THE TRAIL I NEVER PLANNED
From Marine to Internet Pioneer, Trail Host, and Public Servant
The Autobiography of Joe Rinehart
Dedication
To Rose.
For the years we shared, the family we built, the challenges we survived, the laughter, the memories, and the love that remains after someone is gone.
To my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, who are the continuation of a story that began long before me and will continue long after I am gone.
To my fellow Marines.
And to every person who has ever looked at a problem and decided that instead of waiting for somebody else to fix it, they would try.
Semper Fi.
Prologue: The View From the Towpath
Some mornings I walk outside my home near Bolivar, Ohio, with Sundrop, my Golden Retriever, and think about all the people who have traveled through this little piece of land before me.
Long before automobiles, interstate highways, railroads, or canals, people traveled through the Tuscarawas Valley.
Native Americans walked these lands.
Soldiers and settlers followed.
The 1795 Treaty of Greenville created a boundary that still crosses the landscape near my property.
Not far away stands Fort Laurens, Ohio’s only Revolutionary War fort.
Then came the Ohio & Erie Canal.
Railroads followed the canals.
Highways followed the railroads.
Today, hikers and bicyclists travel many of those same corridors on the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail, the Buckeye Trail, the Great American Rail-Trail, and the American Discovery Trail.
And right in the middle of it sits the place I call the Towpath Trail Peace Park.
People arrive carrying backpacks or pushing bicycles loaded with everything they need to cross a state—or sometimes an entire continent.
They pitch a tent.
They build a fire.
They rest.
Sometimes we talk.
They tell me where they have been and where they are going.
And inevitably, I find myself telling them where they are.
Because this little corner of Ohio is filled with history.
The funny thing is that my life has been much the same way.
I have traveled through many different worlds.
The Marine Corps.
Kent State University.
Veterans advocacy.
The cemetery business.
Sailboats.
Computers.
CD-ROMs.
The early World Wide Web.
Internet service.
UNIX servers.
Wireless broadband.
Public schools.
Trails.
Community service.
Politics.
Family.
Love.
Loss.
Looking backward, the path sometimes appears almost logical.
Living it was anything but.
Most of the important turns happened because I noticed something interesting, saw a problem worth solving, met someone who changed my direction, or simply wondered:
What happens if I try this?
This is the story of what happened when I did.
Chapter One
A Valentine Baby
I was born on February 14, 1957.
Valentine’s Day.
That date has always made my birthday easy for people to remember.
I grew up during an extraordinary period in American history.
The country was emerging from the postwar years and moving into an era of enormous technological, cultural, and political change.
Television was transforming American homes.
The interstate highway system was growing.
The space race captured the imagination of an entire generation.
Computers existed, but they were enormous machines found mostly in universities, corporations, and government facilities.
There was no personal computer.
No internet.
No email.
No smartphone.
No social media.
Long-distance telephone calls could still be considered something special.
Few people could have imagined that within my lifetime a person carrying a small device in his pocket would have access to more information than entire libraries once contained.
I certainly didn’t.
But curiosity became one of the defining characteristics of my life.
I wanted to know how things worked.
I wanted to know why they worked.
And when something didn’t work, I often wanted to figure out whether there might be a better way.
That instinct eventually led me into business, technology, communications, government, and community service.
But first it led me somewhere very different.
The United States Marine Corps.
Chapter Two
Becoming a Marine
I joined the United States Marine Corps during the final years of the Vietnam era.
I served from 1974 until my honorable discharge on July 9, 1976.
There are experiences in life that become something you did.
And there are experiences that become part of who you are.
For me, becoming a Marine belongs to the second category.
The Marine Corps teaches discipline, responsibility, teamwork, endurance, and something that is difficult to explain to anyone who has never worn the uniform.
You discover that you are capable of more than you thought.
You also discover that individual achievement matters less when the people beside you are depending on you.
During my service I was assigned to Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines.
My service took place during one of the most consequential moments of the Vietnam era: the evacuation of Vietnam.
I have always tried to describe my military service accurately.
I do not claim to be a combat veteran.
But I did serve during the evacuation, and I was entrusted with responsibilities during a period of confusion, uncertainty, and danger.
Among those responsibilities was helping protect the Supreme Judge of Saigon and his family.
Behind every major historical event are thousands of individual stories.
Governments fall.
Helicopters evacuate people from rooftops.
News cameras capture dramatic images.
