 He earned a civil engineering degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, then moved to Wisconsin and became a civil engineer and lumberman.After successfully building a log dam on the Wisconsin River for use by lumber raftsmen, he and his wife, Mary, purchased several tracts of land in Kilbourn, Wisconsin (now Wisconsin Dells).He built a home in town with acreage that stretched northward up River Road which included the site of present-day Meadowbrook Resort.