Paul Stenquist:  

I left Mendel High School not quite ready for the rigors of academia or life for that matter, so I spent a couple of years goofing off at Bogen Junior College. Next was Roosevelt University, which probably saved me in some ways. Went to grad school at the University of Chicago and took an MA in English Lit. Got married the same year to Marlene Prinz, who is a Francis grad. I was always a car geek, and as a south side boy, I naturally gravitated to drag racing. For quite a few years I tried to balance college and, later, teaching, with some serious racing. I was crew chief for several fuel funny cars, and at one time I had the world's fastest Corvette at 237 mph. That was a hoot, but it didn't mix well with marriage or real life, so I called it quits in September, 1976. After grad school, I taught in Chicago Public Schools for nine years. I quit on Thursday, March 7, 1980, when Chicago stopped paying the teachers and moved to New York to work as a magazine writer for Hearst Publications the next day. While cranking out auto copy for Motor and Popular Mechanics mags at Hearst I ran into an ad guy from Bozell and found out that writers could make a lot more money if they sold their soul to the devil. Signed on at Bozell to write ad copy for Jaguar. In the years that followed I wrote advertising for Mercedes-Benz, Lincoln, Buick, Jaguar, Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep. I produced somewhere around 100 television commercials, and traveled th...Expand for more