In Elementary and High School, I always wanted to be a priest. I would always be an altar server, Lector, and Eucharistic Minister every chance I could. In Short, I was so fascinated with priests that I just simply could not wait to be one.
     When I inquired with the priest who was the Vocations Director for the Diocese of Springfield, IL in 1994, he informed me that I needed a Bachelor's Degree and come back to see him. So I thought that it would get my Bachelor's Degree and then enter the seminary. During College, I began to fall in love with something else…Radio-TV Broadcasting. During my college years, I even rejected the suggestion of others that I should enter the religious life instead of going into the Broadcasting Field.
      I have had numerous people over the years, beginning in my later years of college, tell me that my true vocation in life was that of a Roman Catholic Priest. The vast majority of those me who told me that my true vocation in life was as a Priest I do not know and/or never met before and without them ever knowing that I had felt that Jesus was calling me to the Priesthood..
      They would come up to me after mass or, if I was wearing a suit (suitcoat, Shirt, Pants) and a cross, have mistaken me for a priest on numerous occasions … and I was wearing the average suit worn my most laity (men). Even the News Director at WEIU-TV in Charleston, IL in the late 1990s, Ms. Kelley Daniels, was trying to persuade me to follow my true calling. I ignored her at the time because I had thought that my calling was something else…Radio-TV Broadcasting.
     It took a year and a half of being unemployed (After losing my first job in Broadcasting) for Jesus to get my attention that my true vocation in life was to serve God and Jesus as a Roman Catholic Priest, or as the saying goes "knock me upside the head with a (proverbial) hammer."