About the Founder

John Gillespie was born on a Wisconsin family farm and went to the same one-room country school attended by his father, grandfather, and oldest son. In second grade he took an interest in a third grader named Jan, and they have been married since 1957.

He founded a landscape company in his junior year of high school that is still in operation over four decades later. John got his bachelors degree in agriculture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in Landscape Architecture. He then served in the Army as a Captain in a combat engineer battalion.

In 1965 John and Jan founded the very successful Rawhide Boys Ranch. The following year Bart and Cherry, of Green Bay Packer fame, joined them and with the Gillespies continue to volunteer their time.

The beautiful 500-acre campus of a dozen major buildings stretches for a mile along the Wolf River in Waupaca County. Rawhide, and its high school, Starr Academy, are completely debt free, and have close to an 80% success rate with young men placed by the Wisconsin Juvenile Courts.

In July 2000 John's passion for America led him to run for the U.S. Senate. Even with close to a million votes, he didn't win the race, but America has won. John's message of love of country, patriotism, and faith in God - the message of our Founding Fathers - is now reaching a new generation through 1776 American Dream!