Personal Information |
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I was born and raised in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, a small town in the Alleghenies. My father, Harry, was a WWII navy veteran, and my mother, Beulah, was was a housewife who raised me after my father died in a car accident when I was six. I grew up poor and spent my childhood working for my own expendable income. Through my pre- and early teens, I picked up popcorn boxes at the local theater in exchange for pocket money and free movies. I pumped gas for Clarence down at the Mobile Station in exchange for candy, soda pop, and free gas. In the fall I raked leaves, in the winter I shoveled snow, in the spring I mowed lawns, and in the summer I picked and sold blueberries and blackberries and worked at the high school cleaning windows. |
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After high school I worked for two years before beginning college. I worked at a leather shoe factory for a year. I worked on a highway crew. I worked in a powdered metals factory. During college at Penn State I was chosen by the journalism staff to be the editor of the campus newspaper during my sophomore year. I am still a journalist and teach journalism today. To put myself through college, I took on a variety of part-time and summer jobs. I worked at UPS loading trucks. I worked as a hotel-motel manager at the Roosevelt Hotel Wildwood, New Jersey. I worked as a Christmas tree trimmer. I worked as a roughneck in the Oklahoma oil fields. |
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| The remainder of my adult professional work life is documented in my résumé. | ||
| I am married to Susan and have a lovely daughter, Kristi, and a handsome son, Adam. Kristi is an environmental engineer. Adam is a digital video technician. My wife and I both teach. We both worked for AT&T in the 1980s before teaching. | ||
I enjoy backpacking, river rafting, writing, technology, landscaping, investing in stocks and real estate, and taking unexpected road trips. I have navigated my own raft down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. I have hiked at least 1,000 miles of California wilderness. I was online back when the Internet was a loose collection of BBS phone numbers around the country and everything was text, back before Microsoft, back before hard drives existed. I hope to one day retire to my cabin in Tahoe or Nevada and teach online from the comfort of my back deck. Until then, the work goes on. Thank you for taking the time to read the personal section. Sincerely, Steve |