Jeff was born of a Texan father and a Canadian mother in the era before cell phones, microwave ovens or man had walked on the moon. He is the middle sibling of three brothers. In an uncanny case of foreshadowing, he lived three years in Puglia as a child when his father was serving in the US Air Force. As a teenager, he moved to Nova Scotia, Canada. There he went to an Acadian university to study biochemistry, with his foreign language credits completed in the English language. Eventually, he decided upon a career path as a veterinarian, attending vet school in Prince Edward Island, Canada and subsequently a graduate degree in microbiology, in the USA.
Christianity and church attendance has played a role all along this journey. Jeff was baptized as an infant and later confirmed in the Methodist church as an adolescent, and has joined several different Christian communities in the different locations where he lived. Most recently, prior to moving to Rome, he was living in rural (Wooster) Ohio for about 16 years. Jeff married Susan Vaughn Grooters in 2015 and at that time started attending the Presbyterian Church in Wooster, Ohio. They started attending St. Pauls regularly in 2018, at the invitation of another member, a short while after we moved to Rome to stay indefinitely.
Jeff enjoys being a husband to Susan and a father to his two adult children, Harrison and Chance, from a previous marriage. Both boys are currently in graduate school- Harrison in Ohio, and Chance in Montreal. Jeff works at FAO. Susan is also a scientist (epidemiologist), so dinner conversations a our house can be considered either quite boring or entertaining, depending upon your perspective and background, especially during the time of the pandemic. In his (spare?) time Jeff likes to cook and play with his dog, Ella, and to take naps on Saturday afternoons.