After graduating from high school in Hastings, Mich., Myers went on to the University of Michigan and then Bowling Green State University. He was interested in teaching so majored in accounting and then became certified in sports medicine.
Myers started his working career in Dayton, living in the area from 1969-86. He moved to Florida in 1991, though most of his family, including his son, daughter and his grandson, Ian, remain in the Dayton area.
“When I was in my 30s, I was looking at the world as a troubled place,” Myers said. “I had a goal to live to be 100 years old and didn’t realize how rare that really is.”
Myers suffered job losses, broken marriages and business failures, but also ended up founding two successful companies and renovating a 140-year-old home in the Oregon District — one of the first in the city to have solar panels installed.
Along the way, Myers learned that Americans’ overuse of plastics, fossil fuels and pesticides were creating an unsustainable future for younger generations.
“A few months after I moved to Florida, I read two small articles about wildlife kills,” Myers said. “When 1,000 American white pelicans fell from the sky over Lake Apopka in central Florida and 90% of the alligators died, I had to find out why.”
The answer was pesticides, and Myers began thinking seriously about writing his first book. He knew he didn’t want it to be a book with graphs and charts.
“I wanted to write murder mysteries,” Myers said. “So I created a character that is like the ‘Indiana Jones’ of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
“Pest,” deemed an ecological thriller by its author, was published in 2005 and tells the story of EPA investigator Derk Bryan, who experiences a deadly premonition while fishing in Florida.
“I felt like that kid in the boat with my grandfather again,” Myers said. “I called every department you could call, and it took me four years to research the details about the pesticide use. A lot of my first book takes place in Dayton.”
Always close to his grandson, Ian Myers, who is now 17 and a junior at Oakwood High School, Myers wrote “A Letter to my Grandson,” and presented it to Ian on his 10th birthday.
“It includes lessons I learned about integrity, courage and happiness,” Myers said. “But also about making good decisions, respecting yourself, the earth and all those who share the planet.”
Myers realizes that transforming American society for the good of the world as a whole is a heavy lift and that younger people, like Ian, are mostly focusing on their lives at the moment.
“I decided to interview Ian to find out what his level of awareness was about the environment,” Myers said. “The most profound thing I learned was that there doesn’t seem to be much interest in classes in school about this topic.”
For Ian, who is busy with schoolwork and playing Lacross at Oakwood High School, he knows the importance of the topic, but making change will be difficult.
“I feel like kids aren’t focused as much on this stuff (the environment) as older people are,” Ian said. “We are all just living in the moment.”
Saddened by the crisis that Myers believes his generation is leaving as a legacy for the younger people, Myers is pushing more education on the subject and is doing his best to raise awareness.
“Everyone has the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat fresh vegetables,” Myers said. “I want people to get educated about this and make it a priority.”
Ian, who says he has learned much from his grandfather about the issues, is trying to talk more to his friends about the subject.
“Ian told me there is power in groups,” Myers said. “There is a tendency for people to throw up their hands and say ‘I’m just one person. What can I do?’”
Ian plans to study engineering in college and believes that though major change is needed, it’s manageable if more people get involved. And Myers is excited to be working with his grandson collaborating on something that will not only educate, but also inspire younger people to do something.
“You can imagine almost anything when you are young,” Myers said. “We need the enthusiasm and imagination of young people and just being able to work with Ian on this is a joy.”
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