Up Close and Personal: Ramblings About John

(or, more than you might ever want to know about John)                   [HOME]

                                                                            relaxing on 'Utopia' at Shasta Lake 

THE CHILDHOOD YEARS:

John was born in the San Francisco Bay Area on the same day the Golden Gate Bridge was opened - May 28, 1937, toward the end of a boon in construction around the Bay. In addition to the Golden Gate, the Bay Bridge was built, San Francisco City Hall was restored, and Treasure Island was created from landfill in the middle of the Bay and hosted the World's Fair two years later. He's a fourth-generation Californian.

His father - John ("Jack") Renesch - was a salesman, originally from Cincinnati, who possessed a "partier" personality. Jack's father had migrated from Germany and his surname probably had its roots in the Alsace region. John's mother - Ellen - was born and raised in the East Bay township of Centerville, the granddaughter of another German, Henry Dusterberry, who came to California in a covered wagon with two pals in 1852 and served on the Board of Supervisors of Alameda County in the 1870s. He married an Irish lass - Ellen Foley - and had six children. Their next to oldest boy - Ellen's father - was also named Henry. Ellen and Jack were married in Centerville, which is currently a district in the City of Fremont (incorporated in the 1960s), and lived in Alameda where John was born, making him a fourth generation Californian.

Family photo circa 1890                      

John was baptized in the Catholic faith. When John was four, his parents had another son, Robert. He attended St. Joseph's grammar school in Alameda which was run by the Sisters of Notre Dame, and started serving as an "altar boy" at age seven. During the WW II years, John developed a talent for art - primarily action figure pencil drawings as well as becoming an excellent student. His drawing also included lots of  "pinups" which had become quite popular during the war and added to John's appreciation of the female form. His mother worked as a secretary so day care and babysitters became regular fare for the two Renesch brothers. Soon after entering grammar school, John's parents divorced - something very rare in the 1940s, especially for Catholics who considered divorce a major sin worthy of excommunication from the Church. Now seven or eight, John took on "head of household" tasks as his mother started drinking regularly after work and on weekends - to the point where John eventually was providing meals, laundry and other care-giving for his younger brother.

At age ten, he and brother Robert ("Bob") became wards of the court and were sent to an all-boys boarding school in Marin County, north of San Francisco. A bright student, John was routinely on the honor rolls for excellent grades. His teachers - the Dominican nuns - recommended that he skip one grade. Their father, who had a history of heart problems, remarried. John immersed himself in his religion, serving mass as an altar boy and singing in the choir, while performing all the combinations of prayer, pleading with God to restore his family.  Jack died of a heart attack while the boys were in boarding school and, after two years, their now sober mother was awarded custody of her children. John started high school at St. Mary's College Prep High - another all-boys Catholic school run by the Christian Brothers - on the Berkeley/Albany city line. A few months later, Ellen's drinking started again and the boys once again became wards of the court. Fourteen year-old John was placed in a foster home while ten year old Bob was sent to a nearby boarding school.

Official high school graduation pic (1954)                                              Ellen & Joe

In 1953, their mother remarried and regained custody of the children. Their new stepfather - Joseph ("Joe") Ruebel - was a heavy-construction carpenter who had been a friend of his mother for several years. They purchased a home in San Francisco where John and his brother were adopted by Joe. Ellen never drank again. John chose to stick with his biological father's surname but his brother changed his. John was unaware that this decision would result in his being the only living Renesch in the world he could find when, years later, he searched the Internet looking for relatives. 

In 1954, John received the Bank of America Achievement Award for Mathematics and graduated from St. Mary's just barely seventeen, receiving a scholastic scholarship to the University of San Francisco. He attended USF and majored in mathematics but a non-scholastic passion that had been growing in him for several years still dominated his awareness.

