About me

I was born in Rockford, Illinois in 1957 and grew up in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. I graduated from Proviso East High School in nearby Maywood in 1975 and attended Southern Illinois University in downstate Carbondale.

A glimpse of my university self, then 23 years old, has been preserved on video in the John Candy Roadshow Halloween 1980.

My first job was as a reporter for the Effingham Daily News, where I worked for nine years, and where I fell in love with the publisher’s daughter, my wife of 41 years (and counting). Jo and I raised 13 children, including 11 whom we adopted.

We had our “15 minutes of fame,” so to speak, when the Chicago Tribune featured us on the front page of their Tempo section on Sept. 11, 1992.

After the McNaughton family sold the Daily News later that fall, I worked for a number of local companies in my second career as an IT manager/developer. Most of my technology career was spent with a medical-services company in Effingham, from which I retired in 2021.

I have been joyfully occupied in my retirement with occasional travel, many grandchildren, and lots of reading.