It is almost too late to celebrate it, but it was twenty years ago this month that my family and I first arrived in North Carolina.
It was 1983 when we moved into a house in Charlotte so big that another kid on the school bus asked me how many families lived there with us. He was serious, though the house wasn’t as big as that.
Jim Valvano’s Cardiac Pack had just won the NCAA basketball championship and his goofy grin was all over the local television advertising.
Charlotte was also primed for major growth as Bank of America (nee Nationsbank) was still North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) and still strictly local. Jim Hunt was governor and was reeling in business for his home state.
IBM made printers and ATM machines in a nearby office park. The IBM PC was barely two years old, and ours was one year old. I called my first BBS (bulletin board system) that year, beginning a long career in computer communications. It was there I began to call myself “IBMark” in the online forums.
The move to North Carolina was very good for our family, and to me in particular. I’ll always remember how at home I felt when I got here. Twenty years later and I still don’t want to leave!