How long have you lived in Newtown? I grew up in Easton and then shared a three-bedroom apartment on Glover Avenue, back in 1990. I rented there for ten or so years, with a variety for different roommates. We would throw a Louisiana Crawfish Boil eve
How long have you lived in Newtown? I grew up in Easton and then shared a three-bedroom apartment on Glover Avenue, back in 1990. I rented there for ten or so years, with a variety for different roommates. We would throw a Louisiana Crawfish Boil every May that involved flying hundreds of pounds of live crawfish up from New Orleans. Dianna and I rented on Queen Street for a few years, and eventually bought a house in Sandy Hook.
What do you like to do in your free time? I graduated from evening law school in May of 2011, and passed the bar exam this year, so my free time has drastically increased. I love spending time with my wife and kids, and doing projects around the house⦠that werenât caused by my kids. Iâm an avid Formula One racing fan and follow the Yankees. Reading for pleasure, as opposed to schooling, is becoming one of my pastimes.
Do you have a favorite movie? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I loved it as a kid, but back then, there were no VCRs so you could only watch it when it was on TV. My father was a closet inventor who was always tinkering in the workshop. He and I bonded when we put two VW Beetles together to form my first car. I recently rediscovered the movie and I enjoy watching it with my kids and hearing them sing the tunes. They just donât make fun, imaginative, musical family movies like that anymore.
Do you have a favorite travel destination? I bought a small vacation home in New Smyrna, Fla. in 1997, and we fly down there at least twice a year. Itâs nice, because my brother and sister-in-law live an hour from there and when we are there we spend great family time together. They are the ones who mainly use my cottage now. My sister and brother-in-law also own a vacation condo in New Smyrna, so we stay there. Itâs twice the size of my cottage and has a pool with the ocean right across the street!
What is the best thing about Newtown? Now that I have a child in school full time and Iâm done with night school, I sense the need to be more involved in the community. What is so great about Newtown is that it is so family âoriented with an abundance of activities, events, clubs, and organizations that families can be part of.
Who has been the greatest influence in your life? My father. He was born in 1919 and was an orphan at age 3. He taught me that anything is possible if you are willing to sacrifice for it. He was a self-made man who learned from books and by doing. He died at Ashlar (Masonicare at Newtown) a few months before my first son was born. Ironically, I spotted a house for sale across from Ashlar when I was visiting him one day, and we ended up buying that house. It made it easy to visit him and my mother, who was at Lockwood Lodge then. She passed away a few months before my second son was born.
Do you have a personal philosophy? There are always two sides to every disagreement and itâs critical to understand both if you want a positive resolution. This was drilled into me in law school and it applies in business dealings and personal life. If you can empathize, not just sympathize, with an opponent, you can better understand the key issues. Most individuals have valid reasons for how they are and the situations they are in, and there are no easy or quick answers.
Do you have a guilty pleasure? Iâm a process improvement kind of person that always needs to be busy, fixing, or improving things; jumping to the next task and getting things on the list done. My guilty pleasure is just stopping what Iâm doing and sitting and watching people, especially my wife and kids. I try to live in the moment and imagine what they are thinking. When I travel for work, I sit in the airport or plane and catch pieces of peopleâs conversations and realize how we are all not that different. It helps me put life into perspective.