SHAKER HEIGHTS & UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS ROOTS

I was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and attended Mercer Elementary School, Byron Junior High School (now Shaker Heights Middle School), and graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1979.

On graduation from Shaker, I was awarded the Beduhn Drama Award, based on my accomplishments onstage and offstage, as both an actor and a stage technician.  This photograph of me is from 1979, during a performance of "Pfeiffer's People," performed in the Small Auditorium of the High School, a Broadway show based on the works of renowned comedic writer Jules Pfeiffer.

After earning my Zoology degree from The Ohio State University in 1984, I returned home to Shaker Heights, where I first lived at my childhood home in the Mercer neighborhood while working as a Medical Research Assistant at the Cleveland VA Medical Center (now the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center) and later throughout my Law School education at Case Western Reserve School of Law, from which I graduated in 1989.

Following graduation from Law School, I moved to an apartment in Shaker Heights, in the Moreland neighborhood, near the Shaker Municipal Court, where I lived during my years as a Law Clerk to United States District Judge John M. Manos of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and later during my first years as an attorney with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP.

Since then, I have been a resident of University Heights, Ohio, where I have lived in the same home since 1993.