Jon Sebba was born in South Africa. After high school, he lived in Israel for eight years, and served in the Israeli Army.  As a student in Jerusalem, There he studied geology among other, and worked cataloging 19th Century medical journals, monitoring seawater intrusion at the Hydrology Institute, as a laborer on the construction of Jerusalem apartment buildings and of evaporation lagoons at the Dead Sea (1400 feet below sea level) with summer temperatures topping 115°F.

 

By 1967 he was married with and infant child. That's when the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War began.  As a reservist, he was mobilized to fight in Jerusalem.  Among the things he learned from that experience are: death in war is random; wars should definitely be avoided; and given the choice, few soldiers would ever start one.

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In 1968, Jon immigrated to the U.S. to study civil engineering, arriving the day before Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated.  En route, he worked as a lorry driver in London. He has lived and worked as an engineer in six states. He divorced, remarried and retired.  He now lives in Arizona and Utah, with his wife and muse, Chris. Together they have four children scattered across the US.  Jon has been writing poetry since the 1970’s.  In early 2013, he had a play produced at the Gallery Theater in Ogden.  He has written a movie script and is currently writing a novel. Both are based on the lives of people he knew growing up under apartheid in Cape Town.  He is also writing a memoir and a sequel to Yossi, Yasser & Other Soldiers describing the effects of war on the lives of civilian loved ones of combat veterans. It is titled: The Ones They Left Behind.

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Nine years ago, Chris and Jon were presented with a grandson – a gift which has changed their lives.  Thanks to Declan, they feel greatly encouraged about the future.