Joe Stapleton

It is my great fortune to have been raised in the only part of America where we speak proper English and do it without any accent, that is The Bronx. Sadly, despite my excellent speech, I was always relegated to be a stagehand, or a non-singer with the choir.

I retired last year after 36 years as a Physical Oceanographer. No, I did not know Jacques Cousteau, I haven’t been swimming with Flipper or Shamu either. My specialties were sonar, underwater communication and navigation, shallow-water acoustics, and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs). I got paid to go to the beach.

A bagpipe band I had played with had been doing Scottish Weekend at MDRF and each year we all added more Renn Garb. Two of our pipers were already doing Renn Faires with local Guildes. It didn’t take much persuasion, and off I went to do a Faire in 2003 at Urbana, IL.

Since then, I have been frozen, I have wilted in boiling heat, I have been soaked to the skin, I have been locked out, I have been forgotten. And I have never had more fun in my life, and never met finer friends then I have now.

Period/Setting	Character
Elizabethan	Captain General Martin Frobisher