Tom Ryan:  

Life, eh? Well, following my Escape from Wheaton North (sorry, I could not flee that place fast enough), I went to the College of DuPage. Covered some high school basketball games for the Wheaton Daily Journal, which led to getting hired as sports editor of the COD school paper. Due to staff turnover, I ended up the year as managing editor. After two years, transferred to the University of Chicago where it only took me 3 1/2 more years to emerge with a degree in English, which was about as marketable then as it probably is now. Got hired as a reporter at the now-defunct (I had nothing to do with it...) City News Bureau of Chicago, a historic training ground/boot camp for Chicago reporters. In three years there, I got to cover some cool stories, like the night in 1981 that Chicago's Mayor Jane Byrne announced she was moving into the Cabrini-Green public housing project to protest violence there; the 1983 campaign and election of Harold Washington as Chicago's first black mayor; a couple of local appearances by President Reagan; the 1982 Tylenol poisonings/murders; the 1984 Illinois primary election; the murder trial of a gang member accused of shooting a candidate for the Chicago City Council; and too many crimes, fires, lawsuits and mayhem of all sorts to even recall. This led to a job writing press releases and news articles at the University of Chicago and attempts (successful enough...) at getting the school's professors and students interviewed on TV and in print. Three years of that and I got hired at Lake Forest College in a similar capacity (now with the title of Director of Public Affairs). Four years of that and I got a job at the University of Illinois at Chicago (in our high school days it was known as "Circle Campus"). I publicized medical research, health professional education, patient treatment and, later, regular university news (a highlight: the day in 1996 that a local TV reporter called to say the FBI ...Expand for more