FRED WYSOCKI

Republican running for US Senate for RI in 2024

I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood, largely Italian, on the South Side of Chicago. In my middle teens, the neighborhood turned from white to black, so getting along with blacks is easy for me. But there was a lot of racial craziness. Martin Luther King Jr. marched on the local park (my mother said I could watch from the window), the American Nazis tried to make headlines there also, the local parish priest was in national news, etc. When I went to college, Jim Croce’s Leroy Brown was topping the music charts. I didn’t live a sheltered life.

I had uncles in World War I and the Korean War, while my father was in World War II (probably part of a never mentioned ALSOS decoy). I was a major in high school ROTC, and almost went into the military.

Around ten years of age, I got the idea that I could seriously develop my mind. I read some books on this and decided that learning was important. I read my older brothers’ textbooks, became grammar school and high school valedictorian, and won a National Merit scholarship to Harvard. I majored in Geology, but took a year off to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I decided to go into business, but retain my Geology major, graduating in 1978.

After college I went into inventory control, then taxes. I became an Enrolled Agent, allowing me to open my own tax office. I prepared taxes as a side business for a few decades before abandoning it, since increasing IRS requirements made it impractical. From taxes I went into accounting, learning it largely from computerizing small businesses in the 1980’s. I’ve been Controller for several companies, managing their cash flows, and have managed some offices. I obtained FINRA licenses to act as a stock broker and financial advisor, and held various insurance licenses for RI and MA. Not having done much with them, I’ve set them aside to run for Congress, but may re-activate them in the future.

In the 1990’s I was beset with a curable form of cancer that wiped out my health and finances. This forced me into bankruptcy around the beginning of the millennium. I’m back to normal again.

I am self-employed in accounting, have never been married, have no children, and have no formal religion. Humans didn’t create themselves, but I doubt that today’s religions have this stuff figured out. But you need a basic morality, and what we have seems to work nicely. My recent hobby was researching climate science, with a more current hobby of running for Congress. While I’m not by nature a politician, I’m looking to turn this into a real job, representing the people of Rhode Island. I ask for your support.