Born Sept. 4, 1954 to my mother, Peggie Sigmon Willis and my father, Kermit Willis. Dad served in the Marines during WWII as a Tech. Sgt. in the Pacific. During his stay at Majuro in the Marshall Islands his unit almost starved to death as they were many miles off course from the major supply routes. There were rumors going around at one time that he was responsible for the loss of about 30 cans of peaches that were being secretly cached by an officer, but nothing was ever proved. Rumor has it the peaches were eaten by the enlisted men and non-coms. It was shortly afterwards that a particularly potent concoction of peach brandy made its appearance. Peaches come packed in peach syrup, ya know? After the war Dad went to work for Fieldcrest Mills in Draper, NC. You see there were these three small towns where the Dan River and the Smith River meet. The three towns were Leaksville, Spray, and Draper - located almost right on the Virginia state line, just south of Danville, Va.

In 1967 the three towns consolidated into the city of Eden. So named because when British surveyor William Byrd trekked through the area, he called it the Land of Eden due to it's lush vegetation, an abundance of wildlife and plenty of water.

As for me, after high school, I took a boring one year class in Basic Electronics at the county community college before beginning my career in the wonderful world of tv repair about 1974, adding vcr repair a couple of years later when they began appearing on store shelves. The choice to go into VHS or Beta repair was made for me, as my employer chose the VHS system to sell. It was a fun job, lots of hard work, especially when we started doing TVRO dish installations in the early eighties. At the peak we were doing five or six installs a week, primarily the eight-foot diameter dishes. When we saw the writing on the wall, i.e. the dbs systems with the eighteen inch dish, we geared up for that. Just before the systems made their debut, I had a massive stroke in Feb. 1992. I was 37 years old. I spent exactly two months in the hospital in Greensboro, NC. They had, and still have a fantastic rehab facility. I can't say enough about Moses Cone Hospital, the doctors, nurses, and staff. I went back to work a year later, and struggled for five years, until I saw it was useless, and got my disability in 2000. How long that will last I can't say, but I don't feel like I can work at all, what with continuing medical problems and mental problems as well. -robert-