Settling in Georgia

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"On Saturdays and Sundays, I would go door to door, selling housewares: linens, bed linens, blankets, silverware, pots and pans, aluminum pots and pans, credit, etc. So, by the time we graduated college, I dreamed of going to Wharton School of Finance, University of Pennsylvania, getting master's degrees and becoming CPAs. We threw all that aside and said, 'we got a business already.' So that's what we did, back home, we spent our time developing and increasing the size of the business.

We ended up getting into the furniture business. We formed a partnership to expand and open more furniture stores. So, after we opened Indianapolis, Indiana, together, we decided to open a furniture store in Atlanta, Georgia.  That's how we ended up with a furniture store in Atlanta, Georgia. One thing led to another. My twin brother Howard first decided to move his family to Atlanta for him to manage the business.  Now, as that store was doing extremely well, and the managers we had couldn't handle it. Then as we expanded further, I used to go to Atlanta and spend two weeks at a time in that store, and back to Jacksonville. And then we went up to another totally different partnership that was quite different. And then I decided, 'better move my wife and my mother-in-law to Atlanta.'

That’s how we ended up [in Georgia] for business reasons. We opened up additional furniture stores and another business selling mattresses from temporary locations.”