Different Voices

About the Book

this a kind of travelogue
of where my thoughts have been,
a window opened, if you will,
in hope that some look in
and recognize resemblances,
be they vague or clear,
to places they have journeyed to
in joy or hope or fear.

About the Author

The author was raised in Queens, New York City in a neighborhood called Elmhurst. John was the oldest in a family of four brothers and one sister which had the love and support of decent, hard working parents. He attended St. Bartholomew grammar and Brooklyn Technical High schools before going to New York’s City College, uptown. He completed one semester there and then worked briefly in a few different jobs before enlisting for three years in the U.S. Army. After training he was stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. with the 82nd Airborne Division. He remained there until the spring of 1965 when the division was deployed to the Dominican Republic to quell a revolt against the island’s dictator. He was discharged that summer and returned to New York where, within a week, he met a Scottish émigré at a house party. They married ten months later and in three years were the parents of a son and then a daughter. John spent his working life in New York’s concrete construction industry; a hard-working, knock-around business where room is made for all types and toleration the name of the game providing one can “put in the weight”. In 2007, after forty-two years in good standing as a member of New York’s Reinforcing Ironworker Local 46, he retired. He still lives in the same apartment, with the same woman, and enjoys not only his leisure but a family life greatly enhanced by the arrival of six grandchildren.