Stewart R. Ogilby

Current Time:

Stewart Ogilby, Sr.
Sarasota, Florida

Managing The BIG EYE, since 1995, for the new intellectual.

See also THE BIG EYE BLOG

After entering the first grade in New York City's public school, PS-42, I was "skipped" ahead one grade, and then two. School counsellors advised my concerned parents to enroll me in a private school, telling them that I fell into a "gifted" category. I recall being quite happy wherever I was placed. For grades three through six, I attended the Staten Island Academy that became known as the Staten Island Day School.

When the second World War ended in 1945 my parents moved for one year to East Aurora, New York where I attended seventh grade before they purchased a farm in Hudson, Ohio.

My younger brother, Robert, and I were raised by a mother and a father on the family farm in Hudson, Ohio thirty miles south of Cleveland and Lake Erie. For years, the nearest house was nearly a quarter of a mile away. Let me share with you some memories of long-gone happy days..

The Ogilby farm in Hudson, Ohio

In my early teens, after becoming certified as an American Red Cross Water Safety Instructor, I taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced swimming classes. I worked as a lifeguard one summer close to home and on a New York City beach the following summer.

The next summer the Red Cross director in Akron, Ohio, who had watched my progress, recommended me for the job of head lifeguard and waterfront manager at Tamsin Park, a new recreational resort only a few miles from our farm. Aware of the shocking statistics involving death by drowning, I am proud to have saved several lives.

After thoroughly enjoying one junior high-school year at Hudson's excellent public school, I was enrolled, at my mother's insistence, as a "day student" commuting daily to Western Reserve Academy, a boys' boarding-school located near Hudson's downtown park containing its historic clock-tower.

Despite getting excellent grades I grew to dislike that over-rated school intensely, including its weird "masters", anti-female attitude, smug hypocritical religiosity, required dress-code, inconsistent rules, and unjustified academic pretensions. For me, that institution's sole redeeming feature involved sports, varsity swimming, tennis, and being captain of a soccer team.

Early in my senior high-school year the U.S government's bankers launched a war in Korea designed to thwart the takeover of southeast Asia by foreign geopolitical competition. After receiving a draft card in the mail, in mid-January, at age seventeen, I enlisted into the Navy Air's O-2 training program at the Akron, Ohio Naval Air Station.

Back when I was eight years old, following the U.S. government's bankers' politically enginered Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor and President Roosevelt's schemes to involve the U.S.A. in a second huge war, I had decorated my bedroom's walls with pictures of Navy planes.

Independently changing high-schools to accomodate my new schedule, and returning to Hudson's local public high-school, I discovered that it fully equalled and, in many aspects such as independent use of its worthwhile library, provided greater educational opportunity than the costly "academy" I had voluntarily left. For example, I required private tutoring, paid for by my parents, in order to meet Ohio's foreign language requirement for a public high-school diploma, an important detail overlooked by that classy "prep-school". From what I understand, that school is very different today.

Happily re-uniting with local friends for a few months, I was able to wear informal clothes, including my pale-blue Navy issued work shirts, before receiving a high-school diploma and entering boot camp.

Naval planes in which I flew included the PBY (Catalina flying boat), TBF (Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber), R4D (Gooney bird), SNB (Expeditor), and the SNJ (North American T-6 Trainer). Members of the F4U Vought Corsair, Squadron VF22 were sent to Korea. My multi-engine, Squadron VR-651 remained in the USA. We flew domestically from the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Virginia.

I loved to fly and wanted to earn my "wings" as a Navy pilot. College graduation was required for admission to the Navy's Pensacola, Florida flight school. My Commanding Officer recommended me for a Navy college scholarship which was approved. As an enlisted man "from the fleet", I was awarded a direct commission signed personally by Dan Kimball, U.S. Secretary of the Navy.

Ordered to report to the Captain at the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps unit within Ohio State University, at age nineteen I may have been the country's youngest commissioned naval man. (Students at the Naval military academy in Annapolis, Maryland receive their Naval officer commission when graduating college).

At the end of my second college year I was ordered to report for cross-training aboard the USS Iowa, one of the U.S. Navy's four huge battleships. After crossing the stormy North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland, I was able to visit Edinburgh Scotland, London England, and Oslo Norway.

News regarding a military action in far off Korea was confusing. I began to realize, having grown up from age eight to age twelve during the Second World War, that my youthful military outlook resulted from four years of scripted wartime radio propaganda.

