Gay, William A.: - Bill Gay comes from a navy family. His late brother Jim was a retired naval officer and their father was Lin A. "Alex" Gay, LST 479 communications officer. Bill and Jim's grandfather was commanding officer of the San Diego Naval Hospital when the author was born there. One of their uncles was a survivor of the December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Upon graduation from the University of Missouri Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, Bill was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in 1968 and spent nearly four years as a surface warfare officer. After active duty, Gay spent more than twenty years in the Ready Reserve, most of it as a public affairs officer. In 1994 he retired from the Navy with the rank of commander. With a master of arts degree from the University of Redlands, and a bachelor of journalism from the University of Missouri, from 1972-1997 Gay was a reporter, editor, and finally general manager for the Imperial Valley Press. In October 1997, he and his wife, Sue, founded a public relations agency located in El Centro, California. It wasn't until late in life that Bill's father, Alex, began penning a history of the 479 he intended to entitle The Fighting LST 479, but sadly, Alex succumbed to congestive heart failure before he could finish it. This is the book Bill's dad intended to write.