan Bickerman in the basement of Goldwater Hospital, Welfare Island, NYC (now Roosevelt Island) under an American Cancer Society grant to Dr. Papanicolaou (of "Pap smear" fame). We sought the possibility for a similar early diagnosis of bronchogenic carcinoma. Although that work reimbursed me for exhorbitant semester-hour graduate school fees uptown at Columbia University, the ACS grant expired (brochial pathology smears were inconclusive) and I was unable to take full advantage of that opportunity. Laboratory work was intensely interesting but the pay had been unsatisfactory despite my rooming economically above Mrs. Garcia's El Charro Mexican Restaurant on Charles Street in West Greenwich Village. I recognized the need to obtain an advanced degree if I were to continue in a scientific career.
In order to earn enough money to attend graduate school at OSU I arranged to drive a large state-of-the-art 1957 GMC-620 truck over the road (prior to interstate highways) for one year to the day, as agreed. I saved more than enough money to return to graduate school, pursuing my own interest in protozoology, cytology and the new science of molecular genetics. Shortly after enrolling in graduate school I was unexpectedly awarded a paid graduate teaching assistantship and taught undergraduates for a full academic year. Although my students excelled on departmental final exams, that experience made me decide to forego a scientific career within academia. I sought corporate employment that would provide greater financial reward than offered by academia. My younger brother, Robert Russell Ogilby who was also enrolled at OSU, continued in graduate school and earned a PhD in geology. My brother had been named after my father's greatly admired "Grandpa Russell". Robert W. Russell was Thomas Edison's attorney in New Jersey after immigrating with his wife from England.
Replying to an employment advertisement, I was hired in Ohio by Lever Brothers Company (the U.S. division of Unilever LTD, one of the world's largest corporations) to a job that offered a two-year training program in the sales and marketing of the company's consumer products. After consistently leading the Ohio group in sales for two years, I was promoted by Lever Brothers to New York City. I worked with the company in NYC for four more years in key-account sales, marketing promotions, new product introductions, and sales training at the district level. I was able to purchase a house on the Hudson River in Cold Spring, New York. Following six years of consumer-products sales with Lever Brothers, I decided to transfer into industrial sales and to become involved with anything involving trucks, an interest of mine for years.
After obtaining an interview, I was hired, and trained by the owner-executives of U.S. Truck Body Company, Long Island City, NY. I became the firm's House Account (key account) Representative and Manager of Distributor Sales. I gained a national sales reputation as the result of sales to major truck leasing companies including the sale of five hundred aluminum van bodies, each with a Maxon electric-hydraulic liftgate, to Ryder Truck Rental of Coral Gables, Florida when Jim Ryder decided to compete with U-Haul in the one-way truck rental market. Needing to work with larger capacity manufacturers, I moved twice in the industry, honoring a verbal agreement not to work with a competitor for a full year.
Following that year (in which I played a lot of singles tennis) I became Regional Sales Manager with the Unisteel Division of Ohio's Hercules Gallion Corporation, purchasing a house in Milan, Ohio, the birthplace of Thomas Edison. A year later I was appointed, as a management consultant, by NASDAQ's Instrument Systems Corporation to either turn aroumd its financially troubled truck body manufacturer in Troy, Alabama or to have it dismantled and sold by the conglomerate. I was able, with the help of Robert Belfield, an ingenious mechanical engineer from Sayville, Long Island, NY to save the jobs for employees of the city's largest employer. Lyncoach & Truck Company remained in business. I learned recently that it is a thriving business today. That accomplishment is one of which I am very proud in human terms.
Unexpectedly a single parent, I moved with my son to Worthington, Ohio, the location of Ohio's top-rated public school. I got Ohio real-estate and insurance licenses, quickly becoming the leading condominium conversion sales producer in Columbus, Ohio. Promoted to sales manager and sales trainer, I was recruited to take over a failing Century21 franchise. With constructive advice from the region's sales director, I was able to turn it into the Ohio region's top residential sales agency, winning awards in all categories: number one in sales, listings, recruiting, and profit.