The major change from my decision for a military career occurred aboard the USS Iowa. When returning across the Atlantic via Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the Norfolk, Virginia Naval Base, I read books that I had bought from vendors at the entrance to St. Paul's cathedral when on shore leave in London. One was an English translation of Goethe's Faust, a paperback, stuffed in a back pocket, that ended up getting ruined by diesel when refueling in rough seas. Another, a hard copy that I still have, addresses a dilemma involving idealism and personal ethics.

When I returned from that training cruise, I legally resigned from the officer training program by exercising a clause in my contract. The Naval Captain, angry at losing his top commissioned midshipman, reminded me that I was in the United States Navy. He told me that he was going to watch me carefully and, should I fail to remain enrolled in college at any time in the future, I would be immediately ordered to the front lines in Korea. No student ever had a greater incentive to remain in college.

With my Navy pay eliminated, I struggled financially, odd hours in various part-time jobs in order to obtain a college degree. By the time I received my BS degree the Korean "war" had ended. After forty months from my enlistment I was mailed an honorable discharge.

The draft board's "Seletive Service" shockingly discrimatory (racist?) law at the time provided a "2-S draft deferrment" to full-time college students. Many healthy young men, including those working and saving money for college, were drafted and sent to Korea.

Military action in Southeast Asia resumed twenty years later, escalating into a disastrous war with massive injuries and deaths for a generation of Americans and Vietnamese. If I had the magic today to turn my age back to seventeen I would not enlist in the military. If drafted, I might have taken the trail blazed twenty years later by many of the brightest college students to avoid being obliged to turn Vietnam into a wasteland and a living hell for its farm families (Google "Agent Orange"), its other citizens, and the USA's poorly directed military.

Many students went to Canada rather than enable the bankers, the Pentagon's career military men, and the corporations having lucrative war contracts, what retiring President Dwight Eisenhower called America's "military-industial complex".

Its willfully blind participants support war criminals, including those who keep a low profile. Eisenhower, a greatly admired major general, was personally responsible for the deaths of up to ONE MILLION men and boys who peacefully surrendered at the end of World War2.

They were put in prisoner of war camps surrounded by barbed wire and open in the freezing winter weather, for which Eisenhower was responsible. He had those specific camps reclassified to prevent The International Red Cross from being involved with them! This shocking and unpleasant fact has been vehemently denied and covered up, protecting "Ike"'s iconic image. Any reader anxious to deny that historically well documented matter MUST READ FULLY THIS LINK

The ranking military man, my Navy captain, could have ordered me sent to Korea or elsewhere. He permitted me to earn a college degree, something that neither of my hard working parents, growing up through the depression years, had been able to do.

When I graduated and received a BS degree, the "war" (they had the gall to call it a "police action") had ended.

I then worked for two years in highly interesting but low paying laboratory research jobs.

1957 GMC-620

Leaving lab work to earn more money I drove a large GMC-620 truck, today considered to be a classic, over the road for exactly one year.

After saving enough money, I returned to OSU in Columbus, Ohio and enrolled in graduate school.

Thanks to having a high under-graduate grade-point average, I was unexpectedly offered a paid graduate teaching assistantship. I taught basic biological science, an elective course, to undergraduates for one full academic year, attending advanced courses, following my advisor's recommended path of study and independent research designed to earn a PhD.

When that school year ended, after considerable thought and discussion with my brother who was enrolled in graduate school, his college costs being paid by an employer, I decided to leave academia permanently, bypassing a teaching career in favor of greater financial opportunity. I realized that scientific curiosity could be continued throughout life which I value today as a hobby.

It wasn't difficult, in those days, for a young White male college graduate to find a job offering training, a company car, and a steady paycheck.

For the next twelve years I worked with corporations, learning as much as I could. Six years were spent with Lever Brothers Company, the U.S. division of Unilever LTD, one of the world's largest corporations. After working with the company in Ohio for two years, and having had two years of corporate sales training, I was promoted to New York City.

I spent the next four years with the company in key-account sales, sales scripting, new product introductions, and brand marketing. I was able to buy a house (mortgaged) in Cold Spring, New York above Hudson River's Bear Mountain Bridge. A trip to midtown Manhattan by train took an hour and a half each way.

