Family History

I was born, the youngest of six children, on Easter Sunday in a small town in New Jersey, to parents of English and Irish descent. Some fifteen years earlier, my father, Joseph, enlisted in the army as a young man and served in post-World War II Germany. After completing his tour, he returned home and found work in a factory. He married and had four children by his first wife. She suffered an early death, however, and their youngest son, Johnny, would also die soon afterward from childhood leukemia. My father remarried and had two more children, my sister and I, by his second wife.

Childhood

In 1968, when I was three, my father moved the family to the island territory of Puerto Rico, where we lived for the next six years. I attended kindergarten and elementary school, where I excelled academically and began learning Spanish. In 1974, sensing a change in the political climate of the island, my father moved the family back to the mainland -- first to Elmira, New York, and then to Streator, Illinois, about 100 miles from Chicago. He had accepted a job as an assistant factory manager, and the family spent the next four years in Streator. My half-brother Joey, upon graduating from Streator High School, enlisted in the army and served for four years as a paratrooper in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

In 1978, my father accepted a transfer and promotion to factory manager in Tampa, Florida, where the four of us (my parents, sister and I) spent the next eight years. At age 14, I began scuba diving and received my certification in 1980. At age 16, I began working at Busch Gardens, a theme park in Tampa. Along with coworkers, I began taking ski trips to West Virginia. In 1983, I graduated from Chamberlain High School and was accepted to the University of South Florida. My sister, Robin, married in 1986. She and her husband would later move to Atlanta, Georgia. My parents also moved, to a suburb of Los Angeles, California, and then later to the San Francisco Bay area, as my father continued his career in management. I stayed behind in Tampa to complete my education while working part-time at Busch Gardens.

Adulthood

In 1988, I graduated from the University of South Florida and accepted a full-time position in the accounting department at Busch Gardens, where I had worked since high school. After two years, though, I found office work unsuitable, and I left Busch Gardens to travel west to California. Out of money, however, I soon returned to Tampa to work as a security guard in 1991. In 1992, I left Tampa and stayed with my parents, who had retired to the west coast of Florida. I worked as a sales clerk in a department store until finding a more permanent position in 1993 as an accounting technician with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Miami, Florida. I lived and worked in Miami for the next three years until accepting a transfer to Los Angeles in 1997. I lived in Los Angeles for six months, and rented an apartment in Venice Beach. Bored again with office work, however, I quit my job and returned to Florida.

In 1998, I found seasonal work as a Visitor Information Aid with the U.S. Forest Service and moved to Wyoming. When the season ended, I found work in Miami again, this time as a clerk with the Social Security Administration. I returned to Miami in October 1998, and after a year was promoted to legal assistant. Three years later, in 2002, I accepted a transfer to San Jose, California, which is where I currently live and work, handling disability claims files in an administrative hearing office. My latest hobbies include learning to surf, oil painting, and taking trips to the Hawaiian islands. My sister has since remarried and had a son, Logan. My brother, Joey, also has a son, Jason, and they live in Jacksonville, Florida.