A graduate of the former Boy's Tech High School (now Milwaukee Tech), he and his wife Carol set up housekeeping in Cedarburg while he was employed by a lawn mower manufacturer in Port Washington. By 1972 he was a quality-control inspector covering a career of 28 years. He became fascinated by the circus as a youth and became a model railroader and a circus historian and modeler, eventually completing a scale model of the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus which occupied most of his basement.At the dawn of cable access television he began producing and hosting "Just Trains" on Milwaukee's local access channel on Viacom Cable. Eventually the show was picked up on the cable network around Milwaukee and other cities. After 72 shows of this 21-hour interview format show, Milwaukee's WMVS Channel 10 (PBS) agreed to air a new 21-hour magazine format show "On Track" in the Milwaukee market. For the second season the name was changed to "Tracks Ahead", and at that point it was expanded to the PBS network.