After working for six years with Lever Brothers' consumer products, I decided to move into industrial sales and tripled my income. For the next six years I carved out a strong career in the truck equipment industry, handling distributor marketing, customer product development, and direct sales to the nation's leading truck leasing companies (Hertz, Avis, Ryder, Leaseway, National). Spearheading sales for two major truck-body manufacturers, I was recruited to turn around Lyncoach and Truck Company, which I was able to do in less than four months, saving the employees their jobs. The company is prospering to this day.

As my ten year marriage was ending, I moved from the house that I had bought in Milan, Ohio to Lakewood (near Cleveland). I met and fell in love with a responsible beautiful woman whom I definitely would have married. She was introduced to me by my landlady, her wise and creative mother. The time that we spent together was magical but I ended up making the biggest mistake of my entire life, mis-handling my own personal responsibilities.

I spent many years treating my son and his two-year older step-brother equally while doing my best to cope with their mother's struggle with drug addiction, a progressive condition. I took both boys to Worthington, Ohio. The boys' mother had moved there with a state politician. Despite her sons being nearby she didn't take time to visit them. I know little about the drug culture other than its members interact with one another.

My ex-wife soon chose to abandon her two sons, knowing that I would never let them down. She flew to Hawaii where she remained for years. Overwhelmed with finding new work, and caring for two motherless boys, I temporarily lost touch with my friends in Lakewood. In today's digital age that would not have happened.

I met several persons in Worthington through Parents Without Partners, just to have some adult company. Once the boys' mother was out of the picture I was anxious to return to Lakewood, my amazing landlady and her two lovely daughters, especially the one I missed desperately. I had no way of knowing that she was involved with another man until she told me by phone that they were getting married the very next day.

I was devastated. To my dying day I will never understand that biggest failure in my life. I lost forever my irreplaceable friend, the likes of which I never found again, nor expected to find. Even after fifty years an enormous pain remains. In remembering and recounting that shattering unexpected rejection I struggle, unsuccessfully, to hold back my tears. There are happy dreams of the times we were together. I will never forget those days for which I am grateful and try not to think of what might have been. I relate to Ezio Pinza's South Pacific song, This nearly was mine. She too flew away.

I remember how terribly alone I felt. A professional nurse practitioner whom I met at Worthington's PWP was a twice divorced highly intelligent mother of three, including a boy my son's age. After serious discussions we teamed up in a mutually respectful business-like arrangement for the next ten years, providing a constructive home environment for four children, all of whom have done well in life, including my own son. My new partner was very unlike my son's mother. Making a difficult adjustment contributed to his maturity today.

My house partner was very smart, totally reliable, good looking, kind, and good company. I was never able to overcome her barrier to emotional or physical intimacy. I suspect that trait had played a major part in her two failed marriages. It was something that could not be discussed. I learned early to avoid the subject and we enjoyed a valuable friendship. She often mentioned how much she appreciated my encouragement and help with her own children. I am forever grateful for her kindness in providing a civilized and happy home for me and my son, a much different one than the one I suffered with for years.

My older boy, who had been much closer to his mother, left me and his brother despite my best efforts. Bright but strangely troubled, he decided to go his own way. Later in life I was in a position to solve for him a serious situation. On the road to emotional recovery, he died tragically. Working at a seaside resort, he contracted a Salmonella blood infection when preparing seafood, lapsed into a coma and died. I grieved for the young man I loved who, in my opinion, would have grown to be a strong, wise, artistic, sensitive adult.

After getting an insurance sales license I read a shocking booklet about life insurance published by Consumer Reports Magazine. Needing to work close to home, I began a business by conducting two financial training seminars and one public seminar weekly. I created Unified Financial Services and Unified Data Systems. Through personal sales production, together with over-rides from agents, I qualified for MGA (Managing General Agent) commission level that today is reserved for FMO's (large Field Marketing Organizations).

Within three years my business grew into three offices with over thirty licensed agents. Each office was managed by an agent trained by me to be a General Agent. I wrote Financial Recovery, expanding the documentation presented by Consumer Reports and scores of other consumer oriented writers.

After my son was married, working, and learning an important business, in order to reconnect with my younger brother who had earned his PhD in geology (Dr. Rock), I moved to Sarasota, Florida. Bob lived in Tampa, Florida. We had ten years together again before he died from cancer. I miss him greatly.

For six years after moving to Sarasota I spent most evenings at the Cook Library of Florida State University's nearby New College until its 1:00 a.m. closing time for the purpose of acquiring a comprehensive self-directed liberal arts education, augmenting my science background. What I learned in those six years of self-study changed my life completely.

