Diane Jean Diekman grew up on a South Dakota farm, attended a one-room country school in the Hidewood Valley, and graduated from Clear Lake High School. Today she is a retired U.S. Navy captain and published author.

Four years at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with a triple major in elementary education, English, and Spanish, provided her Bachelor of Arts degree. When a mandated closure of rural schools ended her teaching dream, Diane enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After two years as an aviation storekeeper, she attended officer candidate school and earned a commission in 1975.

Designated an aeronautical maintenance duty officer in 1979, she was promoted to captain in 1997 and commanded Defense Contract Management Agency Van Nuys in Los Angeles. Her final Navy assignment before retirement in 2004 was the Office of the Naval Inspector General in Washington D.C.

She has written the biographies of three Country Music Hall of Fame members. Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story, Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins, and Randy Travis: Storms of Life are all published by the University of Illinois Press.

Her childhood memoir is A Farm in the Hidewood: My South Dakota Home, followed by Navy Greenshirt: A Leader Made, Not Born about her military career, and Mommy! Watch Me, the story of becoming a mother at age fifty.

Captain Diekman is listed in Marquis Who’s Who of American Women 1997-1998, 2000-2001, and 2002-2003. She graduated from the Naval War College and holds two master’s degrees from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University — a Master of Aeronautical Science and a Master of Business Administration in Aviation.