John Richard Gehm (1955-2019) was born in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio, to John H. and Evelyn Gehm. His father was a school teacher and principal, and the family spent John’s early years in Cleveland; Indianapolis; Redford, MI; and St. Clair Shores, MI; before moving when he was 12 to the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights.
He graduated from Cherry Hill High School in 1973, and attended Valparaiso University graduating in 1977 with a Bachelor degree in English & Drama. Later that year he married fellow-student, Cindy Miller of Harvey, IL. The couple had four children and divorced in 2001.
In 1978, Gehm was given a scholarship to the Yale School of Drama, and the couple moved to New Haven. The next year, his play The Deerslayer aired on National Public Radio. His plays were given stage readings in Chicago and Detroit, and in 1981, he was accepted into the Eugene O’Neill playwright’s workshop in Connecticut, where he worked with several well-known actors and directors, including John Madden.
He found his passion for restorative justice with the Indiana-based non-profit PACT (Prisoners And Community Together) in 1984, where he became executive director. There he learned the art of victim-offender mediation, talking circles, conflict mediation, and group facilitation tools such as Open Space Technology. His creative non-fiction book, Bringing It Home was also published in 1984, chronicling a family’s move from the inner city to the suburbs.
Gehm received a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame in 1987, and earned a Master’s degree, followed by a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1991. He taught at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, then moved to Vermillion South Dakota in 1994 to teach criminal justice and sociology at the University of South Dakota. During this time, he served as a consultant and trainer with the National Institute of Justice-Community Corrections Division.
In 2004, he married Julie Nelson of Sioux Falls, and began teaching at the University of Sioux Falls in 2006. He retired from full-time teaching in 2009 and taught as an adjunct professor for USD while doing victim-offender mediation through RESTORE, Inc.
