about the family

            “Having logged some 76,000 miles during the past seven years, the third time (presidential) campaigner is currently on a… “Back Road to the White House Tour” with his wife, three kids and a host of novel ideas in tow.

                                                                          --Rome (GA) News

            defying all odds, and then some.

Ours is a story of an “average” Midwestern family that is defying all odds, and then some.  We have undertaken a quest for the presidency. 

No big money.  No special interest support.

Just a dream and a small motor home.

And in that motor home, we have traveled some 80,000 miles down the “back roads of America,” to date.  And we have campaigned in towns all across the country the past three election cycles.  We have stumped on street corners of hundreds of towns, including Teutopolis, Illinois, Ephrata, Pennsylvania, Rome, Oregon (pop. 5)…  (If we don’t carry Rome this election, I’ll be surprised.)

Our story has appeared in thousands of newspapers, including the Rising Sun (MD) Herald (circulation 2,000 on a good week), the Havre (MT) Daily News, the Keene (NH) Sentinel, the Jackson Hole (WY) News…

In fact, we’ve spent more time on America’s back roads than perhaps any presidential candidate’s family, ever.  The Harrison (OH) News Herald noted that I was the first presidential candidate to stop in their county since, well, 1950.

And it’s the 1950s that we’d like to see the country go back to, in spirit, I recently told the Chillicothe (OH) Gazette.  That is, we’d like to see the country go back to a time when the pace of life was slower, neighbors were closer, there was less pollution, it was safe for kids to walk the streets, and Norman Rockwell paintings were big.

As a family, we’ve been working on a 1,000 piece Norman Rockwell puzzle at our home in Cleveland, Ohio.  And when we’re not doing the puzzle, our family is volunteering at a drop-in center for the poor up the street, or working at a community garden, or trading baseball cards, and other family stuff. 

When a reporter from The Post-Journal in Jamestown, New York, asked what made me “average,” I replied:  “I cut my own grass (with an old wooden push mower -- to reverse global warming).”  

And while I’m cutting the grass, my wife Liz is usually gardening.

Liz

I’ve been married to Liz the past 13 years.  She is from New Zealand and has an accent that won’t quit.

When a TV talk show host in South Carolina said that we seemed like the kind of couple that was very happily married, I replied:  “We have our days.”

What average Midwestern couple doesn’t, huh?

Besides gardening, Liz’s other hobbies are running, photography and beating me at Scrabble.

Besides being a wife to me and a “motor-home-schooling” mother to our children, Liz is the campaign manager and campaign treasurer.  She is also in charge of ballot access.  And she is the person most likely to say to me:  “You’re not actually going to wear that shirt to the talk, are you?”

Liz also gives any number of talks herself and is continually helping with position paper research.  (*This is research that has spanned almost a decade and a half of traveling.  And it is research based on interviews with experts, and regular citizens, all over this land.)

Liz recently told the Mississippi Press that while it’s easier to lament about the state of society, “it’s better to do something.”

Our children

We have six children.

Two of them, Peter and Mary Rose, died of complications in the womb.  (We hold to a “Consistent Life Ethic,” I told the Cortez (CO) News.   And Liz and I believe, strongly, that Peter and Mary Rose are both human beings with immortal souls.)

For the past five years, we have also financially adopted a youth in India through the Christian Foundation for Youth and Aging.  And it has been more than a ‘financial adoption.’  We regularly exchange letters and our children refer to Gopinath  as their “older brother.”

Our money helps with food, schooling and other basic needs.  And in the past five years (based on the progression of pictures we’ve been sent), Gopinath has gone from a stick thin lad to a strapping young man who is just finishing high school and is considering going to medical school.  (During a campaign talk to a youth group in Valdosta, Georgia, I said part of our platform involves asking many Americans to cut back on their lifestyles so youth in the Third World can have a better shot at life.)

In almost every letter, Gopinath talks about playing soccer (India’s number one sport).  And while it’s not the number one sport in America, our other children have written to Gopinath that they like playing soccer as well.  And in between campaign tours last year, Sarah, 11, and Joseph, 9, played in a Cleveland Recreation Center League right up the street.

Sarah also likes to write like her Dad (I’m a former journalist) and she won a “Rainbow Reading Contest” in Ohio for one of her stories.  Her most recent book is called Road Buddies USA and is a series of “postcard poems’ from places we’ve visited, like: a Pony Express Station in Gothenburg, Nebraska, a phenomenal city park at Houghton in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the ocean at Pacific Grove, California…

Joseph likes to travel too.  And one of his favorite places has been the “Field of Dreams” in Epworth, Iowa.  He also likes to toss the baseball around with his Dad.  And, with his Mom’s help, Joseph has started an “Animal Facts Club” with a group of pen friends.

When Joseph or Sarah aren’t writing, playing soccer or looking up stuff about animals, they are volunteering at an outreach to the poor in our neighborhood, or singing in St. Patrick’s choir, or driving their Dad nuts sometimes.

I told the Fairibult (MN) News that if I can handle conflicts between Sarah and Joseph “…Russia and China will be nothing.”

Then there’s Jonathan, 3.  He’s my “driving buddy.”  He sits in the passenger seat of the motor home, while Mom home-schools Joseph and Sarah in the back.  Jonathan helps Dad spot big yellow diggers and “old fashion” cars.  And Jonathan does amazingly well at the latter, given he’s three and has no frame of reference whatsoever about what an old-fashion car might look like.

Jonathan also helps Dad pass out campaign flyers on the street corners and when we’re back in Cleveland, he and I like going to the “Old Fashion Hot Dogs” place around the corner.

I told the Owantonna (MN) People’s Press that we travel together because we see family solidity as extremely important.  “People are so busy these days and they don’t get to be with their families,” Liz said to the reporter.  “There’s such a reward in that.”

*For more on the kids, see their respective web pages on this site.

…the innocence of these young children

In an interview for the “Politics One” blog, I said that it is the innocence of these young children that haunts Liz and I.  That is, these little ones are walking into a world of war, babies being killed in the womb, climate change that is on a path to soon decimate the world, scores of starving children in the Third World, while inner city youth in this country try to dodge hunger, needles and bullets growing up.

I told the Selma (AL) News that in the face of all this, Liz and I gave up our regular professions and we are running for president as “concerned parents.”  And we’re not just concerned for our kids, we’re ‘concerned’ for everybody’s kids.

And I told the Range News in Wilcox, Arizona:  “This nation needs to be a lot more healthy for them (the children) spiritually, emotionally and environmentally.”

During a talk at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, I said that now is not the time to be partisan anymore.  “Now is the time to be right.”

So we press on as a family, one town at a time.

Our family is a modern version of Johnny Appleseed.  That is, in each of these towns we plant seeds about all these wonderfully creative, common sense things we’ve researched.

Things like: how models in Nebraska City, Nebraska and High Springs, Florida hold the keys to reversing global warming; how a church in Staunton, Virginia, and a woman in Cortez, Colorado, know, unequivocally, how to end world hunger; how a police officer in Newport, Rhode Island has the answer for making the streets safe again for kids…  And did you know that you don’t have to go any further than Bluffton, Ohio, to learn how to end war, for good?

Hopefully, some of the information we’ve spread has taken root and is rippling out to other towns. 

And just as hopefully, some day, the most unlikely of families, from a hardscrabble neighborhood in Cleveland, will end up in D.C.  So their message can get out farther, and faster – before it’s too late.

                                                                                    --Joe