GROWING OLDER: A PASSION FOR ACTION IN THE WORLD    

Ever since he was a bit beyond 14, John possessed a real passion for auto racing. This was his first real interest outside of his failed attempts to keep his family together. He became an avid reader of Hot Rod magazine and started longing to build a roadster and race it at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah - a dream he'd fulfill when he was a few years older. He worked part-time, mostly in what they used to call "service stations" - pumping gas, doing lube jobs and oil changes, and minor repairs. He got his drivers license and purchased his first car just as soon as he was legally able to do so. He started modifying it but soon learned that a hot rod was not very reliable as day-to-day transportation and decided it was time to have a second car specifically for racing. He learned to weld building a transport trailer and race car especially for the Salt Flats and managed to run his hand-built roadster for two consecutive years during SCCA's Speed Week in the Fall on the rather meager income from his part-time jobs while attending college. He came within 1.5 mph of a new class record on his meager student's budget but failed to surpass it.

  Salt Flats Speed Week (1958)                       product prototype (1955)

At 18, also while attending college, John started his first business venture with his part-time employer agreeing to back him. He invented an alloy wheel for car enthusiasts, designing the wheel using an inexpensive aluminum and steel alloy. However, his investor-partner withdrew after John created prototypes (see photo) and John was unable to continue.

In his early twenties, John built a NASCAR modified race car and entered the world of professional competition. He was drafted into the U.S. Army after he and his driver-partner had only raced a few times with the newly-built car. He felt ripped from his life when he received his summons but, in those days, it was unthinkable not to serve in the military if called. In the Army he was trained as a Hawk guided missile mechanic at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and stationed on the Pacific island of Okinawa for the remainder of his tour of duty. Out of sheer boredom, he tried out for the pistol team even though he had never fired a pistol in his life. Surprisingly, he made the team which allowed him some distraction to relieve the monotony of being in a peace time army.

John with Hawk missiles in Okinawa (1961)                with pal in basic training 

After his discharge from the Army in 1962, his interest in professional auto racing continued. Helping friends who drove or owned racing cars, he got involved in midgets, sprint cars and late models - but never again as an owner himself. He lost much of his interest when a good friend was killed in Sacramento driving a midget race car.

Riverside Raceway (1958)                            sprint cars, circa 1963

In the late 1960s, John and a partner started an event promotion company, staging public admission events - mostly involving motorsports - including the International Sport Cycle Exposition (for eight years producing an annual exhibition show with two seasons of promoting Grand Prix Motorcycle races and one Formula A auto race) and The National Golf Show (1969). Venues included the Cow Palace, Oakland Coliseum, Orange County International Raceway and the Shrine Auditorium (Los Angeles). He also formed an advertising agency, was a partner in a weekly motorcycle racing newspaper and owned several other enterprises.

the Batman era (1966)                       Cow Palace expo (1972)

After a 'mid-life crisis' in the mid-1970s, he co-founded a real estate investment firm and, later, a financial securities corporation in which he served as President & CEO. John became a licensed real estate broker as well as an NASD-licensed securities principal. The firm specialized in forming limited partnerships which acquired income properties on behalf of passive investors. When he left after eight years, the company managed approximately $60 million in real estate, mostly garden apartments located in Northern California. It was during this period when John started speaking publicly, presenting investment opportunities to his company's agents and their investor clients.

                      addressing investors (1982)

In 1974, John discovered the human potential movement - learning that an individual could change themselves, their predispositions, attitudes, core beliefs and patterns of behavior. His interest in personal development and becoming more conscious as a human being prompted John to take an interest in world affairs, particularly improving the outlook for the future of the human species. In the mid-1980s, John started merging his interest in human consciousness and his experience and passion for the world of business.

After leaving the real estate company, John took on some independent contractor engagements in the late 1980s, serving a stint as CEO of a client's NASD broker-dealer firm. His interest in creating a better future for humankind was blossoming and he decided to make it an essential focus for his work. He became Editor-in-Chief for New Leaders Press in 1990 and proceeded to create and publish business anthologies focused on bridging human consciousness and the business world. He thought that the corporate world had to change dramatically if the world was ever going to make the transition to what was then being called a "new paradigm." This was the era in his life when, as one colleague called it, "Renescharian thinking" was born. Industry Week magazine interviewed John for its "On the Edge" series in 1994 for an article entitled "Design a Better Future" and his thinking began generating agreement. Since then, he's been praised as a visionary by several of his own heroes. New Leaders Press closed in 1997 and John has since become a widely-known independent writer, social commentator and international keynote speaker in the field of transformative change or the social transformation movement. He now offers "Keynotes that Make You Think!" and does some private mentoring (coaching).