But inside those events are families who do not know what tomorrow will bring.
Parents trying to protect children.
People leaving homes knowing they may never return.
Military personnel carrying out assignments while events are changing around them.
I was one small participant in that enormous chapter of history.
It left an impression on me that has lasted a lifetime.
Chapter Three
The Chaplain’s Clerk
My final nine months in the Marine Corps were different from what many people might expect.
I became Chaplain’s Clerk for Lieutenant John L. Fitzgerald, a Catholic priest.
Working with a chaplain offered a remarkable view of military life.
The military is built around discipline and mission, but every uniform contains a human being.
Marines deal with fear.
Family problems.
Loneliness.
Faith.
Doubt.
Grief.
Relationships.
Homesickness.
Questions about life and death.
The chaplain’s office existed inside that human world.
My experience there gave me an appreciation for religion that went beyond denominations and doctrines.
People find meaning in different traditions.
What matters enormously is whether those traditions lead us toward compassion or toward division.
During my Marine Corps service, I earned the National Defense Service Ribbon.
I qualified as an Expert Rifleman and a Sharpshooter with the pistol.
I was also promoted three pay grades in approximately seven months.
Eventually I reached the rank of Lance Corporal.
Then came July 9, 1976.
My honorable discharge.
I walked away from active service, but I never really stopped being a Marine.
That is why November 10—the Marine Corps birthday—still means something to me.
And why July 9 remains one of the most important dates on my calendar.
Fifty years later, I can still say it without hesitation:
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Semper Fi.
Chapter Four
Kent State, the GI Bill, and Veterans Finding Their Voice
After the Marine Corps, I enrolled at Kent State University using the GI Bill.
Kent State was unlike almost any other university in America for a Vietnam-era veteran.
May 4, 1970, was not ancient history.
The shootings that killed four students and wounded nine others were still part of the university’s living memory.
The Vietnam War had divided the country, and veterans often returned to a society that had complicated feelings about both the war and the people who served in it.
I became involved with the Kent State University Vietnam Veterans Association.
Eventually, I was unanimously elected its final president.
Our advisor was George Urban.
The organization gave veterans something important: a collective voice.
One particular episode during my time there taught me how effective that voice could become.
During the energy crisis, Kent State experienced extended school closures.
For students using veterans educational benefits, prolonged closures could create a serious problem.
Veterans risked losing tuition assistance because the university had been closed through no fault of their own.
That made no sense to me.
A veteran had fulfilled his or her responsibility.
The school closure was beyond the student’s control.
Why should the veteran be financially punished?
So I started making calls and writing.
I contacted Senator John Glenn.
I contacted Congressman John Seiberling.
The issue eventually received federal attention, and President Jimmy Carter later issued executive action addressing the problem.
I do not pretend that one college student single-handedly changed federal policy.
Government rarely works that way.
But I learned something enormously important:
Speaking up matters.
Most large systems contain problems that remain unsolved because the people affected assume nobody will listen.
Sometimes nobody does.
But sometimes somebody does.
That lesson stayed with me.
Chapter Five
Sail Ohio and Learning to Follow the Wind
Life did not lead me directly from Kent State into technology.
Instead, it led me to Columbus.
There was an opportunity involving my family’s cemetery business, and I moved there to pursue it.
But entrepreneurship has always had a way of pulling at me.
During the 1980s, I started Sail Ohio.
We rented sailboats and taught people how to sail.
I loved it.
Sailing teaches lessons that apply far beyond the water.
You cannot order the wind to change.
You cannot argue with it.
You cannot pretend it is blowing from another direction because you would prefer it that way.
You observe reality.
You adjust.
You use what is available.
Then you move forward.
Business works much the same way.
So does technology.
So does politics.
So does life.
Some of my best decisions came not from predicting the future perfectly but from recognizing that conditions had changed and adjusting the sails.
Chapter Six
My Father, Cemeteries, and Building Bridges Between Communities
During those years, I also worked with my father, Sheridan, in the cemetery business.
Cemeteries might seem like an unusual foundation for a career in technology, but they actually taught me quite a bit about information.
Every grave represents a person.
Every burial represents a family.
Every property record matters.
Errors that might look minor on paper can have enormous emotional consequences.
Working in that business also introduced me to different cultural and religious traditions surrounding death and memorialization.
My father and I helped establish what I understand to have been the first two Islamic memorial gardens in Ohio.