Advancing information technology has historically been the catalyst for dissemination of ideas, knowledge, and progressive social values. Torture of intellectuals and emerging scientists whose findings questioned religious dogma was challenged by the invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing of books became too popular to remain controlled by the priest-police power of the Vatican.

Ancient wisdom, formerly laboriously copied in monasteries, became available as printing businesses proliferated throughout Europe, particularly in Italy. The Western world's classics, the Hebrew Bible and later, writings by Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Robespierre, Paine, Jefferson, and others accompanied social revolutions.

Will a failure to totally control and censor the Internet result in the next major revolutions, freeing humans from top-down manipulation and exploitation?

I realized that in order to coherently share my own interesting discoveries I needed to develop my own writing skills. I read and re-read works of writers whose written language I most admired. There is an easy limpid style in the prose of Randolph Bourne (analogous to Beethoven's musical "lion's paw") exemplified in his famous essay, War is the Health of the State. I love the humorous sarcasm of H.L. Mencken in his famous essay about democracy, and the cool rational analysis within Albert Jay Nock's masterpiece, Our Enemy, The State.

When the public digital information revolution arrived in 1992 I bought a Personal Computer and spent hours figuring out how to operate it. Studying the book, DOS for Dummies, I created the earliest online social networking resource, The Email Club, for more than four thousand persons in over fifty countries.

Following the six years of independent study I decided to create something of educational value by using the new digital resource, the internet's Worldwide Web. After teaching myself to write HTML code I constructed The Big Eye, an educational website.

I read biography to research history and to discover the authors' writings, values, ideas, and their associates' own biographies. My country has produced brilliant responsible men and women. Even the best schools I had attended, which my parents struggled financially to afford, taught me little or nothing, over years, about their lives and writings. Most of those whom I discovered and admire appear on a page of the Big Eye.

When the Netscape web-browser arrived, The Big Eye was listed in Newsweek Magazine's November 20, 1995 issue. It received even greater publicity as the result of a full page St. Petersburg (Florida) Times article that was syndicated by Scripps Howard to the major newspapers throughout the country.

I changed The Big Eye's original URL after selling the domain name. Today "The Big Eye" can be found at WWW.BIGEYE.ORG

NOTE: There appears to be considerable effort by Google to mis-direct Bigeye searches to the .COM pages. It is important for viewers to specify Bigeye.ORG instead of the .com address.

Sadly, after retiring from her exemplary nursing career as oncology nurse specialist at Ohio State University Hospital, my former Ohio partner died, ironically, of cancer.

Easily passing FINRA's Series65 examination, I registered Wisebird Financial, LLC. Having studied Henry Abts' book, The Living Trust, and working with the business he founded, I placed online Estate Planning Documents

By studying Google's algorithms I was early to grasp what soon came to be called "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization). Promoting several product lines, I developed profitable affiliate marketing.

Using The Big Eye website and traveling throughout Florida, my assistant, Sherri, and I trained mortgage brokers for four years explaining HUD's HECM reverse mortgage to many financially struggling seniors, saving their homes for them from greedy "line of credit" (2nd mortgage) banks, and relieving them of disheartening lifetime financial struggles.

When the real-estate market crashed in 2008, I bought a tall-rigged sloop and spent the next four years day-sailing with friends. Although I enjoyed the friendship of younger women, I never found one even slightly comparable to the one in Lakewood, Ohio, that I surprisingly lost. In the evenings I enjoyed reading, as usual, and worked on improving my writing skills.

As a consequence of certain articles written by me and placed on The Big Eye website, I was overwhelmingly flattered, recruited by Gordon Duff, the Senior Editor of Veterans Today, to write as one of their columnists.

Over ten years (2007-2017) that popular website published thirty-four of my columns. After many columns that I wrote for Veterans Today, including those written by others, were oddly deleted, I retrieved several of mine and placed them on a "sister" website that contains my personal and other esoteric articles, located at BigEyeBlog.com

My 80th birthday party, May 14, 2013 (archived by Google, wait for pages to load)

100% RETIRED, May 14, 2025

Member, HealthFit, Clark Rd., Sarasota
Member, YMCA, Bahia Vista St., Sarasota
Member, Sarasota Senior Friendship Center

I wish to meet others OF ANY AGE, including anyone interested in The Big Eye's VIDEOS. It would be nice to meet an unattached mature lady who has a sense of humor and looks forward to civilized companionship.