Introduction to Jack Marine

I was born on December 2, 1955 at Albert Einstein Medical Center in North Philadelphia. At that time my parents' house was at 1307 Paper Mill Road in Erdenheim, PA - in Eastern Montgomery County. My sister, my parents and I lived in that house until I was eight years old. I was a child who was very curious about the world around me and even at the young age of seven, I was exploring nature by witnessing giant fish swimming through a small creek behind my house, catching tomato hornworm catipillars in my father's garden and pulling around a dead rat (in a toy wagon) that my cat had brought home. I was also fascinated by the ticks that my dog brought into the house, which when full of her blood would literally crawl up the wall of our den! I didn't have that many friends from the neighborhood, because I attended private school after kindergarten, located about five miles away. I remember going to school, coming home and hanging out with my sister or just hanging out in the yards on either side of our house. That house was a ranch-style house, but when I was going into third grade, my parent's moved into a much bigger house in West Mount Airy, a move that really altered my state of being.

After we moved, uprooting me from the few friends I had, I was transplanted into an even stranger environment, just adjacent to the Wissahickon Woods in Fairmount Park. I began taking a carpool to my school (which had also moved- from East Oak Lane/Cheltenham) to Blue Bell. The school was the Oak Lane Country Day School and I had a pretty good time there. I had a lot of school friends and had some really neat experiences too. My favorite teacher was Miss Hunter- she had worked in a circus before becoming our science teacher. She lived on the school's property and she had a pet black rat snake, and a minah bird. I am pretty sure she is the main reason I became a science teacher too. I had an unconscious love and fascination with nature, but it was her nurturing that provided my brain with a conscious push into the world of exploring all that surrounded my world.