IN-BOX

July 22, 2007

A son’s bumpy ride

I read with interest your article on Tom Creal Jr. and his Chopper College (“Going whole hog,” June 17). I worked with this young man’s father, Tom Sr., at a Chicago-based accounting firm, where he headed our forensic accounting and financial fraud investigating unit. He was the ultimate straight-laced accountant who even looked the part of a financial crimes investigator, with slightly graying hair and riveting cold-steel blue eyes–an Eliot Ness/Kevin Costner lookalike, indeed. How difficult it must have been for him to watch his son go through his many travails on his road to success, and how wise of him to recognize that “all kinds of minds” can succeed in this world.

PAUL A. DILLON