“I was born in 1925 in a small rural town in the Midwest called Seward, Omaha. Life was simple but not easy. My parents, both children of immigrants, believed in hard work, personal responsibility, and self-reliance—values that shaped who I became as a man. We didn’t have much in the way of money, but what we lacked in material wealth we made up for in moral richness. My father was a farmer, and my mother tended the house and raised my four siblings and me with a firm, but loving hand. We were a proud, quiet family—people of action, not words. That was how the world was then. You didn’t talk about doing the right thing; you just did it…”