After reading considerable financial material, including a booklet published by Consumer Reports Magazine, I decided to move from residential real-estate into helping families with accurate and important financial information. I launched a consumer-oriented financial business, renting an office in Worthington, Ohio (on the north side of Columbus, the capital of Ohio). I wrote, published, advertised and sold in quantity a hugely influential book about life-insurance policies, Financial Recovery.
A.L. Williams' huge 1980's financial success in exposing the world's weathiest industry nationally was not jeopardized by the popularity of Financial Recovery. That remarkable Organization needed neither my book, nor printed copies of its Appendix #1, to be outstandingly successful. With three teen-agers and a younger child at home (my partner's three children and my own teen-age son), along with training agents and managing my business, I had no plans to get licensed in other states.
Pursuaded to be the Libertarian Party's candidate for the Ohio State Senate from District #3, unelected thankfully, despite significant voter support. I tend to support certain populist issues but have never been interested in career politics.
Shortly after my son was employed and married I moved to Sarasota, Florida. Renting a house at Lido Beach, for four years I spent daylight hours on Lido and Nokomis beaches and evenings in the library of Sarasota's New College branch of Florida State University until its 1:00 a.m. closing. That library had computer access to the huge Eureka RLIN database of thirty million books in libraries worldwide. My objective was to gain a broad liberal arts education for myself. For the annual fee of fifty dollars I gained access to inter-library lending and accessed books that, for years, I had wanted to find. Unknown to me, at the time, those years serendipidiously prepared me for creating the popular Bigeye website when the worldwide web appeared.
"The Big Eye", a portal website for students, appeared in Newsweek Magazine. A full-page newspaper article about my online activities was published nationwide in major newspapers. Although The Bigeye developed affiliate marketing income, as other "dot-coms" it became eclipsed as a portal or search-engine website by hugely financially backed Google.
When personal computers became available I bought an early PC clone and studied it, creating the first online resource for personal networking that grew to more than four thousand members in over 50 different countries.
Among essays that I wrote on Bigeye, what may have been the first weblog (blog), was one that went viral online, A Free Internet from an Historical Perspective
Recuited by Gordon Duff, the senior editor of VeteransToday.com, I wrote for that site as a featured columnist for ten years. I reprinted several censored essays to Bigeye.com including those discussing the "9/11 Arab attack". Persuaded to sell that domain name, the original Bigeye's largely outdated original pages can be found today by opening its pages archived online by the Wayback Machine and linked to from Bigeye.org
I purchased two modest townhouse condominiums in a small Sarasota community, one of which I live in today. Requested by residents to address immediate serious community problems, I agreed due to necessity, and was elected President, reluctantly, through six consecutive years until turning community matters over to a competent board of directors and a professional management company.
2004-2008 Helped struggling FL seniors, saving them their living quarters using a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage. Marketed HECM's state-wide with Sherri, my assistant and top-notch salesperson. We built and educated a Florida reverse-mortgage broker network with accurate supportive coverage from local newspapers.
2008 Major pandemic economic crisis due to greedy lending policies of irresponsible major bankers
2008-2012 Happy years. I bought and day-sailed, with a 2-man crew, my 30-foot tall-rigged sloop
A founding Member of WSMR FM, an excellent classical music station of Sarasota and Tampa. Streaming worldwide, it can be clicked online.
2024 I registered Wisebird Financial, LLC in Florida. Having easily passed FINRA's Series-65 exam, following several professional interviews I decided against working as a fiduciary IAR (Investment Advisor Representative) despite being qualified.
I manage the following personally created websites:
ReplaceProbate.com
Bigeye.org
NewsWatch.org
The 9/11 Media Hoax
BigEyeBlog.com
Placed my 1980 book, Financial Recovery (updated), online at www.Wisebird.com
Financial Recovery was introduced to licensed life insurance agents nationally for their enlightenment in February, 1981 through a full-page advertisement in Life Insurance Selling Magazine.