in the offices of New Leaders Press                               with Willis Harman (1990)     

EXPLORING  HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS      

During his mid-1970s "mid-life crisis" John explored the human potential movement and discovered that one's lot in life or predisposition about reality was a territory he had never known. He immersed himself in a variety of practices and disciplines so that self-exploration became a major part of his lifestyle. It was during this time period that he also taught goal-setting workshops, based upon his own learnings from the human potential movement. Eventually, he stopped teaching workshops when his real estate company started demanding his attention and he wrote his first book - Setting Goals - which contains all the basics about setting and attaining one's goals.

He realized that he had far more control over his reality than he had ever imagined. He started his real estate company with an eye toward achieving the financial means to be able to work on any projects he chose to take on. He also chose to work toward the end of the nuclear arms race - his first venture into any type of activity designed to benefit the whole world. This was about 1980. He discovered the field of General Systems Theory and adventured into the study of systems dynamics. Some initial people who influenced John in this period were MIT's Peter Senge (who later authored The Fifth Discipline), David Berenson, MD, and Willis Harman, former Stanford professor and SRI social scientist who was then serving as President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. To this day, John considers himself a perpetual student of complex systems and their unpredictable antics.

In the mid-1980s, John had several powerful existential experiences and his life took on a profound spiritual dimension. He attributes this breakthrough to his becoming more emotionally authentic - something he considers absolutely necessary to having any kind of genuine spiritual life. He became much more spiritually explicit and his emotions far more authentic in-the-moment. He learned what many people called emotions were actually "thoughts-in-drag" and that a fully-experienced emotion can pass incredibly fast if felt in all its intensity. This includes the nice emotions like love, compassion and joy as well as the one people tend to avoid like fear, anger and despair.

VOLUNTEERING FOR A BETTER WORLD:

While John has done his share of traditional volunteering in the earlier part of his life, such as serving as a vice president for the local Jaycees service organization, various political and activist campaigns, speaking to Rotary and other service clubs, being an active member in professional associations, his focus since the late 1970s has been shifting the consciousness of society with the goal of creating a better world.

In the late 1990s, he served as trustee for Ervin Laszlo's Club of Budapest foundation in Hungary. He served on the advisory board of Presidio World College (now Presidio School of Management), which offers MBA degrees in Sustainable Management. He also served as a founding board member for the Association for Spirit at Work, as well as founding chair of its selection committee for the annual Willis Harman Spirit at Work Awards (now the International Spirit at Work Awards).

In the Fall of 2000, John co-founded with Elizabeth Bloom The Presidio Dialogues (TPD) - a non-profit organization that hosts regular public meetings to have deep conversations about matters not usually talked about in the workplace cultures. Featuring multiple "dialogue starters" who get the conversation going, these meetings encourage candor and inquiry about a wide variety of themes. Elizabeth moved to Washington state a couple of years later and John turned TPD over to Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in 2004 and remains on its leadership council.

2006 Int'l Spirit at Work Awards

MORE PERSONAL STUFF:  

John's mother and step-father both died in 1972. Ellen died of heart disease and Joe passed the next night in the rest home where he resided after a stroke. Ellen had been "clean and sober" for over twenty years, having earned her "gold chip" from Alcoholics Anonymous just before her passing.

John never married, although he has come close a time or two. He lives alone in a San Francisco high-rise in the Russian Hill district, with a magnificent view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Although his brother Bob was a surrogate son for him in their childhood, they followed very different paths as adults and chose very different lifestyles. In addition to being single, John has been an entrepreneur all his life, spending less than a couple of years cumulatively working for companies in which he had no ownership interest. In contrast, his brother chose a corporate career, cut short by early heart problems - a health issue inherited from both of their parents who suffered heart attacks at very early ages. Bob also married at an early age. He and his wife have two grown daughters Kelly and Wendy, several grandchildren, and live in Southern California. Over the years, John has developed a rather large 'extended family,' a wide and diverse circle of friends from whom he relies for support and collegiality.

