Faith

"Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith

Faith is an interesting word. To some it is deeply rooted in religion, for others is the foundation for relationships and some still find it means nothing at all. At various points in my life, it has meant all three. Recounted in this tale are quite a number of events which I have concluded are either direct or indirect actions of God in my life. I am not afraid to admit that when I need Him, He is there - sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, but always there. In the fall of 2009, I found yet another definition of faith as I struggled to find a way to close the distance separating me from my family.

I was leading the advanced learning strategy on a program to train air traffic controllers for the FAA. No longer centric to the Troy area, I was now traveling to facilities all across the USA. I found myself at locations from San Diego, California to Washington, DC and everywhere in between. Given the Raleigh/Durham International Airport was just a short drive from my house, I made the decision to try and work from there for a while.

My wife had been asking me for months to "just close up the apartment in Troy and work from home." I was reluctant to break the lease and pay the fees, so I waited until it was due to be renewed at the end of October. It was there that I took a leap of faith. Without confirming my desired working conditions with my boss, I turned in the papers so that the termination of the lease would coincide with the Friday before Thanksgiving week, trusting that everything would work out, or else I would be looking for a new place to spend my nights in Michigan.

Call it divine intervention or coincidence, but during the next two months, we had an explosion of work requiring the addition of thirty plus new employees. The wave of new bodies set the office building to a critical mass, ready to burst out the doors. There was not an empty “cube” to be found anywhere, and my office mate and I were being squeezed out to allow for more desks. I saw this as a sign and approached my boss with a solution. Trying to hide a smile, I said to him, “I am willing to take one for the team and give up my office and work from home.” He responded, “Okay!” And that was that. On the 20th of November, I packed my entire apartment into my car and headed back to North Carolina.

The months of November and December went as planned. What with vacations at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and trips for the FAA, I would have never been in the Troy office anyway. Two months of lease payments would have been for nothing. Instead, I got to work from my home office and spend desperately needed time with my family.

As with other times in my life, faith also has its little surprises. Driving home from Thanksgiving, I received a call from a recruiter who had seen my profile on LinkedIn and was interested in interviewing me for a new job opportunity. Trudie was sitting next to me in the car and I could tell she was ready to burst as I completed the call. I told her the news, but since I did not have many details, we were excited, but had to wait.

The interview the following week went well. The job was perfect, and come to find out; it was in a town just 2 hours and 44 minutes from Raleigh. I had another interview a week later and then, due to the holidays, had to wait until the first of the year for the next step. Fortunately, due to my travel schedule for the FAA, I had quite a bit of vacation time backed up (faith or coincidence?) and the first week of January 2010 found me at an all day interview. Interestingly enough, I also discovered that projects I had reluctantly managed the previous three years were strongly relevant during these interviews, and I thanked God for the opportunities I had been reticent to show my appreciation for in the past. Several days later, I was rewarded with a call from the new company that they wanted me to join their team.

During another moment in time when everything stops for an instant, I realized that had I not had faith that God would find a way for me to be home with my family in October, much of what transpired might not have been possible. If I had not listened to God speaking through Trudie, two months of precious time with my children would have been lost. As it was, we found ourselves prepared for the transition, and for the first time we could see a light at the end of a ten-year tunnel.

The economy is changing once again. I do not expect all will be cured overnight. It has taken four long years to return to North Carolina, and may take another decade to repair the damage done to other parts of the country. For now I am simply thankful to God and my family and friends for being there when we needed you most. I will still be traveling between two cities. Fortunately, the distance is drastically reduced, and my family will get to see me each weekend. The drive is even short enough to allow for unexpected events during the week, and the knowledge that I can be home in case of emergencies is a wonderful gift indeed.

The journey has been long, both in miles and hours. I am grateful to God that he has provided for us along the way. We have never gone for want of food or shelter. Against all odds, He enabled us to keep our children's community and education constant. And through it all, our faith in each other and in God has remained strong.

We are going to take the year to allow the kids to finish up with school and then relocate in 2011. And, as the second decade of the 21st Century begins we will have a new home and a new journey. This one we will travel together.

- Ken

Two Cities

Once upon a time, there were two cities. In the north lay a small bedroom community suburb supporting a shining manufacturing pillar of chrome and steel. In the south was the epicenter of a land of tobacco, textiles, and technology. Each represented some of our country’s best emerging from World War II and moving to an era of prosperity.

