At an age of about 8 years I got my first folding book. It was a Dutch translation of 'The art of Chinese paper folding for young and old' by Mrs. Maying Soong (1948). This book contains a series of models, but no explicit folding technique. So after that I didn't do real Origami, but just a little bit folding among a lot of other things.
But summer 1980 there was some information about Origami in the newspaper and I got wondering. Than at Xmas 1980 I received a book along with some real Origami paper. The next three months I did nothing but folding. I took some of the folded objects with me to my office.