Ernest Mahar

Ernie Mahar graduated on time from the prestigious and very parochial St. Mary’s High School of Royal Oak, Michigan in 1971. After a year of classical training as a short-order cook, he matriculated at the equally prestigious local Community College, Orchard Ridge campus, which he alternately referred to at the time as a “glorified high school with a budget” and a “finishing school for morons.” After orientation at the campus, he requested and was granted a refund on his admission fee, which he later explained to his mother as a move that had prevented her from wasting a lot of money on a worthless exercise.

It’s probably important to note that he had formerly passed up on a partial scholarship offer to the future NCAA Division II football powerhouse, Grand Valley State University the previous year, afraid that his absence might tempt his high school sweetheart to seek alternative relational opportunities. In hindsight, this was a big mistake. Actually, he knew it was a mistake at the time, but there’s no accounting for the stupidity of youth.

After marrying his high school sweetheart and making the quintessential error of moving “out-state” to the rural “Thumb” area of Michigan and going into an ill-fated business venture with his father-in-law, he then failed in his own first small business foray, and relocated back to “civilization.”

Once firmly re-ensconced in Metro-Detroit, he set out on an equally ill-fated twenty year odyssey in the wine and liquor industry. During this period our hero fathered three adorable daughters, which he saw more of after the inevitable divorce, than he had before. Although becoming a highly respected manager, merchandiser and trainer with a good palate and many connections, he ultimately also failed in a subsequent second business venture, and then became an avid listener of the Rush Limbaugh radio program.

Firmly ensconced now in middle age and realizing that his greatest accomplishment to-date was having attended twenty consecutive Detroit Tigers opening day baseball games, and realizing that his middling Class-C and Co-Ed softball career was coming to an unseemly end, he began to self-reflect and re-assess.

Eventually, as most members of the baby-boomer generation did, this narcissistic egomaniac then decided to make a mid-life change. So he moved east to free-load off of his brother for a couple of years in New Jersey. Wearing out his welcome, he finally used some of his brother’s connections to enable him to embark on a new career in the computer re-selling business. Having never sat in front of a computer previously, he was obviously the perfect choice for that position.

He learned well and eventually found employment in the staffing industry. This came about from a referral from a former co-worker who had turned him on to an opportunity, which eventually led to not only his gainful employment for the next fifteen years, but to a marriage and a fourth daughter, by way of said former co-worker.

Today he is “on sabbatical” from this stellar career, after having remodeled the house, having undergone a double-bypass heart surgery and finally, finishing this book. He works out most every day, eats a healthy diet as dictated by his wife, the “food Nazi,” and fulfills his current role as Mr. Mom.

“This has been the hardest thing that I have ever done,” he commented about writing this book, but he didn’t mean it. The hardest thing “he’s” ever done was to write this auto-biographical blurb in the third-person.