I have had a wide range of experiences in life, but at this stage in my life, I have found a place to set down roots. That place is Brown County, Indiana.
I grew up in a very rural area of South Dakota on a family farm. Brown County is really not all that rural compared to where I grew up. There were only 29 students in my high school graduating class for the entire county, which covers an area five times larger than Brown County. By the time I graduated from high school, I was anxious to experience the wider world, so I attended the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and obtained a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering. From there, I worked at John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa for seven years as an engineer. I had several different jobs during that time, including manufacturing engineering, quality engineering and product design engineering. While living in Waterloo, I continued to expand my educational background by attending business classes at the University of Northern Iowa, and right before I left John Deere, I graduated with a masters in business administration.
For a variety of reasons, I concluded that Waterloo, John Deere and engineering were not my ultimate future, and so after seven years, I chose to quit my job and go back to school full-time to be a lawyer. And so, I moved from my Iowa to Texas to attend Baylor Law School where I obtained my juris doctor degree. From there, I got a job as a patent lawyer with a large intellectual property law firm in Chicago.
Shortly after moving to Chicago, I met my wife, Clara, and soon after getting married, we started a family with our first son, Ricky. Two years later, we completed our family with the birth of our second son, Caelan. Ultimately, I lived in Chicago for 14 years, and although a lot of my adult life was formed in Chicago, I never intended to finish my life in a big city like that. Fortunately for me and my family, an opportunity eventually arose with my law firm work to move to Indiana, and being that I knew a little bit about Brown County at the time, we found a perfect place here to move to.
I’ve reached the point in life where it’s becoming more obvious how fast life really does go by. I have now lived in Brown County with my family for about 12 years. My two boys grew up here in Brown County and attended middle school and high school here. Ricky just finished his undergraduate degree at Purdue, and Caelen is in the Army. After working at several other law firms, I am now formally retired from the rat race. Although I wish I could see my sons more often, life for me here in Brown County is as good as I could imagine.
I have no shortage of hobbies to keep me busy. I ride horses, garden, hunt, fish, do woodworking (all the way from a standing tree to furniture), and just generally enjoy the nature that Brown County has to offer. I am also active in our church, St. Agnes. Brown County has it all for me, and there is no place I would rather live at this point in my life. That is why I have every intention to finish my life here in this beautiful place.