Summary:
After reading an article about life-insurance in Consumer Reports Magazine around 1975, I decided to help families understand and recover from the mistake that, over the years, can be hugely damaging financially of buying a life-insurance policy as an investment. I wrote Financial Recovery while building one of the largest personal lines agencies in the country, having three offices in central Ohio.
To understand why I dedicated Financial Recovery to the late Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, read the book's Introduction.
I gave public seminars twice a week (Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings) that persons interested in their own family's finances or in a worthwhile personal career were welcome to attend. Those who decided to join us were given help in the licensing procedure and assigned to one of my three Columbus, Ohio offices (managed by general agents) when completing seminar attendance. Information about that hugely successful business can be found online at www.WiseBird.com.. In addition to publishing FinancialRecovery, I hired and trained over thirty agents in Ohio, appropriately replacing cash-value policies with a variety of term insurance for family financial protection, redirecting previous overcharges to personal IRA's, and retired to Florida.
During those same years, by marketing nationally on a multi-level basis, a creative entrepreneur became a BILLIONAIRE.
With today's internet, the time has again come for a nationally licensed insurance brokerage business (or a unique company that has A LEADER OF PRINCIPLE) through a team of branded Wisebird agents to reposition TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in overcharges that have been pitched as "investments" over the past forty years by life insurance salesmen.
Financial Recovery was largely responsible for the industry's creation of Universal Life Insurance. UL consists of annually renewable term life-insurance combined with flexible overcharges that create its CASH VALUE, permitting agents to pitch it, as usual, as an investment. If owned today, I am suggesting that it be either sold, if worthwhile, or replaced appropriately. For the reasons, see items #92, #93, #94, #95, #96, and #97 within the online book's updated bibliography.
This information will make billions of dollars for a unique company with PRINCIPLED LEADERSHIP that brands WiseBird agents advertising and marketing Financial Recovery, and that works with established life-settlement businesses.
BRANDING IS ESSENTIAL FOR CREATIVE MARKETING. Brand your website(s), products, services, and sales-persons to be IDENTIFIED AND REMEMBERED. A TOP LEVEL DOMAIN NAME LINKED TO YOUR OWN LOGO IS MARKETING DYNAMITE. CREATE YOUR UNIQUE BRAND by using a domain name that displays your own graphical eye-catching "OWL" or "EYE". The price of WISEBIRD.COM is $$$. The price of BIGEYE.ORG is $$$. That is an increasingly valuable business investment, not an unrecoverable cost. Own and control either unique domain name, or both. Call (941) 545-3600.
A fortune will be made by BRANDING autos with "WiseBird.com" bumper stickers along with agents wearing the "WiseBird" cap (or visor) and shirt (or sweater) during face-to-face and remote presentations. Wisebird branding items can be awarded to licensed agents, accompanying initial commission(s).
FOR ONLINE MARKETING & PROPRIETARY BRANDING PROTECTION AVAILABLE TO AN EXISTING NATIONAL TERM LIFE-INSURANCE MARKETING BUSINESS.
To obtain and use any of the below registered internet domain names, contact me. Of course, they need to be professionally edited for marketing purposes.
Wisebird.com
FinancialRecoveryBook.com
WisebirdFinancial.com
WisebirdAgent.com
WisebirdAgents.com
MyWisebirdAgent.com
WisebirdRecovery.com
WisebirdPartners.com
WisebirdInsurance.com
WisebirdAnnuities.com
WisebirdInvestments.com
LifeInsuranceBooks.com
ReplaceProbate.com
Today's social media make this consumer friendly business a "no brainer" for creative marketing together with exclusive use and editing of the above internet domains. I am willing to help, if you wish. If interested call (941) 545-3600. |