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Biography
of Author
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�Her working career began shortly after
her sixteenth birthday, with almost five years of enjoyable public
relations work as a grocery store cashier, supplemented with work doing
accounts payable and receivable for an electrician, filing and billing
for both an insurance and a fence company, and having the impressive
title and humbling wage of an �assistant trainer� for an Arabian
horse farm!�
�Calling herself a dry sponge for
knowledge, Julie amassed a sizable library of non-fiction, notable for
its patriotic thread wending through the books on American History,
biographies and autobiographies.
�Julie spent
twenty-seven years behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer, plying the
nation�s roads as a lady truck driver and accruing over three million
accident-free miles.� For
twenty-two of those years, she had a dual career as a pedigree
researcher, breeder and trainer of purebred Arabian horses carrying a
high percentage of the blood of the genetic sport,�
*Raffles, a tiny but prepotent Arabian stallion bred in England,
but with the blood of the Arabian desert running hotly in his veins.
�During the
winter of 1998-99, Julie and her neighbors were apprised of the fact
that they were living in a �Study Area,� for what was purported as a
�proposed United States Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife
Refuge.�� At public
meetings, they were told that, if the project did not have �public
support,� it would not continue.�
From the three grassroots public opposition groups who formed to
stop the process, and the hundreds of �NO DARBY REFUGE� signs that
dotted the 54,000-acre landscape, it was readily apparent that local
public sentiment was decidedly anti-refuge.�
�From the first day that Julie learned of
the proposed wildlife refuge, she �could hear the clock ticking,�
meaning that time was of the essence in learning all available
information and disseminating that information.�
�In March 1999 a neighbor gave Julie a
nine-year-old computer with �8 mgs of RAM.��
The computer-illiterate Miss Smithson soon learned the basics of
her new knowledge tool, and the fondly nicknamed �dinosaur,�
although far too slow to �get on the Internet before timing out,�
was still useful for composing articles and letters to the editor, and
sending and receiving e-mail.� For
Internet searches, she had to make a drive �to town,� to a local
library.
�A discovery
was made when the book, Undue Influence, by the notable author Ron
Arnold, was purchased and read.� �Following
the money trail� seemed the best way to discover why the United States
Fish and Wildlife Service was not �going away.��
In a late evening call to Mr. Arnold, Julie learned the amazing
and troubling news that grants had been given to The Nature Conservancy
by such non-governmental organizations as The George Gund Foundation
(1989) and The Columbus Foundation (1992 and 1994), among others, to
study the area in which Julie resided.� The eyebrow raising wording of the grant applications:�
�For Darby Biosphere Reserve, including hiring Riverkeeper for
citizen-based protection of the Big and Little Darby Creeks.��
Having no idea of the meaning of �Biosphere Reserve,� Julie
was shocked by Ron Arnold�s response:�
�It means you are in deep trouble.�
That�s a United Nations designation!�
�This single
statement, more than any other, began Julie�s quest for knowledge,
�tools in the toolbox of the mind.��
She learned that The Nature Conservancy had a list of �Last
Great Places,� of which they proudly proclaimed her neighborhood to be
one.� She also learned that
the distinction of being on that list was dubious, because every Last
Great Place was also a United Nations Biosphere Reserve, or Bioreserve.�
With the United Nations serving as the �umbrella� of the
governments of the world, they were truly a foreign government in their
own right.� Having
America�s resources become collateral for a foreign government, to say
of how or if America could use those resources, was and is a source of
legitimate concern.� Now the
ticking of the clock was more insistent and louder than ever!
�In August
1999 a website was formed: http://www.nodarbyrefuge.org�
-- now http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org
-- by a sixth generation farm owner whose property lay within the Study
Area.� The boundaries had
yet to be established, so no one could be certain of USFWS� intent
toward their home and land, but the entire Darby Creek watershed was in
the crosshairs.
�It was during
this time that Julie made some major lifestyle changes.�
She resigned her twenty-seven year career as a truck driver and
sold her beloved Arabian horses.� The
decisions were not difficult for her to make, in view of the
alternative: being forced from her home by USFWS and its seventy
partners.� �The Founding
Fathers put everything they had on the line -- even their lives -- for
our country,� she explained.� �How
could I do any less?�
�The idea for
the workbook evolved during early 1999.�
The language used mystified Julie and other people that attended
public meetings sponsored by USFWS and other agencies.�
The printed material available was also �Greek,� and
unfathomable by even those who were paid to implement it.�
The need to put together a glossary became apparent, and Julie
began work on it in every spare moment.�
The work you are viewing is her first book.
�An Ohio
native, Julie lives in the rural west-central area of the state near
London, enjoying life with her Blue Heeler dog companion. Julie is
available to speak on property rights issues.�
It is her hope that her words will provide an inspirational
template for others who are seeking a way to put their thoughts into
action!
Julie Kay Smithson
213 Thorn Locust
Lane
London, OH� 43140-8844�
740-857-1239
voice/message (no fax)
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