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Portrait Photo of Alan M. Foss, 1983
Alan Martin Foss was born in Detroit, Michigan on March 19, 1960, the eldest son of Millie and Peter H. Foss. The family moved shortly thereafter to Hampton, Virginia, where Dad got a job at NASA designing test rigs for rocket engines. Family legend holds that Alan's first word was "astronut." Alan attended kindergarten and first grade at the Hampton Institute Department of Early Childhood Education.
The family moved back to Detroit in 1967 and Alan attended Edison Elementary School for a short time before the family finally settled in a house in Livonia, Michigan, a growing suburb of Detroit. Alan finished second grade at Coolidge Elementary and attended Bryant Junior High and Stevenson High School in Livonia, Michigan, where he played the saxophone in the marching band for about one hour before declaring it was too much like being in the army.
A lifelong fan of science fiction, Alan collected quite a large library of scifi novels and magazines. He wrote short stories, screenplays, and at least one novel, which remain unpublished. He turned Isaac Asimov's short story, The Last Question, into a play which was performed at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington, Michigan, where the family still attends church.
In 1981, Alan earned an Associate of Arts degree at Schoolcraft Community College, Livonia, and in 1983 he finished his Bachelor's Degree in communcations/television-film at Wayne State University, Detroit. Around this time he worked at Toys R Us in Livonia, Booth Cable Company in Birmingham, drove a delivery truck for a florist, drove a cab for a short time, and for four months was an unpaid intern at Channel 56, Detroit's Public Broadcasting Service television station.
Alan's main ambition was to become a filmmaker and screenwriter and he had submitted at least one script to a major production company before his untimely death in a car accident on February 25, 1985. Twenty-five individuals benefitted from donations of his organs.
Alan was four years older than me and, as a child, he was my guide, my guru, my mentor, and for a lot of the time, the closest thing I had to a best friend.
Gwen Foss, with love, 2010
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