Brad grew up in a small rural town in Ohio in a blue collar family. He began swimming lessons with his older brother at an early age under an edict of his mother. He spent summers swimming in quarries but never swam in an organized or competitive environment. In college he began lap swimming as hobby and means of exercise. The habit remained with semi-regular spurts of swimming.
Fast forward to 2010, when Brad moved to New York City, and two months after arriving he competed in the “Great Hudson River Race”. It was his first open-water swimming race. Jumping into 60°F water without a wetsuit, while treading water waiting for the start horn to sound, he recalls thinking “This is the stupidest idea ever!” However, after completing the race Brad began setting his eyes on swimming 28 miles around Manhattan Island, known as the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim or MIMS. IN what he describes as “surreal sequence of fated events” he found himself taking on much more in 2011.
In June of 2011 Brad completed MIMS, and with it on his resume he was now qualified to continue his pursuit and swim the Catalina Channel in August. The Catalina Channel swim started near mid-night and finished prior to noon the next morning. Then 6 weeks later he was on his way to swim the English Channel, a grueling event that started in Dover, England and ended 14 hours 56 minutes later in Sangatte, France. So in less than 100 days Brad completed the “Triple Crown” of open water swimming. He was the 48th person in the world to complete the feat and 1 of 6 people who have completed it in single year.
Brad continues to train and take on some the grueling channel crossings around the world. But in 2014, having swum year round outdoors as part of
his training, and with the encouragement of a few CIBBOWS swimmers, he accepted an invite from Russia to in the Festival of the North also known as the Polar Olympics. Brad traveled to Murmansk, Russia as part of 4 person contingent representing the USA. He competed in 4 individual events, in which he won Gold in three including the 450m endurance swim. Then the following week he headed to Finland to compete in the 2014 Winter Swimming Championships. He has taken the inspiration for this experience to found the United States Winter swimming Association with four of his comrades to bring the sport to the US.
Through all of Brad’s life swimming has be source of enjoyment, fond memories, and friendships new and old. Thanks to his mother he grew up comfortable in the water, but this not true for many people. Brad provides support both shore-side and in the water, offering encouragement and coping mechanisms to help people overcome their fears of the open water as a SwimFree Swim Angel whose mission is to promote the health improvement of children and adults through swim and get everybody in the water, safely and comfortably.
Brad considers himself blessed to be able to seek out these swimming challenges and travel the world. These opportunities would have been unavailable without his higher education and successful career. The obstacles to a typical high school student are daunting, and for those from low-income backgrounds, the challenges are particularly magnified. Brad volunteers as a mentor with the iMentor organization, whose mission is to empower students from low-income communities to graduate high school and succeed in college. Brad is a man who actively works to charge his mentee to discover his passion and obstinately pursue his life ambitions as he is in his life.