BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN FICKES

            Akron attorney John Fickes is a Democratic candidate for judge in the General Division of the Court of Common Pleas of Summit County, Ohio.  Mr. Fickes seeks the term starting on February 9, 2009.

            Mr. Fickes, 53, is a shareholder (partner) at Brouse McDowell, one of Akron’s oldest law firms.  Most of his work concerns resolving disputes, through lawsuits and private negotiations.  Mr. Fickes joined Brouse McDowell in March, 1985, following graduation from the law school at Case Western Reserve University.  Prior to his legal studies, Mr. Fickes was a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), a religious order of the Catholic Church.  While a Jesuit, he completed a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Detroit, and taught at St. John’s Jesuit High School in Toledo, Ohio.  He left the Jesuits on good terms in 1982.

            John Fickes was born in Akron, Ohio.  He grew up in the city’s Firestone Park neighborhood, the eldest of the six children of Jack and Pat Fickes.  He graduated from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in 1973, and from John Carroll University, in Cleveland, in 1977.

            Mr. Fickes has served actively in many civic and professional organizations throughout his career.  At this time he is the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority (AMHA) and the president of the Board of Directors of the Humane Society of Greater Akron.  Mr. Fickes is a graduate of Leadership Akron (Class XVI, 1999/2000).

            John Fickes is married to Mary Kate Mead.  They reside in Copley.  Mr. Fickes has three daughters: Katherine, of Portland, Oregon; Anne, of Redlands, California; and Eileen, a student at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.