Carlsbad author among Amazon best-sellers

Six years in the making, Strother, now retired in Carlsbad, was inspired to write after some light nudging by his daughter, Christine, who regularly listened to her dad’s stories as she grew up.Said Strother, “She kept telling me that I should write this down, that I ought to write a book. So, about six years ago, I started going out to the beach with a personal tape recorder and dictating a story at a time,” “About 14 tapes later, I was ready to commit to writing, and it all came together,” he said.

Strother’s timeline occurs against the familiar backdrop of American post-World War II history, including the segregation, prejudice and inequality that was synonymous with the times and growing up in the Arkansas Delta. To his credit, though, Strother doesn’t focus solely on the hardness of the times during which he grew up. He shares in equal parts his feelings of amusement, happiness and sense of humor. He rises above stereotypical thinking, reflective, but never bitter about the adversity he faced.

Strother’s narrative brings the contrast of the rural South to experiences he had later in life, such as living in Germany in the 1960s and later being in the corporate world, where he worked for such tech giants as NCR and AT&T.

While Strother says he is not a speaker or advocate, his impressive resume later in his life, lends itself to being equal parts inspirational and theatrical. His story is one of coming up from relative poverty to having a successful military and corporate career. “I am really not advocating for anyone or anything,” said Strother. “I just wanted to tell my stories about what I experienced. There was excitement, humor and history with those times.”