Since the 1950s, Troy, Michigan and Raleigh, North Carolina, have carefully managed the diversity of their job base by encouraging a variety of industries to invest in their cities. The current fiscal crisis facing Michigan, however, is miring Troy’s progress due to the state’s mass exodus resulting from the demise of the automobile industry. Raleigh faced a similar crisis back in the early 1980s with the outsourcing of textile manufacturing and the anti-tobacco movement. Fortunately, the state of North Carolina had begun diversifying its economic base in the early 1950s making it better prepared to react to the crisis by localizing the economic downturn and minimizing its scale.

If there were a villain in this story, it would be the unions: the United Auto Workers Union and the Textile Workers Union of America. Initially established to help the average factory worker, they evolved into political dynamos whose purpose transformed to one devoted to self-interest. The unions ultimately controlled these companies and helped lead to the destruction of both American industries and their supporting communities. The unions made it impossible for these companies to be competitive in the global economy, and this ultimately led to the affected companies finding alternative ways of either doing business elsewhere or simply going out-of-business.

With a population of roughly 80,000 people, Troy has experienced no major growth in the past ten years. Raleigh on the other hand has experienced a 29.6 percent increase in population growing to 375,000 in 2009. The unemployment rate in Raleigh is 7.40 percent compared with Troy’s unemployment rate of 9.70 percent. Recent job growth for both cities is negative; however, Raleigh jobs have only decreased by 3.30 percent whereas Troy jobs have decreased by 9.3 percent.

Economic slowdown in both areas has introduced some interesting corporate dynamics. While the unemployment rate in Raleigh has remained low, so have salaries. Resulting from the downturn of 2001, income has remained 10% to 30% lower than in years prior. Two key growth characteristics for Raleigh include low unemployment and rising incomes. Although Troy has elected to follow the rest of the state of Michigan in providing tax credits to bring companies to their region, the availability of skilled resources has made staffing a challenge. To solve this problem, businesses are importing resources, like me, from other states or they are supplementing their rosters with virtual employees.

Is there a happy ending to this story? Well, the forecast for both cities is mixed. Raleigh’s commitment to its history, the arts, education, business, and the environment consistently make it one of the most desirable places to live and work. Annual awards for Raleigh include “#1 Best Place to Live in the U.S.” (2008, MSN#1 Best Place for Young AdultsBC.com), “” (2008, Bizjournals), and “#5 Recession-Proof City” (2008, Forbes magazine). Troy has one of the best public school systems in the country and is home to several major universities. Troy was ranked 22nd “Best places to Live” (2008, CNN Money). North Carolina’s economy is expected to continue to grow through the next decade, with Raleigh and Research Triangle Park leading the way. Michigan is more difficult to forecast due to the collapse of the automobile industry and its ripple effect on suppliers and associated businesses. Unfortunately, much of the Troy’s economic prosperity was based on automotive-related business, especially small-scale manufacturing and supply operations. As a result, Troy has no clear forecast and may have a slower recovery due to the larger impact of the state economic conditions.

The more I travel, the more I realize just how many other people are sharing the life I lead. Lay-offs and company bankruptcies are causing many to rethink the job market and explore new ways of providing for their families. Real estate foreclosures and the recession have made it difficult to relocate. “Unconventional” has taken on new meaning. You live and work where you must even if it means separate locations for each.

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2009 has become a bedtime story for grown-ups. The moral of the story is to work hard, buy only what you can afford, pay in cash, diversify, pay attention to what is going on around you, and be honest. If you follow these simple guidelines, you should be able to sleep at night.

- Ken

Marking Time

The fourth year of our journey began without any fanfare; just a few more gas receipts and another 750 miles on the speedometer. My father once told me the older you get the faster the years go by. I now understand what he meant. And, as if in pace with the hours I travel, the days and months are whipping by like the mile markers along the road with only the occasional rest area break that I call home.

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I have come to believe that everyone has their own unique way of marking the passage of time. In fact, the ways we mark time actually change as we grow older. Take my life for example. When I was a kid, time almost seemed to run in reverse. It seemed I would never be old enough to do this or that. I could not wait for my next birthday or Christmas.


Even in school I tried to race as fast as I could. Self-paced learning was my friend, and so with the aid of the SRA Reading program, I was at a high school grade reading level by the fifth grade. I always wanted what was coming next, sometimes sacrificing the things I should have enjoyed most; including a year of my childhood.


