About the Authors

John Loan, also known as John Jerome, was born and grew up in Virginia. He studied theatre at Virginia Commonwealth University before moving to New York, where he studied acting with Herbert Berghoff and, later, famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner.

As a private acting coach, John offers one-on-one sessions through the school he formed in the mid-1990s, Solo Performances. One of his younger students was recently signed for an HBO movie in Los Angeles and a number of his other students have booked a variety of jobs in the New York area.

Spending nearly 10 years as Alliance Capital's Director of Special Events, John has planned and given parties all over the world for groups as small as 20 guests to as large as 3000.

The company John founded in 1999, Jerome Records, helped the careers of numerous talented cabaret artists. He produced and distributed their CDs through the record company and brought attention to one of New York's most creative communities, one which has long been ignored by mainstream audiences.

John is currently pursuing a degree in social work at Lehman College and is in the process of starting an organization called Woman of Color Health Awareness

 (WOCHA), which has the mission of addressing the issues of HIV and AIDS for women of color. The organization's web site (www.wocha.org) is expected to be up and running soon. A skilled public speaker, John

has joined the speakers' circuit and is available to address a broad range of audiences on his true story, corporate ethics, surviving life behind bars and successfully starting over at an age when many are contemplating retirement.

John has been a volunteer at St. Vincent's Hospital for the past decade and he can be found at the hospital most Sundays.

"So much was written and said about me after my arrest, and so much of it was inaccurate," John stated. "That's one of the reasons for this book--to finally set therecord straight with the truth about what happened." 

  -John Jerome

Betsy Gilbert has been an independent writer for more than 20 years and has written dozens of articles for a variety of magazines and newspapers. She has also freelanced as a writer for a number of corporations, ranging from Fortune 500s to start-ups, on assignments that have included national ad campaigns, brochures and customer success stories. Additionally, Betsy has ghostwritten a biographical novel and written four original stage plays and two screenplays. In collaboration with a writer in England, she wrote a three-part miniseries based on her collaborator's novel. Remembering With Hope is her first collaboration on a non-fiction book.

"This is a project that's very close to my heart and one I'm both excited and honored to be associated with," she said. "Over the months that John and I have worked together, he's become not only a good friend, but a man I deeply admire."

Having lived and worked in Atlanta, New Orleans, San Francisco and Denver, Betsy now makes her home in Oxford, Mississippi.