1. My name is Rich Savage. You can reach me at rsavage@nycap.rr.com.
2. I was born on June 4th, 1942 in LeCompte, LA.
3. I now live in upstate NY with my wife, Lauren. (Go figure.)
4. Lauren and I met at a summer camp owned by her parents -- where I taught horseback riding.
5. We were married on 6/5/66 at 666 6th Ave, "Top of the 6's" in New York City. I didn’t know about the alleged implications of those numbers at the time, but today, I thank G-d for the “5.”
6. Together, Lauren and I raised two great kids.
7. I have a Masters Degree in Educational Psychology and all the course work for a Phd.
8. I flunked the essay portion of my comprehensives – twice (perhaps, you are beginning to understand why).
9. I’ve been retired since January of 2003.
10. For the previous 30 years (approx), I worked for NY State as a “Psychometrician” (someone who uses statistics to develop and evaluate psychological measurement).
11. I’m an ex Army Captain, Vietnam veteran and helicopter pilot.
12. I am certifiably inventive -- I have numerous inventions and one patent. The patent number is 4,175,516. Just Google that number.
13. I am also a certified Statistician. (This will be important later on.)
14 . I mention all these tidbits so that someone might want to ‘listen’…

15. I'm not Jewish, but when, 47 years ago, I proposed to my beautiful Jewish girlfriend (Lauren), I promised her that we could raise our kids Jewish. And we did.
16. Lauren and I are still members of a reform congregation.
17. I also attend church (Southern Baptist) most Sundays.

18. Anyway, I was always quite introspective as a kid.
19. By the time I was 11, I was deeply concerned about the existence of G-d and immortality. It sure seemed to me that both were simply “made up” by adults and that once dead, always dead. And I was getting pretty scared about the whole thing.
20. But, there was something of hope “gnawing at me” -- and coming home from an oyster dinner with my family one night, I finally realized what it was. That night, I had what they call an epiphany, or revelation -- and all of a sudden, I “believed”! I was 14 years old. Maybe, it was the oysters.
21. I suddenly recognized something that I had never recognized before. I finally noticed something that I had been looking right past, or through, all that time -- without ever noticing. I had always just taken it for granted (as had, and has, most everyone else)… But this is what had been gnawing at me. And suddenly, there it was in all its glory -- and G-d and immortality took on a whole new life for me!
22. It was like the Scene from Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner, when Mark, Ray Kinsella’s brother-in-law, asks “When did the ballplayers get here?” They had been there all along, it’s just that Mark couldn’t see them before. He had been looking right through them. And only when he was fully aware of them could he realize that he had been somewhat aware of them before…

23. More accurately, I suppose, what suddenly became so clear to me were the “implications” of something that I (and most everyone else) had always just taken for granted (and, the others still do).
24. As a matter of fact, these were statistical implications, of all things – “Bayesian Statistics” to be exact – but, I had no idea what to call them at the time. (I’ll have much more to say about this later.)

25. Now, this epiphany didn’t tell me what religion, if any, was correct, but it did make me “religious.” I suddenly believed in immortality, ultimate meaning and even freedom, and that has made all the difference for me. It certainly gave me a new lease on life at the time, and has given me a generally positive attitude (you can probably understand why) ever since that memorial evening in 1956 or 57…