| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | I was fortunate to travel and take vacations with my family as a kid. We would take weekend trips to our cabin where we would go tubing or waterskiing, and maybe go fishing or for a hike. We usually also took a bigger family vacation during the summer where I was able to see places like DC, Toronto, Chicago, Philadelphia, Orlando, and my personal favorite: Hawaii. My general childhood experience of traveling has given me a love of doing so as an adult. I have been fortunate enough to keep seeing new places and revisit some of my favorites. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | My dad. I inherited a lot from him from his looks to his sense of humor and quick wit. Although I never reached his height of 6’4”, I made it to 6’1” and still have his blue eyes. He’s the funniest person I’ve ever known, so I also always try to find the fun or humor in all of life’s crazy circumstances. I looked up to him as my hero as a kid, and try to emulate all of his good characteristics and traits in my adult life. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | Loyalty is by far the trait I admired the most. I never see myself moving away from where I grew up and currently live. This loyalty has extended to our local sports teams, which if you follow then you’d know none of our teams have won a title in a very long time. So you have to have a strong sense of loyalty to keep coming back and supporting the same teams year in and year out. On a more serious note, I value loyalty very greatly in my friendships and relationships. I am very close to my immediate family and can’t imagine my life without them being an integral part of it. I would do almost anything for them. My best friend is someone I have known for over 20 years and we’ve maintained a strong bond even though we now live states away from each other. And the strongest sense of loyalty I feel is for my wife. She’s the bedrock of my entire life and I trust her completely with all my heart and soul. I would do anything for her. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | Early on in our relationship, while my wife and I were still dating, I planned this 6-month anniversary date. It had clues to each activity that we were going to do that day and I had nearly everything planned out. We went to the zoo, went to dinner at a fancy restaurant and ended the date with a drive-in movie. When I asked her what her favorite part of the date was, she said it was when we got some Ben , Jerry’s ice cream from the grocery store and ate it in my car in the grocery store parking lot. You see, we had some time to kill before going to the movie part of the date so we made an impromptu stop for some ice cream. So after all my planning and hard work for our big date, her favorite thing was the one thing that was unplanned. I loved the irony of this so much that I laughed until I cried literally. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | Melbourne, Australia. I studied abroad in Australia for a semester and absolutely loved my time there. I fell in love with Aussie Rules Football but I was never able to take in a game while I was there. It’s a dream of mine to go back and watch a game. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I could steal from my answers to some of the other questions such as being tall or funny or having a love of travel. But I think the thing I’d like to pass onto them the most is just how to be a good person and how important that really is. I would think of some of my favorite quotes about life and use those as guides, such as “everybody love everybody” or “we all do better when we all do better.” I hope to use these ideas to build in them a strong sense of doing good and setting an example for others of how being a good human can positively improve your life, even if it means you sacrifice something else like money or fame. |
