Family: I’m married to Brenda Himrich. We got married on the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis on May 11, 1996. Brenda grew up on the river in Winona, and I like bridges, so it seemed like a good place to get hitched—at least better than one of those drive-through chapels in Las Vegas, which was our second choice.

By marrying Brenda, I became stepfather to a cat, Ponce, who is turning 16 this summer. There are some couple pictures of him on my web site, since he’s the most photogenic member of the family.

Something memorable/highlights about your days or years at Marshall-U High: I got into trouble a lot.

What have you been doing since then? Getting into trouble. In June of 1977, I got really drunk at a Twins game and, on a dare, climbed the left-field foul pole. That’s the last time I got arrested, although it took me another seven years before I quit drinking (so I’ve been dry for nearly 19 years and arrest-free for more than a quarter-century).

After high school, I went into radio broadcasting because of my interest in sports. Over the next couple years, I worked as a disc jockey/staff announcer/sportscaster/sports director at radio stations in DeSoto, Missouri, and Sauk Centre, Minnesota. I started college at the University of Minnesota in 1977 and graduated at the end of 1981 with a business degree. I worked in sales during the 1980s and also started writing during that time. Writing was a constructive outlet for my interest in baseball, and in 1988 I had my first book published, On to Nicollet, a history of the Minneapolis Millers, the minor league team that was here before the Twins moved to Minnesota. As a result of that, I got a job writing for Construction Bulletin, a weekly trade magazine. I was there for two years, then for two years at Lerner Publications, a children’s book publisher, before coming to the state health department in 1993. I’m a health educator, doing various communication work, for the state’s drinking water program.

I’ve continued writing books, primarily about sports history, for adults and children. One of the books I did, Electrifying Medicine, was with Brenda before we were married. It’s a science book for young readers, focusing on uses of electricity in medicine. Brenda has a science background, so it was helpful to have her as a co-author.

We like to travel around the U. S. and Canada as well as other places. Two years ago, we went on a baseball tour of Cuba. Brenda’s pretty fluent in Spanish, but she still had trouble keeping up with them in Cuba, since they talk really fast. In early August, Brenda is going to a week-long Spanish immersion camp, so feel free to talk Spanish to her at the reunion.

One of my recent hobbies has been visiting the graves of notable people. I’ve been to all the graves of dead presidents, and a couple years ago I finished my quest to get to every grave of a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. This past year I’ve focused on graves in Minnesota because I’m doing a book for Minnesota Historical Society Press on the gravesites of notable Minnesotans. It’s a great way to learn history (even more stimulating than listening to Mr. Baker).