For 30 very pleasant years, we lived in Oxford, Ohio. „The Plan“ was always that when our daughter was married and established in her career, we would move to her and help to raise her future children. She and her husband made their move in 2020, the week our governor shut down the state for the pandemic. We followed a year later.

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We were rewarded the following year when our first grandchild was born. Rather than enroll her in a day-care setting, we watch her 40-45 hours/week. It is extremely tiring but VERY worthwhile, especially for me as I worked every day when our daughter was this age.

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I grew up in Swanton, a small farming village (2000 inhabitants) 20 miles west of Toledo, Ohio. I attended the University of Toledo. My goal from the beginning was to teach history at the college level. After completing my B.A., I took an M.A. in Medieval English history. After Duke, I spent the next 11 years earning my Ph.D. in modern German history at the University of Michigan. These were good years. I was able to spend a lot of time in Germany, living in a culture and doing research that I loved. While still in graduate school, I dropped by UT to chat with my undergrad mentor, Roger Ray. It turned out that the history department needed someone to teach Western Civ on an adjunct basis. Hey, I fit the bill! This was a great experience learning how to teach, with students who were unvaryingly kind to a Toledo homeboy. When Ohio State advertised for Western Civ instructors in 1990, I had the credentials they wanted. OSU treated me like a king - good colleagues, plenty of time to travel to conferences, the opportunity to refine my teaching.

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When my daughter was born in 1992 at OSU hospital, my Yooper wife got a special single room reserved for faculty and my daughter got a T-shirt reading "I'm a little Buckeye". It was an omen. After graduating from Talawanda, the daughter chose to go to OSU, where she earned her BS and MS in soil science in the School of Environmental and Natural Resources. She met and married a fellow Buckeye and works for AEP. From working class to lower upper class in three generations; the fulfillment of the American Dream.​