Soldier of Fortune Poet

This book is about a kid who was born in poverty and grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in a very small town. At age nine, he was on his own. With divorced parents going separate ways, two sisters went to live with aunts and the kid was sent to live with various neighborhood families for very short periods of time. During one very short period of time, he lived with an aunt and uncle and their own 5 children, which caused a hardship resulting in the kid running away from this hometown. From nine to seventeen years of age, the kid, still on his own, quit school in the 10th grade. He then lied about his age to join the Marines which was the stepping stone to an education and better life. He finished high school while in the Marines and continued his education in order to earn his flying wings. Here he studied Commercial Flying, Flight Instruction, Instrument II, Airplane Multi-Engine, Single Engine Land And Sea, Aircraft Dispatching and Aircraft Building. He then attended a community college that provided degrees in Airport Management and Airport Administration while he was actually an Airport Manager of several general aviation airports. He also flew cargo many hours across the Devil’s Triangle and at times was a corporate pilot. Although he was not a mercenary, he was a soldier of fortune as a civilian pilot for our country’s involvement with various third-world countries. He built his own aerobatic airplanes to fly in aerobatic competition and won first place in many contests in the intermediate category of the competition. As a Quiet Birdman, he sat down to dinner with astronauts, presidents of many major airlines, airline chief pilots, movie stars and many VIP’s and is still alive at age 86. He wrote this book with just a touch of autobiography, including a few adventures of being a soldier of fortune. It’s all told in rhyme through his various poems that reveal his character and his attempt, way too late in life, to now relax and learn to play golf and author poems. None of this is fiction.

Soldier of Fortune Poet
by Sonny Silvaroli