How Come Nothing Ever Kills Granddad?

Book excerpt: For seventy years, Pat Sheridan has lived an extraordinary and lucky life. He faced life's problems without ever losing his sense of humor, his spirit, or his optimistic outlook. His autobiography takes us inside a family of twelve children, raised in Detroit, and shows us the funny side of growing up in a large family in the post war years. He gives us a very candid look at life in the United States Army in the nineteen sixties. His civic and political activities led him to meetings and shared speaking engagements with U. S. Senators, Vice Presidents of the United States, and a meeting in the Oval Office with President Richard Nixon. We follow his business career with a no-holds barred look at the people he worked with as he progressed toward becoming the Chief Executive Officer of several companies. As Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of a Fortune 500 company, he worked with the financial giants of Wall Street. Pat and his wife, Diane, took their family on annual vacations that eventually brought them to thirty countries. His insights and the humorous incidences that they encounter make for an irreverent tour guide for traveling abroad. Having survived several cancer operations, hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, dozens of kidney stones, and more than a dozen other surgeries and diseases, he calls himself, God's lab rat. His latest cancers led his granddaughter to ask her mother, "How come nothing ever kills granddad?"