Tricia Montgomery
I choose here but in order to understand the why, you need to understand my family history. My family descends from some of the original settlers of Franklin County. The original farmland was homesteaded and registered in Mississippi Territory as Alabama was not a State until December of that year, that year being 1819. My family stayed here for generations.
I was born and raised in Michigan. How did my family get there and why? Jobs were very few in Alabama so to make a living my parents moved to Michigan with my father being a Job Setter at Cadillac Motors. My mother a homemaker until later she went to school and became a licensed cosmetologist.
My career and travels took me from Michigan to Tennessee back to Michigan and then California where I met my husband of 30 years. My husband Scott and I would return every year to Alabama. We loved every moment of being here. The natural beauty, the freedom, how it smells after a rain, the sound of the wind in the pine trees, the lightning bugs in the summer, the taste of the South with the biscuits and chocolate gravy, fried chicken and BBQ.
Scott and I had the opportunity to move and choose here in 2000, and that is exactly what we did, choose here! There is no place like Alabama to raise a family. Our children had many more opportunities here than they would of in California, and we found new opportunities for ourselves as well.
What is unique about our story is that while my parents left here to find employment, my husband and I had the opportunity to create employment when we chose to move here. That employment has grown into a warehouse distribution facility providing jobs for about 50 families and it has become an anchor in a rural community.
We choose to live along the Tennessee River. The River is the reason families came and settled this area. The River was and still is a source of transportation, recreation, conservation, and the reason people and families still move here but for me The River, The Singing River is peace.
Choosing here has given me peace, my home, and our opportunities.
