
In the Beginning
I was conceived in the Catholic Fashion in the spring of 1968 and came screaming into the world on December 11th, already convinced that there was something seriously wrong going on around here.
My mom was Janice Ellen Brinkman The second youngest child of an immense clan of Springfielders, she had fled to the south of the state seeking opportunities that didn’t involve… well Springfield. My Dad was Douglas Anthony Doench, eldest scion of the third generation of Doench families to inhabit the western hillsides of the city Longfellow coined Queen of the West Cincinnati, Ohio.

They would meet behind the mixing boards of a long forgotten radio station in Portsmouth, well before the quiet little river town was ground zero for the Opioid Epidemic Documentary Epidemic. After what their letters describe as a “three month long date,” they became engaged and were eventually wed on May 25th, 1968. A very small me, primarily concerned with growing a respiratory system would have a front row seat.

Though they would have a tumultuous marriage at times, they would love each other very much. Dad had an almost forty year career in radio and communications education, most famously as the news director at WUBE in Cincinnati. Mom would juggle several careers around making seven more of us over the years. They had been married for 31 years when Dad met his physics related demise in November of 1999. Mom is still with us as of this writing, because Brinkman ladies are fucking impossible to kill.

Formative Years
More to come!