Ted Ridder grew up on the Mississippi River near Hannibal, Missouri, the boyhood home of Mark Twain. Ted loved the river and Mark Twain's stories about it. After graduating with honors from Quincy University, he started graduate work in clinical psychology, but his draft board had other plans. Soon, he found himself in a very different world, studying bombs and fuses and wearing a US Air Force uniform. By an incredible stroke of luck, his next assignment was not Vietnam but Germany for three years.
Returning to civilian life, Ted switched to school psychology and worked in the public school system for thirty years. He was elected president of the Michigan Association of School Psychologists, and he authored the chapter on "Children and Television" in a desk reference guide published by the National Association of School Psychologists.
He had always enjoyed writing, and retirement created time for that. Memories of his time in the military produced a collection of short stories entitled "A Reluctant Lieutenant at Bitburg Air Base."