AMA #18: KvilleHokies

Hi! I'm Eric.

I grew up in Stuarts Draft Virginia, where I spent my childhood, like most kids in small towns in the early 70's, running around in unsupervised packs doing things that parents today would send their kids to a psychologist for doing.

Growing into the teenage years my friends and I started looking for things to do to fight the perceived small town boredom, including partying and traveling to anywhere I heard there was party, even if an hour or more away. I thought we were normal at the time but looking back I was a bit wild.

I applied to several top engineering schools because my guidance counselor told me "You're good at math. You should be an engineer. They make a lot of money." Princeton did not accept me. Harvey Mudd was too small. Atlanta was too big a city. Our campus guide at UVA (where my dad went to graduate school and why we were in Virginia) was a pompous ass. Duke seemed overpriced for the engineering degree. The older friends I stayed with in O'Shag when visiting VPI&SU showed me a great time. So I became a Hokie.

I more or less partied my way through undergrad, chased the Grateful Dead around the country, and thought I was living the life. The summer before my senior year my future wife introduced herself to me at The Cellar. After a rocky first month where she put with several no shows on my part we hit it off and were living together soon after, following a problem with her apartment.

A hated senior design in ME (no desire to pay attention to detail) but stuck it out for the degree. I attended graduate school in education (after taking a summer of graduate level math classes to get a minor and pull my grades up to get in) and worked at the Sycamore Deli so I could stay with her. We eventually moved to Roanoke where she worked as buyer for Heironimus while I taught high school alternative education to at risk high schoolers. We took our vacations with her parents at their time-share in Myrtle beach or visiting our families, and I cooked every meal (pescatarian at the time).

When we had our first son, my wife said she did not want to go back to work (Heironimus had been sold to a family out of Texas who was running it into the ground, and the environment had turned toxic), so I decided to man up and look for a career that paid more than the $30K I was making teaching school, summer school, an after school program, and tutoring higher level math. After every technical sales job I looked at required extensive overseas travel I hit the easy button and went to work for the real estate company where my dad was a partner, as his assistant. We provide real estate services to the trucking industry, which was the industry he had worked for previously.

By the time our second son was born I had proved myself in the business, but had to move to a bigger city if I wanted to move up, so we moved to Kernersville, and opened the Greensboro office, which is where we live today. I coached the boys in about everything sport there is growing up, and then found other interests when they grew older. They are both grown and starting their own careers now.

My passion is still for cooking, and that is my creative outlet. I come home from work and cook dinner to relax, and spend the weekends when we are at home trying new food ideas. I play tennis a few times week for exercise but it's more social than serious, and garden (mostly exotic peppers in pots) as an extension to the cooking. We love to travel, and like it even more when we can travel with others.

I think that about covers it, but if there is anything you would like to know, Ask Me Anything.....