We’re all a function of our lives, and it seldom is just like a normal path. I’m the son of two polish immigrants. My mother was a freedom fighter terrorist in the Polish uprising, 62 days in the insurrection of Warsaw. She was captured and went to a concentration camp with the German Nazis. My father was in the Polish military, got captured by the Russians, got sent to a Gulag in Siberia.

When the allies were formed, he was liberated to Iraq. As the years went by and the war ended, they ended up in Italy and met, and both of them went to medical school there. Once they graduated, they had to find a country. They couldn’t go back to Poland, so they immigrated to the United States with nothing. Coming through Ellis Island, they had one suitcase between them, but they had the knowledge they had.

So, I was taught from birth that you need to learn, get an education. I was genetically bred to be a fighter, and I was taught that you have to make a difference, and my dad summed it up on his deathbed last May. When my daughter asked him, “How did you make it?” and he goes, “Ingenuity. With ingenuity there is no problem that can’t be solved,” and as my mother said, “You have to have a passion for everything you do in life.” So, through all kinds of things, I ended up in law school, ended up fighting Goliath, and 35 years later, and maybe 35 pounds and gray hair later, I’m still here.