After graduating from college in 1966 he joined the Peace Corps and spent 26 months in Malawi working on a project to get the local people to grow tea as a cash crop. Afterwards he traveled to Nigeria and, as an administrator for the International Red Cross, worked on relief programs for a half million refugees displaced by a brutal civil war. Upon return to the United States he married an English woman whom he'd met in Malawi. Unfortunately, she passed away after seven years of marriage. Despite this terrible setback he continued working for the City of Chicago as an administrator, eventually retiring in 2004. Meanwhile, he met and married a widow with five children. They have been together for twenty five years and have seven grandchildren. He considers himself the luckiest man in the world with the best family ever.