That experience stayed with me.
America has always contained people of different religions and traditions.
Learning to accommodate those traditions is not a threat to America.
It is part of America.
The cemetery business also led indirectly to the next major chapter of my life.
Data.
Chapter Seven
When Paper Became Data
In 1989, I returned to the Kent-Ravenna area and focused again on the family cemetery business.
We began digitizing burial and property records.
Today that sounds obvious.
At the time, it was transformational.
Imagine shelves and drawers filled with paper.
Names.
Dates.
Locations.
Property information.
Burial information.
Years and years of records.
Then imagine what happens when that information becomes searchable.
Suddenly information can be organized differently.
Cross-referenced.
Copied.
Protected.
Retrieved almost instantly.
Updated.
Analyzed.
That process fascinated me.
I began to understand that the computer was not really about the computer.
The computer was about information.
And the real revolution would come when computers could exchange that information with one another.
That insight eventually led me toward one of the most exciting technological changes in modern history.
The internet.
But first came Rose.
Chapter Eight
Rose
I met Rose Ebner Bond in 1993.
There are moments when your life changes and you know it immediately.
There are other moments whose importance becomes clear only later.
Meeting Rose became one of those defining moments.
Rose had three sons: Edwin, Kyle, and Shannon.
I had my own children.
My daughter Jean had been born in 1977, the year after I left the Marine Corps.
My son James was born July 10, 1980—almost exactly four years after my discharge.
Eventually our lives, children, and families became intertwined.
Over the years I became a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.
When you are young, you tend to measure life by accomplishments.
Jobs.
Promotions.
Businesses.
Money.
Awards.
Projects.
Later you begin measuring things differently.
A conversation.
A family dinner.
A child’s birth.
A grandchild.
The person sitting beside you.
Rose and I would share approximately three decades of life’s joys, difficulties, adventures, and ordinary days.
Those ordinary days become precious after they are gone.
Chapter Nine
CD-ROMs and an Accidental Global Business
The early 1990s were an extraordinary time in computing.
Personal computers were becoming increasingly common.
Software distribution was changing.
CD-ROM technology opened possibilities that floppy disks simply could not provide.
Around this period, I participated in an IRS electronic data transmission research project.
I became increasingly involved with computer products and CD-ROM distribution.
Then Rose and I noticed something.
Many distributors simply would not ship internationally.
We would.
That seemingly small difference opened an enormous market.
Together, Rose and I sold more than $300,000 worth of CD-ROM products worldwide.
The internet had not yet become the global commercial marketplace we know today.
Selling internationally required figuring things out.
Shipping.
Payments.
Communication.
Customers.
Product information.
Everything was more complicated than clicking a button on a modern ecommerce platform.
But that was part of the fun.
The world was becoming connected.
I could see it happening.
Chapter Ten
The URL Nobody Recognized
In October 1993, I did something that now seems completely ordinary.
I put a URL in an advertisement.
At the time, almost nobody knew what a URL was.
The advertisement appeared in Computer Shopper, a massive national computer publication.
It continued running through approximately October 1994.
I believe it may have been the first advertisement in a national computer magazine to publish a URL.
I use the words “I believe” deliberately.
Historical firsts are difficult to prove conclusively.
But surviving advertisements and archival evidence establish that I was promoting a web address remarkably early in the commercial history of the World Wide Web.
Then, in January 1994, a graduate student from Case Western Reserve University approached me about creating a website for my CD-ROM business.
We did it.
That site became what I believe was among the earliest commercial websites in the world.
Again, today that statement can sound almost mundane.
Every company has a website.
A child can create one.
In early 1994, the question wasn’t:
“What’s your website?”
The question was:
“What’s a website?”
We were experimenting in territory where almost everyone was still trying to understand what this new thing could become.
I was hooked.
Chapter Eleven
Fortune, Kent State, and the Business of the Future
My early internet work began receiving attention.
In 1994, my work was mentioned in Fortune magazine.
I was invited to lecture at Kent State University’s Graduate School of Business.
That was an interesting experience.
I had once attended Kent State on the GI Bill as a student veteran.
Now I was returning to talk about a technology that many business leaders had barely begun to understand.
With support from the Small Business Center and Dan Gabella, I developed a business plan that was recognized through the Small Business Administration’s Northeast Ohio region.
I later presented at The City Club of Cleveland.
I was not a computer scientist from Silicon Valley.
