Retired NYPD Officer Now Hampton Author Pens Great Summer Read

These stories became necessary to his life; they became a sort of yardstick helping him to measure the importance of his experiences. But there was no yardstick long enough to measure the experience he had when he turned eleven.

To an author, writing is like breathing – necessary to life. And ideas for a story are like air -always waiting to be inhaled and then exhaled.

For George Daniel Harvey of Hampton, author of several published works, his magnum opus Journey to Yes: And Other Spirited Notions, is a breath of sweet, super-charged air. And although, it took two years to write it, it took a lifetime to live it and to get the details just right.

Born in Rockaway Beach, New York, George remembers staring at the moon and stars and dreaming of far off places; he remembers listening to the stories of the adults in his life about the world they grew up in and “viewing life through their eyes and experiences.” These stories became necessary to his life; they became a sort of yardstick helping him to measure the importance of his experiences.

But there was no yardstick long enough to measure the experience he had when he turned eleven. That was the year his father died. The memory is still vivid. Life changed in that moment and the way it changed helped to make him who he is today ...  a deeply spiritual man who has a soft spot for kids who have problems.  

The jobs he had when he was a kid – paperboy, sand sifter looking for beach treasures, golf caddy – helped to fund the family and gave him an up-close view of humanity while his stint as an officer with the NYPD showed him man’s inhumanity. George remembers it like it was yesterday, “During my time working the streets, I was exposed to the best and worst of experiences which grew me. I had several close calls.

On a frigid day in February of 1972, fellow officer, Richard Gamble, was gunned down attempting to abort a hold up in Canarsie Brooklyn. I was assigned to a vehicular homicide investigation and was in the area when the police radios alerted all units to the direction of the fleeing vehicle. My partner and I cut off the fleeing vehicle. Each of us pursued the fleeing suspects ... both large males.  I tackled and brought down my guy while believing I was about to be fired upon.

This happened on a Saturday afternoon. Officer Gamble was brought in DOA (dead on arrival) to Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn. They made an all-out effort to save him. And they did. Unfortunately, he spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair. He died of a heart attack in 2001.”

George retired from the NYPD knowing that he wanted to work with troubled kids. He became Program Director of a 27 bed intensive treatment facility for emotionally disturbed boys and then served on the Board of Directors at the Chase Home for Children in Portsmouth. He reaches out to the most difficult age group on the planet – teenagers – and has a way of reaching even the most troubled with his broad base of knowledge and interests. George is one of those people who can talk to anyone about anything.  

Add to that, a military enlistment during the Vietnam war along with a marriage that ended, and one might expect George to be negative and bitter. But according to him, “These are crossroad moments that impacted my life for better or worse. They grew me in wisdom. I am a self-realized man today, deeply grateful for the wisdom of my heart’s knowing. Fate has its own way of moving you forward.” Realizing those things has brought him to this day with a book to share on the importance of the word Yes. 

“Writing is hard work. It requires your full attention and presence. You may think that you are writing the book but soon you realize that the book, in many respects, is writing itself through you! Writing Journey to Yes took me on quite a journey, the likes of which I could not have imagined when I first started out.”

According to the jacket on the book, “Yes is a door opening in response to an invitation. The word speaks to the inner you in you, the inner me in me. It opens up the door to fully embrace and experience life more thoughtfully, more fearlessly, and more compassionately.”

Two years ago George Daniel Harvey started planting seeds as he wrote Journey to Yes. “I wrote this book to engage others to think more thoughtfully about their lives; to raise consciousness, to realize more what they have.” He let the sunlight pour in to grow the seeds until he lifted his pen for the last time and now, he leaves it up to the reader to nurture the words that resonate.  

Journey to Yes: And Other Spirited Notions

is available on the web at Xlibris, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble

and at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter.