Tom was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1943. He attended St. Agatha Elementary School in the suburb of Upper Arlington finishing with a magna cum laude in both lunch and recess. He then went to Upper Arlington High School where he earned varsity letters in football, basketball and track along with participation in a host of other student activities. He graduated from the Ohio State University in 1965 with a BA degree in English literature. Along the way he married
Barbara Ann Bain in 1963. After graduation Tom joined a John Hancock agency in Columbus as an agent selling life insurance.
In 1973 he got a case of itchy feet so he, Barbara and their two children, Lisa and Wally, moved to Venice, Florida. “For the next thirty years our family enjoyed all that beachy stuff Florida has to offer...fishing, boating, diving, shelling, golf, etc. You name it, we did it”, Chown says. He mostly stayed in the insurance business and Barbara taught school. Both children graduated from Venice High School and then Florida State University. “After Lisa and then Wally graduated from FSU, we had no choice other than becoming rabid Seminoles. Now grandson Michael is at FSU and his beautiful twin sisters will most likely follow the same path. It’s a helluva thing for two Buckeye alums to admit, but what can you do?”
Both Tom and Barbara retired in 2003 and retired upstate to Dunnellon, a pretty little town in the middle of horse country near Ocala. “I’m too old and busted up to keep at the arduous boating I used to enjoy. I believe I fractured every bone in my body after pounding the waves for thirty years in the Gulf of Mexico and inland bays. Now I putz at gardening but have given up on golf, that terrible exercise in futility surely put on earth by the devil himself”, Chown says. “In desperation to come to grips with my newfound freedom, I turned to writing a family heritage history. It was self-published in 2004 under the name Our Chown Odyssey. I enjoyed the experience so much I decided to attempt a series of historical novels based on the misadventures of my family, using the fictional name Devon.”
The first book, depicting the lives of Chown’s pioneering great grandparents, was published in 2007 under the title Wolves at the Door. “It has received good comments from a number of mid-western newspapers. The second book, Full Circle, continues the story of the fictional Devon family and should be available by early summer 2010”, Chown says.
Tom and Barbara bought a small home in Franklin, NC in 2004 as a refuge from the hot Florida summers. They spend winters in Dunnellon and summers in the mountains. “Its turned into a great routine. I write in our Florida home and mostly edit in the mountains. I don’t know how
that system evolved but it seems to work.”
They now have five grandchildren, three Labrador retrievers and two cats spread throughout the family, not to mention a couple hundred bromeliads to care for. “I guess we’ve mellowed out to that contemplative and appreciative stage in life where we’re extremely aware of how lucky we’ve been. I think we’ve lived through one of the most fortunate times and places to be a human on this planet. I hope my modest efforts at recording the stories of at least one family over this period from the mid-1800’s throughout the 20th century bring some joy, laughs and memories to older readers. I also hope my books help not only my own descendants but any young folks who happen to read them understand what life may have been like for their own forbearers. I’ll probably continue to throw words on pages until I go to Scribblers Heaven, happy with the effort only if I can make that occasional reader happy with my work.
