About Me

Wikipedia says this about me, "Duane Burghard is an American businessman, veteran and politician." While all true, I'm delighted to add the words "and writer" to that sentence.

If you want to know about me as a person, I must refer you back to my written work on this blog, because who I really am is a sum of my experiences and thoughts. But for those who want the facts, I was born in Evanston, IL in the summer of 1965. I grew up predominantly in the north suburbs of Chicago where I eventually attended and graduated from the somewhat famous New Trier Township High School.

I attended college at the University of Missouri-Columbia on a Navy ROTC Scholarship where I graduated with a BA in Political Science and earned my Commission as a United States Naval Officer in 1987.

While I was on active duty I developed a deep and abiding passion for Apple's Macintosh computer. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life when I joined the Navy, but from the day I touched my first Mac, I knew what I wanted to do it with. While I was on active duty I started writing software, specifically a program to assist young Navy and Coast Guard officers with their primary job of  administrative management. This program served as the basis for my first company, and started me off on my life as a "serial entrepreneur" (the subject of blog entries in the early months of 2015). In the years after leaving the Navy (in 1991) I started 17 different businesses, but I am best known for MacXprts, a large Apple dealer that eventually included 12 retail stores and dozens of consultant based representative firms.

Somewhere in there I ran for Congress, twice (I'll write about those experiences someday). In 1992 I participated in what I still call the "no kids, no mortgage, no money, no chance, but lots of passion and time to kill" campaign, where I earned an Independent nomination (so I was on the November ballot) but was unceremoniously and unsurprisingly crushed. Then in 2006, I ran a far more serious campaign. That year I won the Democratic Party's nomination, raised more money than the four previous challengers to my incumbent had raised (combined), got more votes than any previous challenger, and was credited with keeping him busy enough to get a few "downballot" people elected (I lost 62-38, just short of the 40% mark I would have needed to ensure major party backing in 2008).

I've done lots of other things of course (for example, I spent five years in the lay ministry and I've had a number of other interesting jobs and experiences ... again, you can see the blog for some of those), but I think that hits the highlights.

Personally, I started college, joined the Navy and met my wife all in the same week (late August, 1983). Mara and I have been married since 1989 (we were married on December 22, which, if you look it up, was literally the coldest day of the 20th Century in Columbia, Missouri). We have two teenage daughters of our own (Taylor and Jordan) and two others who are grown and who we consider daughters (Kristina, who is a Children's Urologist in Koln, Germany, and Alexandra, who is a Nurse in Cologne, Germany).

I won't list the vast bulk of my interests here because, again, I want my writing on the blog to speak for me. I will note that I am an avid swimmer and have been my entire life. Several years ago I had a major back injury which resulted in having to travel to Europe to have multiple Artificial Disc Replacement (ADR) surgery (using parts that are still in clinical trials in the US and a procedure that is not even performed in our country) ... so now I swim every day for therapy as well as exercise.

I love the water. I love to free dive and scuba dive near my relatives in Hawaii, and before my back fell apart I loved to kayak on the lazy rivers and lakes of northwestern Michigan in the summer.

I have a great interest in science and science fiction, though the vast bulk of what I read now is either online articles or magazines (e.g. MIT Technology Review, Scientific American). And I have what most people agree is one of the broadest and most eclectic tastes in music of anyone alive, though if I had to be trapped on a desert island and could take only one artist's music with me, Jeff Lynne would be an easy first choice.

Finally, I'm not a big believer in having free time, but when I do, I do try to keep up with Doctor Who (I'm not as big a fan of the series reboot, but I keep up ... if you want to engage me in a Tom Baker Doctor Who trivia contest however, you'd better come prepared). I also enjoy watching the Super Rugby league (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia) on weekends in the spring and summer ... but that, as I like to end several of my blog posts, is another story ........