365 Days of Impacts

When I graduated college in December 1987, my dad also retired that month in that year. Mom and Dad had always planned to move back south. My Mom wanted it way sooner than my dad. When we moved to Detroit, Dad always said it was only for a few years. 17 years later my mom was about to leave and go back herself. The winters were killer, and my mom missed her family in Athens. We piled in our brown van and took off for Florida. They originally thought they were going to move back to Florida. That was the plan. While we traveled around Florida from the east coast to the west coast, we visited old friends of theirs like the Filippi's - we stayed in their RV in their driveway. It was GLAMPING at it's finest, and it was fun. I looked at this as a sort of a college graduation trip - back to the old stomping grounds. We went to Ron Jon's Surf shop in Cocoa Beach, saw the old house in Titusville. We would drop dad off in the morning to golf, then mom and I would go on a...

When I was 3 months old, we moved from Huntsville to Titusville Florida, home of the Kennedy Space Center. I don't remember much about living here except a few things. I remember my red hoppity hop that I blew out by landing on a screw. OUCH! For those of you millenials who have no idea what I'm talking about, this was HOURS of fun back in the day. The next thing I remember is my dad leaving my bouncy horse in Titusvillle when we moved to Michigan, because we didn't have room for it. I was devastated. Thinking back now, there are worse things...LOL... but boy did it seem like the world was ending then.   The last thing I remember about living here was a hurricane that came through (foreshadowing my future career at The Weather Channel?) and the storm surge left crawfish all over our front yard. Like little baby lobsters flapping around. We lived here until I was 4 years old. My dad worked for Chrysler and the Apollo Space program - until it was canceled. Two t...