Okay, so I
am not from here and it took a good chunk of my life to get here. The truth is
I had never visited the state of Alabama other than to pass through it until
Eastman Kodak offered me a great promotion to become the General Manager of an
Eastman Kodak division in Birmingham. By that time Kodak had moved my wife,
kids and I several times including Nashville TN, Philadelphia PA and
Hattiesburg MS. Kyle (my wife) and I had already lived a number of places in
our lives prior to Kodak. For me, it included Mifflinburg PA, Cincinnati OH,
New York City, Columbia MO and Nashville where my nearly 30 year career at
Kodak began. For Kyle she was from Overland Park Kansas a suburb of Kansas City
and had moved to Shelbyville IN near Indianapolis. Our journeys brought us
together 37 years ago in Nashville via a mutual friend. So now, you might
wonder what this history has to do with anything related to tourism which is my
typical subject of my weekly column. The truth is it is all about tourism. Kyle
and I moved to Fort Payne because while living in Birmingham-Hoover, we like
many other people from the Birmingham area, became tourists visiting DeKalb
County. Our kids were grown and had both moved to Nashville at that time. We
started coming up here on weekends doing many of the exact same things our
typical leisure tourist do; camping, hiking, visiting the parks, eating, shopping
for art…and most of all relaxing and enjoying what we considered the most
beautiful part of Alabama. It was quieter than the rush we had lived in most of
our lives, less traffic, more scenery and it served as the ideal get-a-way for
us. As time went on Kodak began the struggle to keep their 120 year business
model alive. Even though Kodak invented Digital Photography they could not find
a way to make it profitable. Film, processing, photographic paper and chemicals
were where the profit was and it was declining quickly. The company started
laying off employees and closing offices and divisions and that happened in
Birmingham. I stayed with the company with a small office in Homewood. At that
time I was responsible for much of the southeastern states in Kodak Retail
Sales & Service and they did not care where we lived as long as it was in
my region. We decided to sell our house in Hoover and move to PARADISE. Kyle
loved horses and I loved land so we both wanted acreage. Before you knew it we were living in DeKalb
County and loving it.
Tourists
feel the same way about our area as I did as a tourist. We have become a
location many people retire to or say they want to. Our visitors come back over
and over because we are the exact weekend get-a-way they desire or we are their
chosen vacation spot. Many of you have lived here all of your life and maybe
you do not think about this area the way I do. My love for DeKalb comes via the
choice of picking this as a place we wanted to live. Our prior moves were chosen
by our parents or by Kodak. This was Kyle’s and my first move we have ever made
in our marriage that was a destination we picked.
For all the
things to do and see and for a calendar of events please visit our website at www.tourdekalb.com or call us at 256-845-3957.
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