I was an entrepreneur from Northeast Ohio who recognized that this new communications system was going to transform business.
Sometimes being early does not require knowing everything.
It requires recognizing that something important is happening and being willing to learn faster than everyone else.
Chapter Twelve
Config.Sys Productions
I later consulted for Interactive Multimedia Publishers and founded Config.Sys Productions.
Computer users of that era will immediately recognize the name.
CONFIG.SYS was an important DOS configuration file.
The company name was a little bit technical, a little bit geeky, and completely appropriate for the time.
Config.Sys Productions developed one of the world’s largest shareware collections.
Software developers including companies such as Apogee Software and Epic Games participated.
Shareware was revolutionary in its own way.
Instead of walking into a store, buying an expensive box, and hoping the software was useful, people could try programs and games before deciding whether to purchase them.
It created a direct relationship between software creators and users.
It also foreshadowed what internet distribution would eventually become.
Soon, I realized the real opportunity wasn’t going to be the CD-ROM.
It was going to be the network connecting the computers.
Chapter Thirteen
Config.com and Selling the Internet
Config.Sys Productions evolved.
Eventually came Config.com, Inc.
We became involved in internet access and dial-up service.
In November 1995, I opened what I describe as Ohio’s first retail internet storefront.
That concept almost requires explanation today.
Why would you need an internet store?
Because in 1995, ordinary people walked in and asked questions like:
“What is email?”
“What is the World Wide Web?”
“Why does my modem make that noise?”
“How do I connect?”
“What can I actually do once I’m online?”
People needed software installed.
Modems configured.
Accounts created.
Browsers explained.
Email configured.
The internet was not yet invisible infrastructure.
It was something people had to learn.
And I enjoyed teaching them.
One ability served me throughout my technology career:
I could understand technical systems while still explaining them in ordinary language.
Technology is only useful when the person who needs it can actually use it.
Chapter Fourteen
Microsoft Frustration and My Education in UNIX
By 1996, I was running into limitations with Microsoft NT servers.
I could have continued complaining about them.
Instead, I decided I needed another option.
So I hired retired professor Dr. Dick Depew to teach FreeBSD UNIX through a continuing education program.
The sessions continued weekly through 2001.
That was an education.
UNIX demanded more from you.
But it also gave you extraordinary control and stability.
There wasn’t always a friendly graphical button waiting to solve your problem.
Sometimes you had to understand what the machine was actually doing.
By 1998, I had developed a substantial hosting network through Config.com Internet Services.
This was long before most people talked about “the cloud.”
Servers were physical machines.
They generated heat.
Hard drives failed.
Networks went down.
Power mattered.
Backups mattered.
Security mattered.
A company’s website might depend on a machine sitting in a room that someone like me had to keep running.
There was nothing virtual about the responsibility.
Chapter Fifteen
Technology That Saved Taxpayers Money
In 2001, I leased part of the former Oak Rubber Company headquarters.
A few years later, another opportunity brought together technology and public service.
In 2004, Akron Public Schools hired me to provide internet services for its Remote Digital Academy.
I developed billing software that allowed internet service to be charged according to actual usage.
That meant taxpayers did not have to pay unnecessarily for service that wasn’t being used.
The concept was straightforward:
Measure what is actually used.
Bill appropriately.
Protect public money.
The contracts continued through renewals until 2015.
I have always believed that technology should produce measurable benefits.
“Modernization” means very little if it simply replaces an expensive old system with an expensive new system.
Good technology should make something more accurate, more efficient, more accessible, or less expensive.
Preferably all four.
That philosophy would later influence how I thought about government.
Chapter Sixteen
Wireless Networks and Remembering May 4
As internet technology evolved, I continued evolving with it.
I developed broadband wireless systems in Northeast Portage County.
Wireless technology offered the possibility of reaching locations where traditional wired infrastructure was difficult or expensive.
Again, the problem interested me as much as the technology.
How do you connect people who otherwise cannot easily be connected?
In 2009, another project brought me back to Kent State history.
I helped create the 40th anniversary website for the Kent State May 4 Memorial under Alan Canfora.
Decades had passed since I attended Kent State as a Vietnam-era veteran.
Now technology allowed us to help preserve and communicate the history of May 4 to people around the world.
It was another reminder that communications technology is never merely technical.
It determines what stories survive.
Who can hear them.
And how history is remembered.
