John Waszak’s Bio: Fifty Years on One Page

            I live in Corrales, New Mexico with my wife, Jean, where we own and operate a small, upscale grocery store, the Frontier Mart.  We’ve been married 25 years and we’ve raised four children, three of mine and one of hers.  Three of our four children, and six of our ten grandchildren live nearby in Albuquerque.

            Corrales is a village on the Rio Grande northwest of Albuquerque.  Someone wrote a song that says Corrales has 1000 people, 2000 dogs and 3000 registered horses.  But now the village has grown to 8000 + people who are living alongside a growing population of roadrunners and coyotes.  The dog and horse population has also grown, along with the number of ostriches, sheep, goats, emus, alpacas . . . but I digress.

            We are very proud of our children.  Christine is a graphic artist who runs her own business and does advertising art for local magazines and businesses.  She’s a single mom with one daughter, Helena.  She builds web sites, and she’s an accomplished scenic artist who works in oils and acrylics.  www.krysteenwaszak.com 

            In the early eighties my son, David, spent two years as a pro on the Hogan Golf Tour.  It was a hard life, so he started pounding nails instead of golf balls.  Since 1991 he has been a designer and builder of custom homes.  He often wins top honors in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe Parade of Homes.  Recently he won the “Grande Hacienda” award for a $3,000,000 home he designed and built in Santa Fe.  He and his wife, Christie, have two daughters, Madeline and Juliann. www.waszakhomes.com

            Mary Lynn lives near her mother in Florida.  She is a cosmetologist with four children: Brian, Bradley, Brittany, and Marcus.

            Shannon Jackson is my stepson whom I raised from the age of five.  He graduated from the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in Economics and Business, then went to flight school.  He is now a pilot for American Eagle Airlines.  He and his wife, Elizabeth, have three sons: Alexander, Nikolas, and Brian. Elizabeth graduated from the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in Architecture and is now a stay at home mom. She has a successful on-line business designing and selling paper crafts.www.haruoriginals.com

            My wife, Jean, is an award winning writer who has taught creative writing in Santa Fe, Taos, and at the UNM Honors Seminars.  She and her partner, Susan, founded and taught Focus on Fiction Seminars. She has been writing her newspaper column, “Reflections From a Country Store” since 1993, and many of her columns have been reprinted in books, magazines and other newspapers.

            Here are some highlights about how I landed in New Mexico: After high school I went to Miami of Ohio on a football scholarship, but dropped out after a knee injury in my junior year.  My dad thought more maturity wouldn’t hurt me, so he volunteered me for the U.S. Army.  I married Sandra Isabel and the army sent us to Germany.

            In 1961, after the army, I was working as an apprentice artist for Jack Waszak Studios when I got a call from the Cleveland Browns inviting me to try out.  I signed a contract for the league minimum $7,800 to be a punter.  The condition was that I also had to make it as a back-up fullback for Jim Brown.  I got an A+ for punting and a C as a fullback.  After two weeks in training camp I was released.  So much for my 15 minutes of fame.

            Soon Sandy and I had three children.  We lived in Rocky River and I bounced around in sales: General Foods, 3-M Company, and General Cable, all the while remodeling our old farm house on evenings and weekends.  I liked working with my hands and eventually started Rocky River Building Company where I designed and built custom kitchens and additions.

            Sandy and I divorced in 1974 and I gained custody of my children.  It was a busy time running the business, rasing the children, and coaching 5th through 8th grade football, hockey and baseball.

            In 1978 I sold my home, packed up the kids and a very large dog, and headed west to New Mexico where I had visited my sister some years before.  I liked the west, and I got back in the construction business as a subcontractor doing finish carpentry and painting.  One day I walked into a little grocery store in Corrales and saw Jean.  I thought she was just a clerk, and she thought I was just a shoplifter because I hung around so long.  I soon learned that she owned the store, and she learned that I was just flirting.  I repaired her broken air conditioner.  She adopted my dog.  The rest is history.

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