Charles J. Shields: Hello. My name is Charles J. Shields. The J stands for Joseph. Legally, I'm Charles J. Shields the Third, which is what it says on my birth certificate dated December 2, 1951. The Third is an old fashioned way of saying that I'm the grandson of the first Charles J. Shields in my ancestry.

That gentleman, my grandfather, lived in an Irish and Scottish neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his wife, Mary, and their five children, which included my father of course. My grandfather, an immigrant, was a streetcar conductor. When he was a young man, he worked at the Baldwin Locomotive Factory in Philadelphia. You can see a Baldwin locomotive in Chris Van Allsburg's book The Polar Express. The engine pulling the train is a Baldwin. I'm a big fan of locomotives by the way and anything mechanical.