Lee Daniel Quinn's Biography
Maze Creator had the privilege of being visited by Author, Lee Daniel Quinn. Here is his autobiography. It has come to our attention that Mr. Quinn has passed. Our thoughts go out to his family.
Autobiography of Author
Lee Daniel Quinn
(Author of many Maze books)
I was married in 1955 to my current Britbride, Margaret. We have 3 children: Victoria Royle (Bonkey), Candlish, Conrad Michael Quinn, and Mary Elizabeth (MB) Goldberg.
We Quinn's have 4 grandchildren: Michael (from Conrad), Zoe (from Bonkey) and Alyssa & Brittany (from MB). Victoria married an Englishman so the Queen's books are balanced as she lives there today.
I was born in The Bronx, NY in 1929 and lived there in my teens. Margaret, was born in Bess o' th' Barn, a suburb of Manchester (England) and lived at home until enlisting in the Wrens -- the woman's British naval arm.
I grew up in a very "mixed bag" of teenagers who had one thing to link them -- they were all what today would be called "nerds." We were all into High School chemistry and physics and all worked and hung out at a bicycle rental and general fixit shop called "Fuller's" where we were into all sorts of nerdy pranks. We had, Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Black, kids -- growing up with this group provided me with a lifelong ability to get along with all sorts of people.
Going to work out of High School, I worked for the New York Central Railroad in the passenger department. The last place was the ticket windows in Grand Central Terminal where I met Margaret, sold her a ticket and lost my heart to her after a 3-year international courtship.
There followed a series of transportation-related jobs, such as United Airlines as reservation agent and ticket agent; various retail travel agents (in New York, Detroit, and Indianapolis); wholesale travel suppliers in New York; and for a travel club where I was the direct mail manager.
Margaret and I opened a home-based typesetting business in New Jersey and this occupied both of us for about 20 years. We set type for Rutgers University publications and other local organizations. Working with a computer programmer, I designed an early typesetting program which we sold. I edited and published a local newspaper for about five years. I also offered his services as a communications consultant to small businesses in the area.
On weekends I sold my non-objective art at various malls in the area, winning a prize at the big Greenwich Village (NYC) art show. Because I used to do pen and ink doodles, a local bookstore owner asked me to produce and publish a book of mazes which were popular at the time. This lead -- over 20 years -- to producing a dozen complex maze books, most of which were published by Dover Press and are still in print.
Over the years, with my love of words, I began to collect odd definitions of ordinary words which I wove into a 142 page book containing 5,000+ of these definitions. Because I didn't have the citations for each item, I could not publish Quinn's Devious Dictionary, so I give it away for a $25 donation.
I also acted as campaign coordinator for a local Democratic organization, climaxing in his election as mayor for our community.
When the typesetting business slowed down, I was asked to join the local municipal government as communications coordinator. I held this position for 4 years, during which time I set up the municipal cable television station.
After the mayor declined to run for a second term, I was asked by the County government to come in and be a part of a team which set up a 2.5 million dollar Fire Academy. After 10 years I retired because there was so little to do.
We are in our 46th year of marriage and I credit this to the fact that Margaret still laughs at my jokes. After I retired, I went crazy out of boredom for a while. That is until I discovered conversing with other emailers. I established the two daily e-columns and that saved my mind. In the meantime I had a slight stroke that left me with a shaking hand, but not for typing -- just writing. Then I developed an intestinal condition that keeps me close to home -- but not isolated. I am also the doyen of a words discussion group called ABOUT-WORDS.
All together, I'm quite addicted to the computer -- but quite happy.
