For eight and a half years, Derwood Lane served as a high school English teacher in the Balmorhea, Texas, public schools.Reared on a Central Texas cotton farm near Corsicana, he earned a bachelor's degree in English and Bible from John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, and a master's degree in vocational-technical education from North Texas State University.He pursued graduate studies in anthropology, education, psychology, music, art, and English at the University of Oklahoma (Norman), Central State College (Edmond, Oklahoma), the University of California at Riverside, Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff), and Texas A&M University.His sixteen-year teaching career included work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Navajo Reservation, as well as positions in Texas public schools.Lane's varied career has also included ownership of an antiques business and a natural history museum, as well as service as president of a food industry company. He has additionally worked as an archaeologist at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1943.He and his wife, Raquel, retired to Salida, Colorado.