Author Biography
The author, a 79 year old white man, is a graduate of East Aurora High School in East Aurora, New York, the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, & Yale Law School and Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut. He grew up in a family that was part of a Presbyterian congregation in East Aurora. Religion was not an important element in his family, although blessings were given at meals and, as a child, he learned the familiar prayer beginning Now I lay me down to sleep. The family member having the most involvement in religion was his paternal grandmother, who was an active member of a Methodist congregation in Medina, New York. When he had graduated from high school, his father died while he was a beginning freshman at the University of Rochester. It was only after that time that he learned that his mother was from a Jewish family in Gloucester, Mass., and therefore, that, according to Jewish custom, he was Jewish, although knowing nothing about that faith and never having attended any services in that faith. His earliest recollection of religion is having attended Sunday School at the East Aurora Presbyterian Church and seeing pictures of people with robes in the desert in the time of Jesus and wondering what these strange, long-ago people had to do with his own life. In 1951 he heard a lecture on humanism by Julian Huxley at Rochester which caused him to self-identify as an atheist. Although he has pursued an education path concentrating in the humanities and liberal arts, he showed early competence in science and math and briefly flirted in college with the possibility of pursuing courses in science and math, but was then discouraged by the difficulty of college-level calculus. Nevertheless, he has pursued a life-long interest in reading about all branches of science. After graduating from law school, he practiced law in New Haven for eleven years, but then, after taking some art courses and becoming an amateur painter, began his education at Yale School of Architecture at the age of 36. After graduation, he commenced a career in construction and architecture. At present, Mr. Mack is a practicing residential architect and construction arbitrator. He is also active in the Connecticut Bar Association and the New Haven chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The author lives in Guilford, Connecticut with his wife of 57 years. He has two married sons and seven grandchildren. This is his first book.
