Born and raised in Fort Wayne IN, I am one of a family of ten children. My education began at Saint Charles elementary school following which time I attended and graduated from Bishop Dwenger High School in 1982. Following graduation, I applied and was accepted to Indiana University with the plan to become a Radiologist. What I didn’t realize was that God had a different plan for me. During the summer of 1982 I experienced a life altering event that changed the trajectory of my future. A significant knee injury that required surgical intervention sidelined my plans to attend the fall semester. Instead of attending classes, I had surgery and then embarked on a grueling rehab process that captured my attention and led to changing my major to Physical Therapy.  I re-enrolled at Indiana University, finished my prerequisite classes, and was accepted to Chicago Medical School from which I graduated in June of 1988 with my degree in Physical Therapy.

Following graduation, I was offered a position at Parkview Memorial Hospital and spent my first year as a clinician learning and realizing what I did NOT know.  I was not getting the outcomes that I wanted from my treatment interventions. It was then that I decided to embark in a new direction and went back to Illinois where I had the opportunity to work  and learn the Norwegian approach to Manual Therapy, in a supervised clinical training program, under the direction of Paul Hughes PT.

I credit my time during this supervised clinical training program for becoming the clinician that I am today. It was here that I learned the process of differential diagnosis, manual therapy, personalized care, and empowering patients with the goal to restore the mechanics of the musculoskeletal system to allow for normal freedom of motion.

Following my return to Fort Wayne IN I was recruited by a private practice and it was in this setting that I found my passion. This led me in 2004 to opening my own private practice with the assistance of some of my colleagues and for 15 years I enjoyed both administration and patient care while never losing sight of the focus and my passion for assisting others with their physical functional deficits.  This was also when I had an epiphany that there was more to treatment than just addressing an injury and the associated pain that accompanies it.  I realized, that as a physical therapist,  my treatment philosophy needed to create an environment for healing which does not just encompass treatment of the injury but rather treatment of the whole person.  I then made the decision to take a step further and adopt the philosophy of Doctor Patch Adams  “If you treat a diagnosis you win and you lose, but if you treat a person I guarantee you that you will win every time”.   This profession has been a blessing to me in many ways and as I reflect on my career I see how God’s hand was in all of this.

On a personal note, I was blessed to meet my wife Dawn in 1995. We have been married for 29 years and have 4 beautiful children, two boys and two girls. We also have 4 grandchildren with one on the way. We enjoy family time and vacationing in the Cayman Islands. Notwithstanding our busy schedules, we also have several close friends that we spend time with as our schedules allow. While Dawn does a great job of managing our household, she also is very busy with managing our real estate rental business.

We at FMCC couldn’t be happier that John decided to join our team, allowing us to offer his decades of experience to our patients.