John Hutchinson is a Richmond County native, born in May, 1967. He is an investment planner and financial consultant with Wheat First Union in Rockingham, North Carolina. His wife, Michele, is a Burlington, N.C. native and sixth grade teacher in Ellerbe, North Carolina. They live in Rockingham.

Hutchinson brings a research and writing background into No Ordinary Lives. Between 1989 and 1995, he received his B.A. in history from Davidson College, his M.A. in history from the University of Virginia, and his J.D. from Campbell University Law School. Hutchinson’s interest in Richmond County’s past and his belief in its future brought him back to Rockingham. He wrote No Ordinary Lives after passing the North Carolina Bar Examination, then joined his father in the financial planning profession. Hutchinson is very involved in professional and community activities and serves on numerous local and regional boards.

Local history is an interest Hutchinson comes by very naturally -- his Richmond County roots trail back eight generations to the middle 1700s. Since his senior year at Davidson he has been a casual collector of local history and stories. In the early 1990s he won two awards from the North Carolina Society of Historians for his work on local history. The first was for his master’s thesis on the 1925 murder trial of Rockingham textile millionaire W.B. Cole, entitled Watch my Smoke: The Cotton Mill Owner Who Got Away With Murder. The second was for a three-part biographical series on Governor Cameron Morrison, written in cooperation with State Representative Wayne Goodwin.

No Ordinary Lives was made possible by the Richmond County Historical Society and the Foundation for the Carolina, through a grant from the Cole Foundation