I started out as a child ...

I am the first-born son of Hans and Gladys Riess, who immigrated to this country in 1950, coming off the boat with little more than enough money to survive and a willingness to work hard to achieve the American Dream … a hope of prosperity and a better life for their children. They left behind all of their family and friends, with little chance to return to the life they had known.

Mom was 3 months pregnant with my sister Cathie at the time, I was born in 1953, and my brother Martin in 1956. Dad started working as a salesperson for a chemical company but eventually opened his own business, which he operated for 20 years before his passing in 1979. Mom stayed at home and took care of us until we all got a little older, and she then became a real estate salesperson, working for several different offices in the community over the years. We quickly learned to become self-dependent, doing our own laundry and making meals for ourselves.

While I certainly didn’t recognize it at the time, we were the classic middle-class working American family. We took vacations at nice places during years of prosperity (Ludington, Michigan, or Sarasota, Florida) and stayed home in years that were not. My father worked hard, leaving the house in the very early morning and often being home just in time or just late for dinner. He drove Fords and Chevies, and my mom’s first car was a Ford Fairlane with “three-on-the-tree” stick shift, which we kept until it just had no life in it anymore.

I have never forgotten that my mother and father provided for us everything we seemed to need. My parents were ordinary people. My parents were amazing people. We were never without food or clothing, and while we may never have had the “best” that life had to offer, we always had what we needed. In reflection, life was different then, and the simplest proof of that was the fact that I knew everyone on both sides of my street for several blocks, and they all knew me.

I have never been afraid of work, and aside from earning money from the neighbors by shoveling snow and cutting grass, I needed a job, so I had a paper route. Back then, there were three daily papers in Chicago, The Tribune, The Sun Times, and The Daily News, with each of them having a morning and an afternoon edition.

During this time, I joined the Boy Scouts and earned merit badges to eventually become a Life Scout. I attended Camp MaKaJaWan for several summers and earned my “Tote & Chip,” which was the training to properly use a pocket knife and axe or hatchet. Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent are the 12 “Scout Laws,” which I learned and which remain as some of the rules that still help govern my life.

I was confirmed into the Presbyterian Church when I was 13, and was also a member of the church choir. In the spring of 1967, the choir did a mission tour to economically depressed areas in the South, which was an uplifting as well as an enlightening experience to see that not everyone lived as well as my family did. I am a Christian, and I have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior.

In the summer between eighth grade and my freshman year in high school, I worked as a caddy at one of the local clubs. It was hard work but good money, and you could make $36 a day if you carried a double and did two rounds the same day. That was 1967, and $36 a day was more money than many full-time people would make.

In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I worked at a community restaurant, Phil Johnson’s, which was a very popular place and was always busy. I worked 10- and 12-hour shifts washing dishes, and while there was a machine that I would put one rack of dishes in at a time, it was hot, hard, and dirty work and required constant hustle to keep enough clean dishes available for the customers. After several months, I was “promoted” and asked to come in early (I still had my dishwashing responsibilities) to make their peach salad, which was composed of one peach half filled with a scoop of cottage cheese, all on top of a large leaf of lettuce. It was repetitive, mundane work, but I didn’t care because I was making money. I didn’t know it then, but I had been recognized for my dedication and hard work—came to work every day, on time, and did what I was told.

During my sophomore and junior years in high school, I took work in the high school cafeteria, which required me to run the “continuous” washer during my lunch hour, scrub pots and pans after school ended, and then walk home when all the work was done.

I joined the Explorer Scouts in the late winter of my sophomore year. The Post was formed into a Search & Rescue Post, and we all learned how to SCUBA dive, learned first aid, safety, and traffic control, and would help the local police department during special events like the July 4th fireworks. I was one of the founders of the Explorers President Conference and helped arrange the first Presidents Expo in Gurnee.

Today, I’m married to Mary Ann, have two grown children, Sarah and Rachel, and own my own recruiting business, which places information technology professionals on a permanent and contract basis. I have always worked and I have always volunteered or contributed my time to others. I have lived for more than 20 years in Hawthorn Woods and lived 10 years in Niles before that.
My involvement in politics in the 51st District began in the mid ‘90s when I formed a grassroots organization called ACRE to oppose the development by North Barrington of a Woodfield-size mall at Old McHenry and Rt. 12 (Rand Road). Clearly, this was not an appropriate site for this type of development. The total area of Woodfield was over 200 acres and this site was only 100 acres. I began gathering support of other residents in Hawthorn Woods, North Barrington, and Lake Zurich, and over the next 2 years I led the team in the defeat of this proposal. We all worked our regular jobs while taking on a significant workload with almost nonexistent financial resources to get all this work done.

A year later, Hawthorn Woods attempted the same proposal, and after numerous public hearings and constant negotiations, we defeated the proposal again. It was clear to me that the trustees did not have the experience to understand the impact to the community, and the decision to run in the April 1999 elections was an easy one for me. I defeated the incumbent trustee and was reelected in 2003 and again in 2007.