Discover the Works of Dane Starbuck

Dane’s stories tend to be about outstanding individuals and their history who have somehow escaped the headlines and by-lines but who have, nonetheless, accomplished incredible things during their lives, leaving the world a better place. They have tended to be “Midwesterners” because that is the geographical region that Dane is from and most familiar with. But the qualities that these individuals have demonstrated, e.g., perseverance, integrity, vision, entrepreneurship, and compassion, are really America’s qualities.

Dane’s discovery of the lives of these Midwesterners has taken him all over the United States to conduct research: from California to New York, North Dakota to Florida, Texas to Washington, D.C., Louisiana to Connecticut, and many states in between. In the process, he has interviewed hundreds of fascinating individuals to understand his subjects’ lives and the lives they have touched, interviewing everyone from Nobel Prize laureates, to Governors, U.S. Senators, federal judges, multi-millionaires, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

But Dane has also learned much from interviewing just “ordinary people” about his subjects’ lives. His curiosity all began from his hometown in Winchester, Indiana, a small community of just 5,000 residents located in East Central Indiana.

Born in 1956, Dane benefited from the excellent local schools. He graduated from Winchester Community High School in 1975, where he was President of the school’s chapter of the National Honor Society and named by the Indiana High School Basketball Coaches Association to the First Team Academic All-State Basketball team. In 1978, Dane graduated magna cum laude from Huntington College in three years with a B.A. degree in English and world history.

From there Dane taught English literature and writing at Elmhurst High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He went on to earn an M.A. degree in English from Indiana University and an M.A. degree with honors in English Literature and Language from the University of Melbourne, Australia. At Melbourne, he studied on a Rotary International Foundation Ambassadorial Graduate Fellowship.

He has also earned law degrees (B.A. and M.A.) from Oxford University, England, where he studied at St. Edmund Hall, and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. At Georgetown, he served as an associate editor of The Georgetown Law Journal, one of the top law review journals in the country.

During the course of the past thirty-five years, Dane has held a number of occupational positions: he served on the U.S. Senate Labor & Human Resources Committee in Washington, D.C. as a legislative assistant to former U.S. Senator Dan Coats; he served as a law clerk to U.S. Federal District Court Judge William C. Lee; and, he practiced law in his hometown of Winchester, Indiana, for several years in the 1990s. He also held the position of President & CEO of the Wishard Memorial Foundation, Inc. (today known as the Eskenazi Health Foundation), a non-profit organization that supports one of the largest public healthcare systems in the country.

While practicing law, Dane also co-founded in 2010 and served for six years as President of “Friends of UFM, Inc.,” a U.S. based non-profit organization that raises financial support and awareness for Guatemala’s “Universidad Francisco Marroquin,” one of Latin America’s top universities. Since 2005 he has been a practicing attorney in central and eastern Indiana. In 2024, Dane joined the Indiana law firm DeFur Voran LLP, where he practices primarily trust and estate, business, and family law.

During all of these years, Dane has also been an author. His interest in writing began in the 1970s when he first wrote for his high school’s newspaper. From there he edited his undergraduate college’s literary magazine and worked as a part-time reporter for the Huntington Herald-Press and the Indiana University Daily Student. He has published five books and more than thirty articles in Midwest newspapers and magazines. In addition, he has authored chapters in three other books.

As a speaker, Dane has spoken to more than 350 organizations, often about his research and writing. He has also served as an officer and director of several non-profit organizations. He is currently a director of Liberty Fund, Inc, a Trustee of The Winchester Foundation, and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, The Philadelphia Society, the American-Swiss Foundation, the Indianapolis Literary Club, and the Carmel Creative Writing, Inc.

Dane is married to Bev A. Starbuck, an interior designer and artist, and they have three children and eight grandchildren. They live in Carmel, Indiana, and enjoy supporting local arts and literary organizations.

For a more detailed biographical account about Dane’s life, please see www.winchesternewsgazette.com/news/Winchester’s Golden Graduates: Dane Starbuck—From Classmate to Class Act! June 30, 2019.