Born in Montebello, CA, John grew up with interests in art, music, and building things. In school he was also gifted in English, Math and Science. In 8th grade he received the only academic awards for Math and English. In High School he took accelerated classes in English and Math, played football and ran track every year. He learned Spanish and went to Mexico City on a student exchange. He studied engineering in college at UCSB and got his BSEE with high honors in 1967 and an MSEE at Cal Tech in 1968. Then he served in the Air Force as an officer in space communications and became the Chief of Operations at the first joint service control station for the TACSATCOM IOC. He made Captain and left the service to continue SATCOM at the Navy Lab in Pt.

Loma, San Diego, where he did system design and testing of a survivable EHF SATCOM terminal for submarines. John managed the first study of satellite laser to submerged FBM subs for Command/Control Communications. His report induced a $1,000,000 contract to industry to redo the study and $10,000,000 in hardware research. Later John returned to consult in the ADM cycle for EHF SATCOM, but trained himself for less stressful work in the Arts and succeeded with a long career as a self-employed artist, doing custom jewelry, painting, and other creative wood and metal art projects. He also designed and built his own custom house on the coast in Oregon. He has authored four books.