 He chronicled how every July 4 his family celebrates the holiday with a private family parade at their woodland retreat.The tradition was started by his Great Uncle Frank Straub, who served as the family's Uncle Sam, almost fifty years ago.Years later, while continuing to contribute feature articles to "Autograph Collector Magazine" (now "Autograph" magazine), in 1998, John became a contributing editor for the magazine and started writing more feature articles as well as a monthly column, "The Book Collector".