Todd Bendler:  

I loved high school. I started working at a place called Audioland while still a student there. Before I graduated the Viet Nam war was raging and I did not want to go there. I knew many who went, a number who did not come back and those who did seemed changed, deeply so. I wanted to avoid the damned thing, so I joined the Air Force Reserve and spent six years doing that. Audioland ended up quite a big deal and I learned how to do advertising as part of that. In fact advertising became my career. I wound up as a creative guy, making ads. I spent a number of years at a place called BBDO, but started a number of my own businesses, all doing communication stuff of one kind or another involving the car business. I married once and had three children. I married again and had two more. I've been paying child support since 1977 and in fact spoke with wife number two today who thought it might be nice if she added a few more thousand. I figure I'll be paying to the day I die. So, I had all these kids and a well paying career and houses and cars and traveled and all that good stuff. Then around the 911 attacks my business just evaporated. The next thing I know I loose everything -- wife, kids, house, car, et al -- and wind up living at my Dad's house back on Lincoln Street in Mt. Clemen...Expand for more