I was just about to leave camp at the end of the season. I turned 21 that summer and was the assistant head of the waterfront. Dad called asking me to be the president of his bakery distributing company. His partner had stolen $80,000 from the company and he was putting the pieces back together. We were down to four drivers from 15 and were renting our trucks. For a short time we almost made a profit. We even kept the union out in Youngstown, OH. But we ran out of our $5000 kitty and had to close. I turned 22 a little later, got a job, went back to school, eventually got married and later divorced, worked for the Ohio Youth Commission for 14 years, started my own brokerage business, married again ... got on with my life. I still feel guilty that I didn't pull it off, sometimes.

       Dad lost most of his businesses. He was down to one hardware store. He came up with ideas to build indoor ski slopes, later over 200 ideas for recycling, and he sold me on his ideas. I spent thousands of hours talking to people, writing letters, drawing plans, reality testing things, writing The New Recycling story and searching for money ... always searching for money that almost happened several times, but never actually.

       Although it was a part-time effort, for years trying to help dad pursue his dreams distracted me from my brokerage business, from developing Chimorel, from time with my wife and kids. There are very sound ideas in the recycling program we developed, but writing letters to congress people, company presidents and hundreds of others was a waste of time. I stopped this effort, began actual recycling programs at a few companies, recycled about 200 computers donated to Chimorel and took tangible steps that work on a small, doable scale. The recycling program became part of Chimorel, instead of a distraction.