It all started in 1973. Having had the usual boring life through high school and college, 3 of my college buddies and I decided to rent a townhouse together. This was to be a bachelor pad completely devoid of all the female touches. For the basement, we purchased a foosball table. I took apart my family’s old console stereo and built it into a small roll-around stereo system. One wall we covered completely with the centerfold pictures from a popular men’s magazine. We then decided we needed a pinball machine to finish off the pad. A look in the local paper produced a possibility in the area at one of the local colleges, UWM (that’s the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee; NOT the University of Where, Man?). A phone call and we were off. It turned out that the seller was a frat house, and with spring approaching they were selling off lots of stuff. The game looked to be in OK condition (what did we know?). And it worked. We even won a free ball on our first game! We handed over $90 and the game was ours, ready to be placed in the basement of the bachelor pad. Things went along fine, but then a year later the buddies and I decided to separate, as some of the guys wanted to get married (to girls, not each other…this was the 70’s!). One of the townhouse guys and I had bought the pinball together, each paying $45, with the agreement that the one to get married first got the game as a wedding present. So on the break up of the townhouse gang, my game went into hibernation in my buddy’s basement. At this time, I started a new phase of my life.

In 1975 I started a job at Harley-Davidson Motor Co. in Milwaukee, WI, as a test engineer for new motorcycle designs. I was responsible for the development and testing of the belt drive system that H-D still uses today. Since that wasn’t exciting enough, I took up skydiving. I stopped jumping in 1985 with over 1200 jumps, having become a certified instructor, expert and holder of a Team World Record. In my spare time while skydiving, I obtained a pilot’s license and took aerobatics training. In 1983, I took a job at Snap-on Tools in Kenosha, WI, and started seriously collecting pinball games after rescuing that first game and fixing it up. At Snap-on, I developed many different hand tools. The most recognizable is the Ratcheting Magnetic Screwdriver; to date over 1.5 million of these unique tools have been sold. When I wasn’t developing products for Snap-on, I was buying and selling games and spreading the pinball virus to my friends and co-workers. As a mentor, I was fortunate to spread the pinball hobby around the Southeast Wisconsin, infecting over 10 serious collectors, some with large collections (much larger than mine). Now employed as a Chief Engineer at Johnson Controls in the Plymouth, MI, area, I design automobile seats for such cars as the PT Cruiser and Viper. I am married to the lovely and very understanding Kathy, my wife of 24 years. We have one child, a daughter named Sarah Jane who loves to watch daddy work on his pinball machines when she isn’t playing skeeball.

One side business of mine has been the purchase of small (and sometimes) large quantities of pinball games from local operators, or containers from overseas. I have purchased and resold over 100 games in the last 8 years. This has allowed me to play a lot of pins and determine what ones I would prefer to own. I decided to select the games for my game room based on what I like to play and what my friends like to play (both collectors and non-collectors).