Chapter Seventeen
Coming to Bolivar
In 2010, Rose and I, along with Jeremiah and Shoshanna, moved to historic property near the Ohio & Erie Canal in Bolivar.
I continued consulting and working with internet technology.
I also helped redesign the website for the Northern Tuscarawas County business association.
But gradually, the land around me began pulling my attention in a new direction.
I started studying the history.
The Ohio & Erie Canal.
Fort Laurens.
The Tuscarawas River.
The Greenville Treaty Line.
Bolivar.
Zoar.
The old transportation corridors.
The modern trails.
Suddenly I realized I was living at the intersection of several centuries of American transportation and communications history.
That fascinated me.
My career had been about communications networks.
And here I was living beside one of America’s original transportation networks.
The technology had changed.
The human impulse had not.
People have always needed ways to connect one place with another.
Native trails.
Rivers.
Canals.
Railroads.
Highways.
Fiber optics.
Wireless signals.
The internet.
Modern recreational trails.
They are all networks.
Chapter Eighteen
The Towpath Trail Peace Park
In 2015, I submitted an easement donation agreement to the Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition supporting the Towpath Trail.
The property eventually evolved into what I call the Towpath Trail Peace Park.
During the COVID-era outdoor recreation boom, I saw a growing demand for simple places where hikers and bicyclists could camp.
So I developed primitive campsites.
No luxury resort.
No fancy hotel.
A place to pitch a tent.
Rest.
Have a campfire.
Listen to the outdoors.
Then get back on the trail.
Visitors began arriving.
Hikers.
Bikepackers.
Cross-country cyclists.
Families.
People from other states.
Travelers from other countries.
Some were riding portions of the Towpath.
Some were following the Great American Rail-Trail.
Some were traveling enormous distances under their own power.
The campground became something more than a business.
It became a place for conversations.
I became Trail Host Joe.
And Sundrop became part of the welcoming committee.
Chapter Nineteen
Trails Are Economic Development
Living along the trail changed the way I think about economic development.
People sometimes look at a bicycle trail and see recreation.
I see recreation too.
But I also see customers.
A bicyclist needs food.
A hiker needs supplies.
A camper might visit a restaurant.
A family may stop at a museum.
Someone may buy gasoline.
Someone may rent a room.
Someone may visit Zoar.
Someone may visit Fort Laurens.
Someone might fish at Atwood Lake.
Someone might discover a local business they never knew existed.
Multiply those choices by thousands—or millions—of trail users and you begin to see the economic impact.
Trails can connect communities economically just as canals and railroads once did.
That realization made me increasingly active in trail promotion, tourism, community development, and stewardship.
I organized and participated in litter-cleanup activities.
I worked with other people who cared about the Towpath and Tuscarawas River.
I promoted local destinations.
And I kept telling people:
Trails are not merely amenities. They are infrastructure.
Chapter Twenty
Rotary and Service Above Self
From 2016 through 2017, I served as President of the Towpath Rotary Club.
Rotary’s motto is simple:
Service Above Self.
I like that.
It does not mean ignoring your own needs.
It means recognizing that communities do not improve automatically.
Someone organizes the fundraiser.
Someone picks up the litter.
Someone attends the meeting.
Someone builds the website.
Someone teaches the class.
Someone helps the veteran.
Someone welcomes the stranger.
Someone preserves the history.
Someone plants the flowers.
Someone speaks up when something isn’t right.
Most of civilization depends on people doing things they were never legally required to do.
Volunteers are part of the infrastructure of democracy.
Chapter Twenty-One
Losing Rose
Rose died on November 13, 2023.
There are sentences that can be written easily.
That is not one of them.
When you share decades with someone, your lives become woven together.
You accumulate thousands of ordinary memories.
The places you went.
The things you laughed about.
The arguments that eventually seemed ridiculous.
Medical problems.
Family problems.
Birthdays.
Holidays.
Businesses.
Bills.
Plans.
Meals.
Morning conversations.
Evenings.
The things you thought you would have more time to do.
Then suddenly, there is a before and an after.
People often talk about “moving on” after losing someone.
I don’t think that description quite fits.
You move forward.
But you carry them.
Rose remains part of the person I am.
I remain grateful for the years we had.
And I have learned that grief and gratitude can occupy the same heart.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Trail of Fame
In 2026, I received an honor that meant a great deal to me.
I was selected for the TuscParks Trail of Fame for my involvement in trail development in Tuscarawas County.
