Writing is a fundamental part of my being. I write to think. I write to learn. I write to teach. I write to make sense of the world and my place in it. I write to rejoice. I write to grieve, a process that helps me cope with the loss of two sons—one to cancer, one to war. On this site you will find a variety of writing types—from books to articles to blogs. And a range of topics.
My writing is shaped by my life’s journey, along which I have played many roles. The most important: husband and father. My wife Donna and I raised three wonderful sons: Josh, Ben, and Nate. Josh’s death (1993) and Nate’s death (2008) immersed me in the practical and intellectual world of grief and grief support. You can see that running through the sections of this website, especially the one titled Grief and Resilience.
It is also embedded in fiction, a trilogy of historical novels that will trace a family’s experience with the wounds of war, grief, and resilience, and corruption in sports. See the section titled: The Commissioner.
The sports interest comes from my work in that industry across four decades—as a player at Bowdoin College, a coach at Amherst College, an administrator at the ECAC, a founder and board member with Seacoast United, and an NCAA faculty athletics representative at UNH. The practical married the theoretical early at UMass, where I earned graduate degrees in sport management, history, and sport studies.
My academic writing culminated in a big history of hockey, co-authored with my friend Andy Holman. See more on that and other hockey writing in the section titled Hockey and History.
I have also published articles, reviews, and books on other topics in sport history and sport management. See those in the section titled Sport Studies and in the list of publications below.
I also love to teach. I taught sport management and sport studies courses at the University of Washington, Robert Morris University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of New Hampshire, where I retired in 2014 as Professor of Kinesiology and Affiliate Professor of History. I still give occasional talks about hockey history and about Arlington National Cemetery, where Nate is buried. As a UNH professor friend said once, you really don’t know a topic until you teach it. And that requires both learning and writing.