 'Utopia' at anchor          Cocktail hour  

For twenty-five years (1972 - 1997), John entertained friends on his boat on Shasta Lake, hosting groups of six to eight people over long weekends a dozen times each year. An avid water skier for many years, he also loved cooking for his guests, serving as tour guide, teaching guests to water ski and providing an environment in which they would feel relaxed and comfortable. In 1982, after owning a 42' "store bought" houseboat, he designed and commissioned the 57' house-cruiser "Utopia." Over the years his guests included most of his Northern California friends and many of his professional colleagues.

Hangin' out  Parked for the night      Set to go

John's spiritual life is a top priority but he doesn't have a traditional practice - neither Eastern or Western. He possesses a curiosity that takes him into a multiple of practices, learnings and experiences. Reflection and meditation are regular elements to his life, as well as periodic journeys of deep self-examination. Many people have had a big influence on John in this dimension. Most of these people are colleagues with whom he's worked or whose books he's read. People who've had a direct impact on his consciousness include Buckminster Fuller, Willis Harman, Lazaris, David Berenson, Werner Erhard, and the 14th Dalai Lama. Friends like mystic Rob Rabbin, futurist Pete Russell and author Gary Zukav have inspired him to his anthologies (which collectively contained the writings of 300 visionaries) John was been fond of saying he loved being able to work with all his heroes, including the likes of Warren Bennis, Riane Eisler and Charles Handy.

discombobulated at his surprise 50th birthday party                                getting roasted

One thread that has run through John's life, from his teenage years to the present day, is his propensity to connect people. This has taken the form of groups he has organized, or helped form, introducing people to one another who he felt had something in common, and hosting events where people come together. When he was sixteen, he organized a hot rod club which grew rapidly into the largest membership in San Francisco. In producing public events, large crowds of people converged on his events. In all his various business ventures, just about every one was a partnership of some sort

In the real estate business, he and his partners formed limited partnerships comprised of passive investors who were otherwise strangers to one another, coming together to purchase and co-own properties. Even when he was in the book publishing business, he compiled collections of original writings from multiple authors on a common theme. Today, he still enjoys introducing his colleagues to one another - hooking up people he thinks would appreciate knowing each other. And, of course, his work today is all about respecting our interconnection as human beings and changing our behavior so it is consistent with mutual respect.

In early 2003, John discovered he had suffered what is called a "silent heart attack" - a cardiac event that occurs without the conscious awareness of the person, minus the chest-grabbing drama we see in movies. He had an angioplasty procedure and started a daily regime of meds and supplements. Since he walks the hills of San Francisco each day and eats a fairly heart-healthy diet, John realized that his life was far more stress-filled that he had ever realized and has begun making changes so his life will be more relaxed.  In 2005 he opted to have by-pass surgery.

  John with friends Maureen and Melanie                                 John in Scotland

Besides his work, one of John's favorite activities is dining out with good friends. He takes great delight in meeting new people. He also enjoys hosting parties, salons, soirees of various sorts and other get-togethers. His creativity has taken many forms over the years. In addition to his experience as an artist in his youth, John has designed apartment buildings, a few custom homes, the house-cruiser "Utopia," and even a custom jacket. The creativity he used to express in his art, or in starting enterprises as a young adult, shows up nowadays in his writing.  In his work, writing and public speaking make him feel most alive - pushing the envelope in the way people think about how things have to be, challenging the status quo.

John has been a pioneer in the movement to bridge spiritual values and principles into society, particularly into the world of business. From a fourth generation Bay Area youth, he has transitioned from local entrepreneur to global thinker - writing and speaking to humanity's potential for greatness and its latent but yet-unrealized ability to transcend the past by maturing into a wiser, more mature society. For more about him and his offerings, return to About John, his Free Newsletter, his Books and Services.