John GearenI grew up in Oak Park Illinois, the oldest of nine, six boys and three girls, in a strongly Catholic family. I went to Ascension Grade School and Fenwick High School in Oak Park, and then the University of Notre Dame. After that, I had the good fortue to spend two years at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, three years at Yale Law School and one year clerking for Judge Spottswood Robinson on the DC Court of Appeals before returning to Chicago. I enjoyed a forty-year commercial real estate practice among the outstanding and generous lawyers at Mayer Brown LLP. I served for years as head of the real estate group, played third base on the Firm's 16-inch softball team and taught analytics and writing to the younger real estate lawyers. I became a Board member and then Chair of IES Abroad, a study abroad organization for American college students; LINK Unlimited, a sponsoring/mentoring organization for African-American high school students; and The Arthur J. Schmitt Foundation, an organization promoting leadership programs in certain Chicago area Catholic high schools and colleges. I also founded and chair Rust Belt Rising, which helps Midwestern Democratic candidates win elections at all levels by focusing on the economic issues of working families. My wife and daughter are excellent published poets, and when I joined the Hope Town Writers Circle, I was drawn to writing poetry. These poems about Joe cast me back to my childhood. My good friends in high school represented practically all the ethnicities of Europe. In the summers, my father got me jobs at the bottom of a multi-ethnic construction crew where the foreman called me College and assigned me the nastiest work alongside the African-American laborers. So I was primed for Joe, his physical work ethic, his language and his spirit. These poems are the result. I hope you like them. Read More Read Less