Ted Strickland was Ohio's 68th governor serving one term from 2007 until 2011.

Strickland was born in Portsmouth, Ohio on August 4, 1941 and grew up on Duck Run just outside McDermott, Ohio.   He was eighth child of nine children born to working class parents.

His family lived a hardscrabble existence, briefly living in a chicken coop after their home burned down.

After winning the governor’s seat in 2006 Strickland often quipped about going from the “Chicken House to the State House”.

Strickland was a member of the first graduating class of Northwest High School in 1959.

Religion played a significant role in his early life. College did not seem within the realm of possibilities until one of his high school teachers took him on a trip to visit Asbury College and Theological Seminary in Kentucky and he ended up graduating from there with degree in history in 1963 and a master’s in divinity in 1967.

He served as a Methodist minister and then in various roles at the Methodist Home for Children in Versailles, Kentucky; in 1980, he got a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Kentucky.
It was while Strickland was at the University of Kentucky he met his future wife Frances, an educational psychologist and author whom he married in 1990.

In addition to serving for five terms in the US Congress, Ted Strickland has been a minister, a prison psychologist at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility and a psychology professor at Shawnee State University.

Ted Strickland was first elected to Congress in 1992. He lost the 1994 election, but was returned to Congress in 1996. While in Congress Strickland served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Congressional Steel Caucus, and the House Veteran's Affairs Committee.

Strickland served as Ohio's 6th District Congressman from 1993-1995 and 1997-2007 until being elected as governor of Ohio in 2007.