Have you ever dreamed of winning the lottery? What would you do with the money? Keep it? Give it away? What if you inherited a million dollars? Would you travel? Would you buy a house in a warmer climate and start a neighborhood tutoring center?

That’s what former Iowa Citian Jamie Schweser did.  Schweser, the son of Carl and Julie Schweser, appears this week in a New York Times article on “Idealistic Heirs.”

Jamie’s dad, Dr. Carl Schweser, founded a study guide program in 1991 while a professor in the college of business at the University of Iowa, and then sold it to Kaplan.

Jamie, 35, who used to run the low-power pirate radio station in Iowa City, suddenly found himself with the means to fund programs that he felt were meaningful and socially responsible.

I had a blast giving away most of the money I inherited, and these days I live in Minneapolis, write fiction, garden, and occasionally work as a consultant for philanthropic non-profits.

I had $600,000 I wanted to go to groups building safer communities and creating alternatives to prisons and policing as instruments of punishment and social control.

You can read the NYT article here:

“When the money was suddenly in my name and I really came to grips with my privilege and class background, the denial came apart,” Mr. Schweser remembered. “I realized: I am literally the Man.”

To find out more about “the Man,” visit his website: http://www.jamieschw…