I am a product of the DOD school system, having grown up (I'm told that's not true) outside the continental U.S. I consider myself to be a semi-educated pseudo-intellectual.
I was raised Lutheran, moved on to the Pentecostal church, before finally waking up only about 20 years ago, though that was not an epiphany but rather a gradual process. I was an angry atheist for several years afterward.
I served 20 years in the military, retiring in 1997, and continuing to serve as a contractor to the military to this day.
I am a widower over three years now of an almost 36 year marriage, so that is a burden to which I am still adjusting (a corollary of which is that I still feel I am being disloyal whenever I speak to women).