Sometimes it is really hard to believe how fast time flies. It seems like yesterday when we decided to move back to the states in 1987.
I still check the Halifax, Nova Scotia weather almost every day. It reminds me of how much I enjoyed living in Halifax.
We moved back to the states because we believed that opportunities for our kids would be better in the US.
For the most part that has turned out to be true. There are things that I miss about Canada, and I even have a site where I occasionally post thoughts about missing Canada.
Still I believe coming back to the states was best for our family.
When we first came back to America, we lived in Columbia, MD. It did not take us long to figure out that there might be a more fun place to raise our kids.
I was working for Apple and ended with the higher education territory for the state of Virginia. I spent a year leaving Columbia on Monday and coming back on Friday. There is nothing like a Friday afternoon traffic jam on the Washington beltway after you have already been in the car five hours to make you really appreciate staying at home.
Virginia Tech ended up being a really good Apple customer, and we decided to relocate to Roanoke in 1989. Apple agreed since having my name on a room at what was then the Marriott in Blacksburg was not exactly cheap.
In four years, I became higher education manager for a good part of the southeast and ended up driving back to Reston, VA two to three weeks a month. By that time, we knew Roanoke was the place to raise our family. We had good neighbors, and the kids were doing well in their schools. We had found a wonderful church in Covenant Presbyterian, and our location on the side of a mountain was a pretty good place to watch the world wake up.
Working in Reston, Virginia gave me something of the best of both worlds. Northern Virginia is a very wired place, and when I became director of federal sales for Apple, I got as much of a taste of national politics as I could stomach. Roanoke remained the place with my roots, and the place from which I drew my strength.
Two of our grown children ended up in Northern Virginia. That is not much of a surprise to anyone who has raised children in Roanoke. Most of them go someplace, Richmond, Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta, or Northern Virginia. Only a small number can stay in Roanoke.
I spent so much time in Reston, that I now consider myself a former resident of Reston. With part of the family in that area, we make a trip up there at least once a year if possible.
Sometime in 2002 we ended up owning our family home in Mount Airy, NC. It gave us a taste of being back in North Carolina. We also ended up with our third young adult in school at UNC Charlotte and eventually settling in a subdivision on the shores of Lake Norman.
In 2003 for our 30th anniversary, I decided to take my wife to a really neat bed and breakfast in Beaufort, North Carolina.
We had a wonderful time, and the trip rekindled my love of the Carolina coast. Over the years we had spent many wonderful vacations on the northern Outer Banks and a few really special ones on Bald Head Island near Southport.
I think it was after our coastal anniversary trip that I started thinking perhaps it was time to move on from Roanoke. For years our mountain in Roanoke was a great refuge. For over ten years we had a wonderful Labrador Retriever, Chester. Chester helped me clear and maintain miles of trails on the mountains behind me.
Many Saturdays we spent working on the mountain. Morning and night when at home, Chester and I would walk the mountain. We could see the lights of Roanoke, but often the city sounds were drowned out by the mountain breezes.
In 2004 my mother and Chester both passed away. The kids were all in different places, and we were on a mountain that was changing rapidly. The land we had walked for years had been sold and someone was buildiing a home and a road in the middle of our trails. I had tried unsuccessfully years earlier to interest Roanoke County in preserving that special 100 acres.
The summer of 2004 was my exit from Apple. 2005 was spent mostly working back up in DC. Then in 2006 I worked in Blacksburg, Virginia for the first six months of the year with a small start-up. It was then that I decided that I needed a new place to work, and we eventually settled on moving to the Carolina coast.
We decided to let what we wanted to enjoy rule our lives instead of finding a place a place where I could earn a lot of money. It made moving to Cape Carteret an easy decision.
I still spend some time in the Roanoke area and also visit not only Charlotte, but Raleigh and Northern Virginia, I believe that I can step back and offer a balanced opinion of the Roanoke area.
In a certain sense it is hard to compare Roanoke to the other areas. The growth that they have seen since we first moved to Roanoke is amazing. Over the years I have had a number of theories as to why Roanoke can't seem to find a growth engine. I doubt my theories are any better than those of others so I will not repeat them.
However, here are my observations on the Roanoke area.
The thing that I notice the most in Roanoke is the lack of a strong market for successful executives. I have seen the problem show up with a number of other friends who have moved to and from Roanoke. If you are lucky enough to get a great job and be located in Roanoke, you have to pray that you do not lose it because likely it will be impossible to replace.
There are just not enough large companies working in the area to create a strong talent pool. Given we are living in the days of over sized initiatives designed to attract large companies. I doubt Virginia can afford to help Roanoke on that issue.
The next thing is the biggest change since we came to Roanoke. Interstate 81 is no longer the strategic advantage it once was. It has become a highway that I would rather avoid. It needs to be six to eight lanes, but no one wants to pay for it so I do not expect that to change. it will continue to get worse until few it gets in crisis mode. As long as we are on transportation, It would not hurt to have a significant discount airline player in Roanoke either. Rail travel to DC is probably a pipe dream but would be a huge asset.
I see more and more trucks on Interstate 81 every time I travel it. With the trucks have come a haze which makes those beautiful sunrises a little rare these days. The sunrises and sunsets I enjoyed so much take special weather to occur these days.
While I have known and worked with some great leaders in the Valley, I have also seen a lack of world class leadership in some of the small valley companies. When compared to many of the other areas, the Roanoke Valley also falls short in having the will to find and follow the path to a growth engine for the Valley.
I believe Roanoke County's school system does a good job on students at least at the elementary and middle school levels. I wonder about the high schools, and I think we lose too many of the best and the brightest after college because of the job situation.
The lack of consolidated government hurts the valley. Duplicate services don't make a lot of sense when you can barely afford them.
Finally I continue to wonder if Roanoke's future lies in improved north-south transportation so that it can hook its star to the Piedmont area of North Carolina. It's far closer than Northern Virginia or Richmond.
Roanoke is still a great place to raise a family and enjoy life surrounded by mountains. It just does not have the reputation of a place where you can have a real career.
Perhaps that will change as new and more sophisticated small businesses move into the area. Maybe one day the Valley will have an anchor business which will attract all the infrastructure and other businesses needed to get the Valley to critical mass.
I will be watching from the Southern Outer Banks. And I might be back. In the meantime, if you're interested in a second home or have made that retirement decision but haven't found the right place, call me. I would like to see some more Roanoke people living along the coast.
One of things there is no shortage of in Roanoke is great people.
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