Thomas Griffith was born in 1945 in Scottsburg, a small town in Southeastern Indiana. He grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana. Thomas completed a four-year tour in the Air Force during the Viet Nam years before graduating from the University of Denver with a degree in economics in 1971. He has pursued continuing education in Public Health through Harvard, McGill, Karoliska Institute of Stockholm, and Hong Kong University Medical School. After college, he earned a living as a sports car mechanic and as a tennis professional, but his true ambition was to be a professional racing driver. He shared tracks with the likes of Michael Andretti and Al Unser Jr; they won, he didn't. He began writing fiction in his college years. This led to a job as an independent movie director. His film resume can be found on IMDB.com. He began working in senior wellness around 1995, when his wife Jeanne (also a Denver graduate), who had worked in the fitness club business for a number of years suggested he get involved with a new senior fitness program being developed. Since then Thomas has conducted over 9,000 exercise and wellness classes for people over 65. During this time, nearly all of his clients have come from the working class and provided both the research and the impetus for writing this book. Both Thomas and Jeanne's parents were working class, and both died earlier than they should have from preventable disease. The Griffiths, though in their 70s, still maintain full-time jobs in senior wellness and see an average of 100 clients per day.