It Should Have Been A Wonderful Life

About the Book

Normally in the literary world, when you write and publish your original autobiography, “I Was Compost When Compost Wasn’t Cool,” now some ten years ago, you put a substantial period on what I and many readers thought was a very interesting and successful life. What else could there be, what else could transpire in just ten short years that would be worthy to share? Fortunately for my very valuable readers, my wife and I have gone through another life time of experiences packed into those very hectic ten years which I hope you will find interesting, but also emotional, irredeemable, despicable, and downright felonious in many aspects. It still involves my first loves of farming, composting, machinery and all the life-long learning connected to that. I mean for me, what else is there in life. It still reverts back to my parental upbringing and all of my previous mentioned mentors that was my privilege and pleasure to work with in my life up to this point. Many aspects and stories about those folks will be highlighted that were missed in my first book. It also has a lot to do with my wife Debbie and our life together. It’s absolutely amazing how much a person can endure and the pain and heartbreak both physically and mentally will be described the best I know how. This book will also describe again, to the best of my ability the unimaginable amount of greed, ruthlessness, trickery, conniving, fraud, extravagant spending and incredible amount of elder abuse on the part of certain family members on their own parents and siblings. It is just amazing what money, greed and power can do to a family and that will be detailed finally in this book. Yes, only ten years since the original auto-biography was written, but what a ride. Hard for me or anyone else to believe, but my wife and I lived through all of it for a very unexpected and tragic ending. I am the first one to realize that no one is guaranteed anything in life, regardless, it should have been a wonderful life, we tried to do everything I thought to make it so, but unfortunately it turned out to be anything but wonderful for us.

About the Author

Stevan A. Brockman was born on January 12, 1951 and raised 3 miles south of Joliet, Illinois on the original Route 66 highway. He was the third child of Howard and Patricia McCrory Brockman. He was educated at Laraway Grade School for eight years, Joliet East High School for four years, Joliet Junior College for two years then transferred to the University of Illinois for two years graduating from the Agricultural College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agronomy in 1973. There are four diplomas on the office wall all having his first name spelled wrong. Will never know where his mother got that spelling, but he has never changed it all these years. Although he did not grow up on a real farm setting, his entire life was spent working on some type of farm nurturing and raising crops or composting organic material all on a very large scale. He started out with his labors as did his two older brothers at the ripe old age of 8 years old working for the local Greek vegetable growers that blanketed the entire area around his home. Working on his hands and knees weeding small vegetable crops, harvesting green beans, peeling onions and the back-breaking work of picking asparagus filled most of his summer months. He was old enough to start handling hay and straw bales on a hayrack and shelling corn out of corn cribs at the age of 11 and then started driving tractors at age 14. At 15, he met Gorman O’Reilly working part-time until graduating from college in 1973 and then going to a full-time position the day of graduation. He met Debbie O’Connor from Elwood, Illinois in 1973 and married in 1974. Because of his unusual work ethic of laboring seven days a week for decades, that particular decision has come back to haunt him and will forever since her passing. All that time worried about making enough to survive and not being with her very little of the time leans heavy on his mind every single day. He spent 17 years with the Gorman O’Reilly farm operation and 27 years with the Fred Noorlag Compost Product’s composting operation. Was forced into early retirement in 2009 by Fred Noorlag’s grandchildren which propelled him into writing his first auto-biography, “I Was Compost When Compost Wasn’t Cool,” that was published in 2010. Worked at many other odd jobs including actually starting another compost operation in northern Illinois before being hired by the Joliet Junior College for 4 years after which he retired officially and began working for the Freistad Dairy Farm as needed. His hope is that you will learn something out of this book that can be carried with you the rest of your life. It might only be a short little story or possibly getting to know one of the great individuals that was his pleasure to work with over these past 60-plus years. He said it before and will say it again, it should have been a wonderful life, just was never accomplished in this lifetime.