I attended the recognition in Zoar.
Recognition is not why anyone should volunteer.
But it feels good to know that your contribution mattered enough for someone else to notice.
More importantly, being honored for trail work made me think about the people who will use these trails decades from now.
Most of them will never know who helped build, preserve, promote, clean, or connect the trail.
That’s fine.
The point is that the trail remains.
You plant a tree knowing somebody else may someday sit beneath it.
You build a trail knowing somebody else will walk it.
That is legacy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Politics, Public Service, and the Auditor’s Office
My involvement in public affairs grew over time.
I briefly pursued a campaign for the Ohio House of Representatives but withdrew from the race in November 2025.
The decision did not end my interest in service.
When the Tuscarawas County Auditor announced plans to retire, I began looking closely at the office.
And something clicked.
The Auditor’s office involves:
Property records.
Data.
Technology.
Financial accountability.
Government transparency.
Taxpayer protection.
Administration.
Those subjects were not new to me.
I had spent decades working with them.
So in 2026, I became a candidate for Tuscarawas County Auditor.
I believe the office should operate professionally regardless of political party.
The taxpayer standing at the counter should not need to be a Republican.
Or Democrat.
Or independent.
They should simply be a resident entitled to competent public service.
That is why I often say:
County over party.
Chapter Twenty-Four
On the Side of the Consumer
One issue in my campaign illustrates the way I think government should operate.
Motor fuel quality.
Consumers pull into a gasoline station and reasonably assume that what comes out of the pump matches what they are paying for.
Correct octane.
No excessive water.
No contamination.
No sediment.
That assumption should be enforceable.
I became interested in Ohio legislation that would expand county authority concerning motor-fuel quality testing.
To me, this is not ideological.
It is consumer protection.
The person buying five or ten gallons of gasoline has far less power than the corporation selling millions of gallons.
Government has a legitimate role in making sure the transaction is honest.
I describe my position simply:
I am on the side of the consumer.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Democrat, a Marine, and an American
My political views evolved over the years.
I eventually became a Democrat.
But I do not believe political parties deserve unconditional loyalty.
Parties are organizations.
The Constitution is something different.
When I served in the Marine Corps, I did not swear an oath to a Republican president.
I did not swear an oath to a Democratic president.
I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
That distinction matters to me today.
I believe in elections.
The rule of law.
Independent courts.
Due process.
Freedom of speech.
Religious liberty.
Accountability.
Checks and balances.
I also believe Americans must learn to talk to each other again.
A Republican is not automatically my enemy.
A Democrat is not automatically correct.
An independent is not automatically above politics.
Ideas should survive because they withstand scrutiny.
Facts should matter even when inconvenient.
Government officials should be accountable regardless of party.
That standard has to work both ways or it is not a standard at all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Internet Changed the World—And Us
Having spent much of my career near the beginning of the commercial internet, I sometimes look at today’s online world with both amazement and concern.
The internet accomplished things we dreamed about.
Instant communication.
Worldwide access to information.
Electronic commerce.
Remote education.
Video communication.
Publishing available to virtually everyone.
A small business in Ohio can reach the world.
That was exactly the promise I saw in the early 1990s.
But the internet also produced consequences few of us fully anticipated.
Misinformation travels instantly.
Anger generates engagement.
Algorithms reward outrage.
People retreat into political tribes.
A falsehood can reach millions before the truth gets its shoes on.
Artificial intelligence is now bringing another transformation.
I recognize that feeling.
I saw it with personal computers.
I saw it with CD-ROMs.
I saw it with the World Wide Web.
I saw it with broadband.
The instinct is often to fear new technology.
My instinct has usually been different:
Learn it.
Understand it.
Use it responsibly.
Then help other people understand it too.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
History Beneath Our Feet
One of my greatest interests today is helping people understand the history surrounding the Peace Park.
Near my property, the Greenville Treaty Line intersects the landscape associated with the modern Towpath Trail corridor.
The line dates to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.
Nearby Fort Laurens connects our region to the American Revolution.
The Tuscarawas River tells another story.
The Ohio & Erie Canal tells another.
The railroad tells another.
The interstate highway tells another.
And today’s hiking and bicycling trails tell yet another.
I enjoy explaining those connections to campers and visitors.
Someone might arrive thinking they are simply spending the night beside a bicycle trail.
Then I explain that they are camping in a corridor representing centuries of American movement, conflict, settlement, commerce, transportation, and communication.
