John Mares:  

If high school were a barometer of one's success, I would be flipping burgers. I attended Tuley High in 1965-1966, and graduated from Schurz in 1968. Three days after high school graduation I was in the Army with the 101st Airborne, and on my 19th birthday I was in Vietnam. I was in the Army for 36 months, 18 of them in Nam. Four of the members of my platoon are on the Vietnam War Memorial Wall. The adjustment coming home was not easy, in part because none of my high school friends served in the military and some became the Dick Cheney type. Thanks to the GI bill, I graduated from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1976, and bought my first home in Minnetonka, MN in 1978.I succeeded in sales for 28 years in radio and as a sales manager of an alternative rock station in Minneapolis when Clear Channel merged all the stations. I changed careers and sold cranes and high reach lifting equipm...Expand for more