Home    Introduction    Publications    Resume    Ultimate Vision     Goals    Articles    Awards    You Tube    News Releases

Ultimate destiny? Who me? You’ve got to be kidding. . .

When I was just 16 years old, my Mother gave me a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. She was hoping (and praying) that something would get through to me and help me make better choices than I was making. I had dropped out of high school, started drinking and smoking cigarettes (and occasionally other things . . . ) and I was wasting my life.

Fortunately, the gift of that book did set into motion a series of “discoveries” over the next few years that led me into a life-long interest in personal growth and development. In recent years, my focus has shifted more toward stewardship and spiritual enlightenment and I have been blessed to have experienced some of the world’s top experts and trainers and coaches on successful living.

But first, more of the background on how a high school drop out graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Masters in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University and became the co-founder of several non-profit organizations and cause-oriented companies involved in personal, organizational and community development.

My first real job was through an unsolicited grant in 1969 from the American Friends Service Committee. The grant was to develop a Community Development Center in Greenville, Mississippi to support desegregation of the public schools. Through a number of unexpected circumstances over the following years, I found myself working as a disaster relief specialist for HUD, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

After six years of helping disaster victims deal with and recover from natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes and earthquakes, I was asked to take some assignments in a different kind of “man made” disasters. That led me to serving HUD for another few years in “troubled offices” such as Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago and East St. Louis, Illinois.

 In 1978, my then wife and our two young children moved to the intentional community of Stelle, Illinois about an hour and a half south of Chicago to focus on our interest in personal development and spiritual awakening. I was still working for HUD in the Chicago Loop and my daily commute was about five hours. Just imagine that drive in a Midwest blizzard in the flatlands . . .

 Someone gave me a copy of Lead the Field, the classic audio cassette tape program by Earl Nightingale. I listened to those six tapes every weekday for many weeks. The results were so amazing in terms of my increased positive outlook, my sense of being in cont