Chris Scharff was born in Germany to an English mother and a German father on one of his father’s business trips. His father was then an importer of German cars to South Africa, where his family lived. Chris and his grandparents were left in Germany when his father was drafted into the German army during World War II. It was after the war, when his father was a prisoner of war, that the family left Europe and went back to Africa to stay with his English-Australian grandparents. They went to Johannesburg, then moved to Durban, where Chris attended junior and high school. Upon leaving school, he went to Central Africa, where he cultivated tobacco, other crops, and dairy and beef cattle. In light of further political instability on the African continent, Chris relocated to the United States, where his father had resettled in Los Angeles as an intelligence officer in the German Air Force. Before going back to school to learn programming and retrain in accounting at a junior college, Chris accompanied his father in mosaic work. He worked in only two companies, and even then, he was hired as a junior programmer by Yamaha Corporation of America and eventually retired as one of its Vice Presidents. Throughout his life, Chris has experienced World War II, Africa, and, currently, the United States. He got married in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and had a daughter, and currently has three grandsons and eight great-grandchildren. He has a great-grandson in the U.S. Army, and another is about to be born.