John's art credentials span forty eight years of working for and supporting the not for profit arts in his home state of Oregon and throughout the Country.  He has chaired both the Oregon Arts Commission and Oregon Humanities, is a singer and an ardent reader.

​

John played guard on Medford High’s State Championship football team, played in the Shrine All-Star Game and was Oregon’s High School Athlete/Scholar of the year. This was in 1960. Eons ago. He also went out for the golf team each year at Stanford and never made it. A lifetime later, he is a competitive rower with a drawer full of medals and the quixotic hope that his career as an athlete will never end.

​

With degrees from Stanford, Chicago and Oregon in American History, Christian Ethics and Law, John’s views on the First Amendment first became nationally known when he was Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1989-92. That was the time, during the first Bush Administration, when congress got more mail about the artworks of Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano than in did about the Savings and Loan Crisis. Go figure.

A life-long trial lawyer, he is retired and lives in Medford, Oregon.

He is hard at work on a sequel to Blood and Faith.