Suddenly the ground beneath the tent means something different.
That is the power of history.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
What the Marines Taught Me About Leadership
People sometimes mistake leadership for authority.
They are not the same thing.
Authority comes from rank.
Leadership comes from trust.
The Marine Corps taught me that.
Business reinforced it.
Community organizations reinforced it again.
You can order somebody to complete a task.
You cannot order someone to respect you.
Respect is earned through competence, consistency, fairness, and willingness to accept responsibility.
Good leaders also understand that they do not know everything.
Some of the smartest things I did in business involved finding someone who knew more than I did and learning from them.
Hiring Dr. Depew to teach me UNIX is one example.
Leadership does not mean pretending you have every answer.
Sometimes leadership means being willing to say:
Teach me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
What Entrepreneurship Taught Me About Failure
Every entrepreneur fails.
If someone tells you otherwise, they either have not been in business very long or they are leaving out part of the story.
Products fail.
Technology changes.
Customers leave.
Competitors arrive.
Equipment breaks.
Ideas that sounded brilliant turn out to be terrible.
Plans collapse.
Money gets tight.
The important question is not whether you fail.
It is whether you learn quickly enough.
My career repeatedly involved abandoning technologies that had once seemed important.
CD-ROMs were revolutionary.
Then the internet made them largely unnecessary.
Dial-up internet access once looked amazing.
Then broadband replaced it.
Servers changed.
Software changed.
Networks changed.
Business models changed.
The only sustainable strategy was learning.
That is why curiosity may be more valuable than certainty.
Chapter Thirty
Family, Legacy, and the Measure of a Life
I have lived long enough now to understand something my younger self probably would not have appreciated.
Your résumé is not your life.
Neither is your bank account.
Neither is your job title.
Neither is your political party.
Neither is your social-media following.
Your life is contained in relationships.
People you helped.
People who helped you.
Children.
Friends.
A spouse.
Grandchildren.
Great-grandchildren.
Fellow Marines.
Business partners.
Neighbors.
Travelers passing through.
Volunteers who showed up.
Strangers who eventually became friends.
Even people with whom you disagreed.
When you are young, you spend enormous energy building a future.
Later, you realize you are also building memories.
And eventually memories become part of your legacy.
Epilogue
Happy Trails
My life has never followed the route I would have predicted.
A Valentine baby became a Marine.
The Marine became a Kent State student.
The student became a veterans advocate.
The veterans advocate became an entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur rented sailboats.
The sailor went back into the cemetery business.
The cemetery records led to computers.
Computers led to CD-ROMs.
CD-ROMs led to the World Wide Web.
The Web led to internet service.
Internet service led to servers and UNIX.
Technology led to public-school contracts and wireless networks.
Eventually the internet entrepreneur moved beside an old canal.
The canal led to trails.
The trails led to camping.
Camping led to history.
History led to community service.
Community service led to public office.
And through everything came family, friends, love, loss, curiosity, mistakes, reinvention, and one stubborn belief:
You can usually do more than you think you can.
I have lived from an era when a long-distance telephone call could be an event to an era when artificial intelligence can carry on a conversation.
I watched computers go from machines hidden inside institutions to devices carried in our pockets.
I participated in the early commercial World Wide Web.
I watched neglected transportation corridors become beautiful recreational trails.
I have watched America struggle, change, divide, heal, and struggle again.
Through it all, I still believe in this country.
Not because America has always been right.
It hasn’t.
Not because government always works.
It doesn’t.
Not because one political party has all the answers.
None does.
I believe in America because we retain the ability to recognize mistakes and do something about them.
That is also how I have tried to live my own life.
Learn.
Adapt.
Help.
Keep going.
Today, when a traveler leaves the Towpath Trail Peace Park, I often wish them the same thing travelers have said to one another for generations:
Happy trails.
It is both a farewell and a hope.
May the road ahead treat you kindly.
May you meet good people.
May you learn something.
May you leave something worthwhile behind.
And when the trail unexpectedly changes direction, don’t assume you are lost.
Sometimes the road you never planned is the one that becomes your life.
Semper Fi.
Joe Rinehart
United States Marine Corps, 1974–1976
Entrepreneur • Father • Grandfather • Great-Grandfather
Trail Advocate • Community Volunteer • Public Servant
Towpath Trail Peace Park
Bolivar, Ohio
