Meril R. Smith grew up at the end of World War II with children of migrant farm workers, with children born in the Japanese internment camps, and with children of day laborers and blue-collars workers. Poverty, recessions, and helping each other were all basic parts of surviving in his childhood world. Living through the times of the Berlin Wall, epidemics of polio, measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, and chickenpox, economic recessions, the assassination of President Kennedy, the space race, the development of Silicon Valley, the Vietnam War, and the tragedy of 9/11 have all fueled Meril's passion for understanding people and events.