About the Author Frederick J. Kraics III was born in 1947 and worked at his father's hardware store during summer vacations throughout grade school. He then began working in the family's well-drilling business in the summer, beginning as a helper at age twelve and working his way up to a well-drilling foreman until he graduated college. In 1965, he matriculated to Stony Brook University and graduated in 1969, becoming the first person in the Kraics family to graduate from college. Frederick began working in 1969 and for 40 years pursued a career in banking. Most of those years were spent in helping to develop new businesses, like Bank Americard, Visa and Mastercard during the 1960s and 1970s for various banks. In the 1980s, banking regulations were changed to allow banks to offer home equity loan products. The 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s were spent creating home equity business departments and marketing home equity loans and lines of credit to individuals. From 2005 to 2009, direct mail marketing of first mortgages was added to the list of products sold. The last assignment was to assist in redeveloping a website for a bank in Manhattan. After that project was completed, he retired early at 62 years of age in 2009. Frederick lived in New York City in the Upper East Side of Manhattan at Sutton Terrace for 30 years. But weekends were mostly spent in Ronkonkoma, where he grew up at 355 Woodlawn Avenue until that house was sold in May, 2005. He retired to the city of Cortland in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State in 2013 before moving to Cape Cod in 2016.
