About the host

Tim Ulmer, Epilepsy Gangster’s creator and host, is quite the advocate for people with epilepsy. He facilitates the prominent support group that he started over a decade ago. He's been a moderator-writer for Health Union's EpilepsyDisease.com where people can read his columns about living with epilepsy (at no charge). In 2024, as creator-producer of Epilepsy Gangster, he was a finalist in Health Union's Social Awareness Awards in the category of "Creative Contributor", and the international Invisible Disabilities Association has selected him to be its first Ambassador who is epileptic (invisibledisabilities.org).  

A head injury at the age of 2 caused his epilepsy. Both of his parents, Tom

and Rosie, were school teachers in Central Illinois. Because their natures

were very positive, he was encouraged to try different whatever activities

seemed interesting and to never think that epilepsy ruled him. This led awards

for teen-employment, speech, and acting. He received an award for an essay

on energy in the White House Rose Garden by the President of the United

States Jimmy Carter.

Tim’s goal to carry on both of his families’ heritage of military service, going

back to the American Revolution wasn’t discouraged by them. So, he became

politically active in order to get his congressman’s nomination to the U.S.

Naval Academy. The family knew that his epilepsy could be a restriction, but

his parents never tried to dissuade him. It was his life. Privately, they knew

that failing at goals is a part of life, and the sooner people learn to fail, they

more confident they’ll be to try other things.

Each of the American armed services rejected Tim’s effort to serve. It was

painful for him to accept it. Mulling it over, he determined that service to

Americans had been his underlying motive all along, and saw that his

politically activities were another way to do that. (His parents had been

adamant that when God closes one door opens another!) Before being old

enough to have the opportunity to vote for an American president, he was

elected to be a delegate to nominate one! Voters in an 18-county district

chose him to represent them at the 1984 Republican National Convention and

nominate Pres. Ronald Reagan for a second term in office. Tim and another

of the youngest delegates wanted this opportunity to be more than rubber-

stamping Pres. Reagan’s re-election. They wanted to do something important

for their generation. He researched and drafted a resolution for renewable

energy that was accepted in the 1984 Republican National Party Platform

decades before the realization of climate change. NBC interviewed the pair in

its network coverage about the irony of their youth and nominating the oldest

presidential candidate to that time!

After college, he relocated to Chicago in the hopes of earning money that

would finance his future in politics.  Long hours and severe stress from

several failed business ventures made the epilepsy that had been controlled

most of his life become savage, and practically daily.  Seizures caused him to

have five auto accidents, several of which were multi-vehicular (and finally

with a semi-truck). Miraculously, no one was ever injured, including Tim.

Bitterly, it meant losing his job, independent housing, and any vision of his

political ambitions. Tim credits the emotional recovery while residing with his

parents to a Chicago friend. She called him nearly every night to reassure

him that it had not been his time to die during those accidents, and that God

had a “mission” for him.

Once again, God shut one door while opening another. His epilepsy qualified

him with the State of Illinois for financial assistance to pursue a master’s

degree. That time, he studied television production (and still considering how

important it was to politics). It was exciting to him. When interning at a

internationally popular daytime drama, executives were impressed by his work

enough to start talking about hiring him for a permanent position. But after he

had a seizure, they told him to “—leave by noontime”. A leading sitcom was

arranging to hire him until it learned his reason for not driving; they would

have proceeded had the reason been because of substance abuse, but not

because of epilepsy.

For a second time, he returned to live with his parents, and started producing

news features for a local TV station. Five years later, a source in one of his

stories offered him a job teaching English at a university in China. It was fun

and he made many friends. Very few of them ever met a foreigner and

practically all of them had never met an American. His congeniality was not

what propaganda described Americans to be like.  And, none of them had

ever seen an epileptic seizure until he had several during classes (on different

days).

University administrators told him that his epilepsy risked being a “political

disaster” for them if he was to get hurt. At the same time, his students were

amazed that he’d been brave enough to journey alone to a foreign land with

his “sickness”. Many became dumbfounded by the confidence with which he

assured them that because God had saved his life in car wrecks, he knew

God would save him from any calamities there. He was also fired from a

position at law university in Shanghai for the same reason. But students at all

schools were fascinated by that faith.

His decades of aching to make a difference for others ended when Tim

realized that there was a purpose for being epileptic! If it wasn’t for his

seizures making him move between 5 Chinese cities, he met many more

hundreds of more people than if he’d stayed at that first school. God was

letting him serve America, but as a goodwill ambassador rather than as the

Navy fighter pilot he’d dreamt of being. More importantly, he discovered that

even though he’d had no training, he was an important source of information

about God to those inquiring people who had been denied the opportunity to

investigate Christianity. (He authored a book about the experience available

on this site).

It’s his steadfast belief that God’s reward to him for accepting that mission is

his wife he met while teaching there. He remains a loving husband and

father, and is determined to help others find out how to make the most of

themselves what purposes might be met by their epilepsy.