About the Author 
Gene Kraay and grand daughter Xylia, summer 2009
Gene Kraay and his wife and best friend Marie of 35 years and their three war hounds - Cooper, Hans and Caesar - spend their time in Tucson, Arizona and Defiance, Missouri.
A native of the Berkshire Hills in Western Massachusetts, I cherish fond memories of Tanglewood, the Pittsfield Public Library, Herman Melville, Norman Rockwell, Richmond Pond, Pontoosuc Lake, the Hashim Boys, Rudy Benedetti, my Auntie in Housatonic and so many, many other people and places that remain dear to my heart.
I recall three specifics that nourished my fascination with history. My parents gave me the book Voices in Stone by Ernst Doblhofer in 1961. That book truly hooked me on "ancient things." As well, I was drawn inextricably to the great epic films of the 50's and 60's. Most notably, I would never forget Rudolph Mate's 1962 masterpiece 300 Spartans, which I saw at the Berkshire Drive-In one summer. Lastly, I recall reading my first "adult book," Spartacus by Howard Fast. As a kid, I read it for the action scenes. I re-read it within the last five years with a completely different perspective. Frankly, there was far more substance and far less action than I remember as a young boy.
In the eighth grade, I was blessed to have a wonderful English teacher, Norman Najimy. Mr. Najimy had a passion for the written word that I had never before encountered. I did a book report for his class that year - 1962 I think - on Par Lagerkvist's Barabbas. I thought my report was terrific. Apparently Mr. Najimy didn't; he gave me a 'B.' That was okay because the experience drove me to the library with an insatiable desire to read. Since 1962, I have read every single night before I turn the light off. Like Stephen King says, "If you don't read, you don't have the skills to write."
Sports have always been an important part of my life. I can’t remember not having a basketball hoop in the driveway. A high school teacher, my Dad would take my brother and me to all the high school sporting events. We’d sit in the stands while he took tickets. In the winter, we’d return home from the high school basketball games just in time to watch the Gillette “Fight of the Week” on one of the two channels we were able to pick up from Albany, NY. I faired well in high school as a soccer player, basketball player and pole vaulter.
I left home when I was 17-years-old in the summer of 1967, and headed west to the United States Air Force Academy. I learned quickly that playing an intercollegiate sport was essential for a fourthclassman (freshman) because the athletes were able to sit on “jock ramps” during meals instead of having to endure the mental and physical abuse characteristic of their squadron tables. Even though I rode the bench on the freshman team (freshman could not play on varsity teams in 1967), it was worth it to sit on the jock ramps. After that first year of bench-warming, I decided not to play soccer my sophomore year, but a mere week before the pre-season, I said to myself, “I’m better than the guy who started ahead of me on the freshman team, and I’m better than the two seniors who are returning this year.” I probably wasn’t (both Tom Hakeman and Ralph Benjabar were great players that inspired me), but I was so committed to proving it that I showed up at pre-season tryouts. We opened the 1968 campaign against the defending NCAA Champions, St. Louis University. Coach Hank Eichin gave me the starting nod. We lost that game, but by the narrowest of margins, 1-0. We had a strong season and made it to the NCAA tournament
Following the campaign, Coach Eichin pulled me aside and said, “Geno [everyone called me ‘Geno’ back then, a moniker placed upon me by my brother’s high school buddy Bill Thomas] you can be a good soccer player and a good pole vaulter, but if you want to be the best there is, it’s time to choose one or the other.” I chose soccer. The following season I was an All-American thanks to my teammates and buddies Danny Ulmer, Mike Blassie, Tommy Webb, Dan Narzinski and so many other great players. I even received an invitation to try out for the Olympic Team that would represent the United States in Munich in 1972. As a military man in a country still embroiled in the Vietnam War, the country needed pilots, not soccer players, so I ended up as an alternate to the squad. That was okay by me. “Uncle” Bob Hohlstein, my military mentor at the Academy following tours in Vietnam as an A-1 pilot said, “Geno, if you like playing soccer, wait until you fly fighters!” Uncle Bob was right. I graduated in 1971 and headed to undergraduate pilot training with my pal Nick Hauck. Nick kept me in line during UPT; he went on to fly F-4’s in Vietnam while I headed to Alaska where I met my wife Marie.
A decade later after a tour in F-106’s with my Olympian ‘editor’ George Mehrtens, I was medically retired (don’t ask) and writing for Dave McGrath’s weekly Boonville Herald in Upstate New York. I had just completed a second degree, this one in Journalism from Utica College under the tutelage of Jack Behrens and Kim Landon, when Nick flew in to Griffis Air Force Base with his F-15 to visit us on our farm in Holland Patent. A month or so later he called with the good news: he was selected to be a member of the Air Force’s elite demonstration team the USAF Thunderbirds. I was quick to remind him that I was the guy that won the “Best Formation Pilot” award in pilot training. He remembered. In May 1981, Nick Hauck died when he crashed performing in an air show in Utah. There is a part of him in The Olympian.
For the next 25 years, I worked in the aviation industry. Much more importantly, Marie and I raised four great kids: Nick, now with wife Terri and son Alix; Stef with husband Dave and son Travis; Brad with wife Stephanie and daughter Xylia; and Jesse with wife Lauren. I used to say my real job during those years was coaching soccer. I’d like to think I was an original back then. The old club Avalon F.C. still flourishes in Missouri.
All the while, however, my strongest desire was to write books. As early as the mid-70’s I had completed a hand-written manuscript, The Messiah, which I wrote while sitting alert as an F-106 pilot waiting for the Soviets to attack (I did my job because we did avert W.W. III during my watch in the northeast corner of Maine). Immediately following retirement, I typed another manuscript, The Wisemaen. After the first agent turned it down I gave up and turned my attention to a ‘legitimate career,’ which led me to corporate aviation. In 1999, I met Steven Pressfield. He rekindled my desire to write. I convinced myself I could do it this time after I overcame the resistance he so accurately discusses in his book The War of Art. Working with a group of friends, I had just successfully bought, operated and sold a company in Arizona. I announced to my family that I would escape ‘corporate America’ and write a book. I whipped out a non-fiction book Let Me Tell You Something, Mister and followed with a ‘cops and robbers’ thriller, DWI: Dying While Intoxicated, both in a very short time. Man, had computers changed things since I hand wrote The Messiah in 1976 and typed The Wisemaen in 1979! My sole objective was to get in the habit of writing and committing myself to it without distraction, day in and day out.
The story of Theagenes had been with me for a year or so before I wrote the first word. I remember discussing the concept with Steve Pressfield in Malibu over a Crazy Ed’s Chili Beer one evening in 2002. He encouraged me to go for it. I took a deep breath and dove in head first. Indeed, the kids were grown up and out of the house. It was time to do it. I was psychologically ready. Marie and I hid in the woods in central Georgia, Gray to be exact and I buried myself in the story and the craft of putting it on paper. Eighteen months and a half-dozen drafts later I was finished and had hooked up with a very reputable agent in NYC. About that time, I was lured back to the St. Louis area and returned to aviation while my manuscript was in the hands of the agent. Two years and no activity later, I parted amicably with the agent and took my fate into my own hands. The result is The Olympian: a Tale of Ancient Hellas.
While I truly hope The Olympian is a critical and financial success, the most important thing to me is that I did it, and I’m proud of it. I’m still hiding in the woods sometimes in Defiance, Missouri, a mere mile-and-a-half as the crow flies from where Daniel Boone settled and died in September 1820. Other times, I find solace and refuge in the desert in Arizona. My imagination is still alive and fired by the sparkle I see in the eyes of my grandchildren each time I tell them a story. Bullfrog has grown up!