The year we moved to North Carolina was a year of opportunity and loss (although I did not recognize the loss until much later in life). We had moved in the spring, right at the start of the fourth quarter of my eighth grade year. I remember sitting in the guidance counselor’s office at my new school, excited about a fresh start, but apprehensive all the same. A girl about my age came in with a stack of books under her arm. I said to my mom, “Hey, they use the same books we used in Florida.” To which the guidance councilor replied, “I think we may have a problem.”


The problem we discovered was that the girl carrying the books was in the ninth grade, not the eighth. Apparently at that time, the schools in North Carolina were a little behind the schools in Florida as far as curriculum went. So, with a little reluctance from my parents, I found myself catapulted ahead in time by a full year. Little did I know that time is a one way street. You can go forward, but you can never go back.


Now, in many ways this was okay. My dream of getting to high school and college more quickly was being fulfilled. I started dating a year earlier than my peers. Heck, my peers were now a year older than me; including the girls. I learned about life faster, but in hindsight I do not think I learned about it better. And as a man heading towards mid-life, if I had the opportunity to do it over again, I think I would have opted for taking it a little bit slower. Some things in life are there to be savored, not gulped down quickly like a meal at a fast food joint.

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Fast forward three years and the X’s on the calendar started marking the days to the prom and the end of high school. Planning for the future became more important than living each day. The girl I was dating at the time even spoke of post college nuptials. The madness of graduation was upon us and time was meaningless.


Even during our graduation ceremony we marked time. Time to enter the hall. Time to wait for the speeches. Time to wait for my name to be called (mine was always in the middle, equal wait on both sides of the alphabet). Time to turn the tassel. And then it was over. The first quarter of my life had come to an end; another milestone along the road.

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There are moments in my life I know that time has actually stopped, or at least my perception of time has paused for an instant. I had one of these moments a few months later when I found myself sitting at a football stadium in West Point, New York, kissing and hugging my mom, dad and girlfriend goodbye as I started plebe year at the US Military Academy. I remember looking at them that last time and thinking this is it. This is the beginning of my life.


I have felt those pauses on other rare occasions. Performing on stage as Professor Harold Hill to a standing ovation. The first time I kissed my wife on a bench in front of her dorm. My wedding day when I said, “I do.” The first time I held each of my children. The cold grasp of death as my insides exploded. Each goal or basket or point scored by my kids. The quiet seconds holding the ones I love dearest to me.


Still life with meaning might be the way a painter would describe these instances. Life, however, is anything but still. There is vibrancy and motion on the canvas. The images are more like a clip than a frame - a movie not a photograph.

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At the Academy we measured time in “butt days.” The Firsties (seniors) asked us each morning, noon and night, “How many days.” To which we would reply, “There are 256 (or whatever number of days remained until their graduation day) and a butt days, sir.” The butt was for the portion of that very day the request was made. Days were important at the Academy, because each day was one day closer to freedom, or so we thought.


When I was a kid, freedom seemed like a great thing to find; freedom to do what I want, when I wanted. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to be free. Naïve little child, I did not realize how free I actually was. This same naïvety followed me from the Academy to design school. College life at the university was the most liberating time of my life, and yet my quest was to get through it as quickly as possible to be able start my career; to reach my next marker. In those few short years, I overlooked the facts that freedom comes from independence, and that independence disappears once you have dependents. And, once you have dependents, you realize that independence is a long time away.

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And so it was on the fourth year of my Tale of Two Cities that I found myself acutely aware of how much time was passing by. This was my oldest daughter’s senior year of high school. Her milestones were laid out before her and they were racing towards me at 100 miles per hour. Senior pictures, invitations, college planning sessions, applications, the senior play, the senior prom, culminating at graduation; STOP!

Ironically, at the time in her life when she wanted time to go by faster, I wished it would slow down. Echoes of my words my parents used reverberated in my mind. “Slow down.” “Enjoy the moment.” “You’ll be old enough before you know it.” It was then I realized there was still time; not much, but enough. If I could somehow decelerate, slow down and watch the scenery instead of just seeing the signs go by we might be able to enjoy this time instead of regret its passing.

And so it was that as my daughter raced ahead, I looked for off ramps that would give us more time. I wanted time to be a part of her life’s journey where in the years past we only intersected on occasion. A selfish time to mark the inches and the miles before our roads diverge on the path to her future.

- Ken