I was born in a log-cabin hospital in Rochester, New York in 1950. As one of eight kids, I learned early on you have speak up to get what you want in life. And I've been talking ever since! My dad and uncle owned an auto repair business and sold Texaco gas in Webster, NY. I began pumping gas as early as my dad let me - I suppose I was 8. Finn's Garage is still there today and is still in the family. And so are the lessons my dad taught us about loyalty, service, and hard work. And how to get greasy hands clean.

I grew up in a big old farmhouse and spent my childhood working - and playing - around the farm. There's nothing like farm work to make food taste great and cold water seem like the greatest drink in the world. And there's nothing like playing in the creek, the woods, or the barns to make you feel lucky to be a kid on a farm. From picking strawberries as a 10 year-old, to working full time on the farm as a teen, I learned to rise early and work on my tan in the fields. If there were room on my resume, I'd mention that I have expertise in tractor management, vegetable growth facilitation, cultivation, organizing straw and hay, skills with a wide range of farm implements, and fertilizer distribution. This last skill in particular has served me well throughout life and is a huge asset in talk radio.

My mother was an amazing woman. In addition to having great faith, fortitude, and facility with all aspects of life, she was an innovator. Instead of buying a station wagon in the mid-fifties, she bought a used 1948 Cadillac limousine - black, complete with running boards, radios in front and back, and power windows. She especially liked the privacy window between the adult chauffeurs in the front and the noisy kids in the back! And after passing countless plates of food out to little kids, in 1956 she put a huge round table in our country kitchen and had the local carpenter make a four foot diameter "wheel." I later learned that this was called a lazy susan, but it was 30 years before I saw one anywhere near that size (in a Chinese restaurant). She was also the first in the country (I believe) to take an above-ground swimming pool (with a football-shaped deep end) and have the installers sink it in the ground.

After being raised in a great Catholic family, I spent my high school years in the seminary - engaging in sports, plays, and all the typical doing all the normal high school things (except the sex). In 1968, I started at St. John Fisher College in Rochester - at the height of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. I got my degree in Mathematics in 1972, then moved to northern New Jersey and started working as a computer programmer. I followed that with a stint as a management consultant, but knew I wanted something a bit different. After moving back to Rochester, I took up bartending to pay the bills, golf for humility, and met my future wife, Linda. We went back to school together - her for nursing and me for psychology. Linda and I were married in 1976 and I got the gift of two sons - Andy was 14 and Joel was 12 at the time.

We moved our new family to St. Louis in 1977, where the boys grew to adulthood - though not before testing me through their teen years! During that time, Linda honed her skills as a hospital nurse and I got my doctorate in social psychology. While at Washington University, I worked as a computer and statistical analyst, an instructor, and did research on a variety of projects, including the link between alcohol advertising and teenage drinking. But my dissertation revealed my primary interest - the marriage of computers and communication - and was one of the first dissertations in the country to analyze group communication over computers, what today we call discussion boards. In short, I caught the Internet bug in the early 80s.

In part because these 'new technologies' were so expensive at the time, and in part because there were student loans and family obligations, I next took a job with AT&T and Linda and I moved back to North Jersey (Somerset). In addition to teaching as an adjunct professor at Rutgers and NYU, I spent my years at AT&T working on communication and information technologies from a variety of perspectives, including technology implementation and training in AT&T Communications, user interface and system design in Bell Labs, and voice mail product management and voice processing product line planning in GBCS (recently Lucent, then Avaya). There was a lot to learn about the unfolding world of digital technologies, and I was in the thick of it.

After a number of years focused on product development, globalizing product, and delighting the customer, I decided to return to my original interest in technology - examining how people use communication and information technologies. So I left industry and went to make my fortune in academia. I spent most of the late 1990s at the University of Kentucky, teaching telecommunications and learning another new profession. While some argue that the two NCAA basketball championships won by Kentucky during my years there were attributable primarily to the players and Rick Pitano, my support should not be underestimated. The problem was, the Kentucky students were even more consumed by basketball than I was!

A series of events, primarily getting divorced from Linda and perishing rather than publishing, led to a return to the east coast. I took a position in the Department of Communication at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where I taught courses in human communication and telecommunications. I continued to be interested in the way people use electronic communication systems, conducting research on voice mail, caller ID, cell phones, and instant messaging. During my years as a professor, I improved my understanding of teaching, listening, organizational consulting, public speaking, teams, and the incredible possibility of people.

But after teaching telecommunications for 10 years, I wanted more. I had caught the radio bug when I started the original The Andy Finn Show on WRFL-FM in Lexington in 2000, and in January, 2004 revived my talk show on WGMU radio in Fairfax. I discovered that I wanted to be part of a different conversation with a different group of people.

The stakes in America today are huge - the threat of terrorism, the direction of the country, and the possibility of working together to build a better future. So I have now given up teaching - except occasionally - to focus on a new career, built around speaking, writing, and talking with people on the radio about life, love, and laughs.

Today, the boys are grown - Andy lives in Kansas City and Joel lives in Rochester, New York. The staggering ignorance of the Bush presidency has turned Andy from an informed voter into a Democratic activist. He's a good-natured 20%er (a rare breed) and I'm proud that he's angry and smart. You can read his blog here. Joel is busy building a new career out of his long-standings interests in art and computers. My ex-wife, Linda, is living happily in Tampa - and is one of my biggest fans.

I have brothers/sisters living in Denver, Oak Ridge (TN), St. Cloud (MN), Porto Alegre do Norte (Brazil), and Webster (NY), my home town. And I have nephews and nieces living in Iowa, Florida, California, Washington, Minnesota, and New York.

I'm living the sweet life in Fairfax County, Virginia, surrounded by my cats (Lexi & Nutmeg) and a great group of friends in the DC area and around the country. I love music, books, ideas, current events, some sports, and making a difference in the world. It doesn't get any better than that . . . on my budget!

http://www.raytownprogressives.blogspot.com/