People have asked what our backgrounds are and what we do for a living.
Anne: For the past several years I was an outside sales rep for industrial supply distributors. That means I had a list of customers that I had built up over time, mostly warehouses, distribution companies, factories, contractors, etc.
The products I sold to them included steel strapping, boxes and bags, custom wooden crates, protective shipping cases, antistatic packaging, custom designed foam packaging inserts, bubble wrap in giant rolls, stretch wrap for palletizing, tape, kraft paper, newsprint, labels, plastic bags, mailing tubes, and packing popcorn.
I worked out of my Ford Explorer and office at home, calling on current customers to make sure they have what they need and are satisfied with my products and service, and cold-calling to add new customers.
Some customers would call and tell me what they needed, ask advice or request emergency deliveries (that's why the big truck). Without a PDA and cell phone, I would have been lost.
Starting as an employee-type rep, I moved up the food chain to be an Independent Professional. IP's are self-employed much like a plumber, lawyer, etc . We choose how, where and when to do the work, pay our own expenses, and represent one company. Being
a 'Hired Gun" gives flexibility and a great deal of job satisfaction.
For the past two years I have not been working as a sales rep. Am "horse-trading".
I was raised in Kennesaw, GA but moved to Oklahoma in 1967 as a teen. From age 8, I worked after school and weekends in my Dad's welding shop, then added other work as I got older. My maiden name was Rudd.
My adult work background is really varied. From 1973 to 1981 I was a professional bicycle mechanic and eventually owned a Raleigh bicycle dealership in Ada, Oklahoma.
When I was about 29, I sold the shop to return to college, with an eye to attending law school. Right after I sold the shop, a knee surgery that was not followed up responsibly resulted in blood clots to both lungs, anoxia (loss of oxygen) and brain damage. My husband, Dale. literally dragged me back from it - it took years. I finished a degree in Accounting in 1985 at the School of Business of East Central University and am very proud of that.
Dale also has a degree in Accounting from ECU, and works in management at a large orange juice factory near Orlando. Busy season starts in October each year, which means he usually works 7 days per week. He gets a few weeks in March of 5 days per week, then we tough it out until about April.
His full name is William Dale Hillebrand. He was raised in Lindsay, Oklahoma and lived in Oklahoma almost his entire life until we moved to Florida in 1988.
He is a twice-decorated Army volunteer veteran of the Viet Nam war. From the photos, you can tell he's 6' 2".
We met January 17, 1971 while in college in Ada, and married just 5 months later on July 3, 1971. In the little town in Oklahoma where I went to high school, the talk still has not died down. ha ha.
There aren't many spouses who would stick it out without complaining with a mate that had the serious health problems I have had. He salvaged me from scrap twice. His whole personality is like that, though. I can honestly say he's the finest man I know.
(Update: - October, 2004. Dale's employer permanently ceased orange juice production in this part of the state. Hurricanes Charlie and Ivan caused major crop losses around the state.) They still produce juice at a plant further South. It is then hauled up to this local plant for testing and packaging. Dale's job did not exist anymore.
I didn't work while he job hunted; we do best when we stick together. He went back to work on Monday, March 7. Same company, which was a miracle, but over the later shift of the fill room and packaging departments, which will remain open.
We kept the web site / internet service and cell phone up even without jobs during that 4 months. It was a leap of faith, but people were helped. We are blessed; others lost everything.
We met our #1 boy, Roy, while I owned the bike shop and Dale was the Accountant for a regional meat-packer. Roy was 13 years old and already 5' 8" - slim as a post.
We learned he needed foster parents and no one had applied. Dale asked if I thought we should, so at 22 and 26, we became parents of a basket-ball bouncing big boy.
#1 is a fine man and we have two swell grandkids - a girl 13 and a boy 11, as a result. They are real sprouts since dad is 6'3" now.
Right after #1 came to live with us, he brought home a friend from school. #2 had a home and family, but became part of our family as well. Not much later, he brought #3 into our lives, and so it went.
All the "# boys" have turned out to be fine men with good careers. We could not be more proud or love them more if they were our own.
We eventually learned that we could not have a baby of our own, but still did not know that the only reason was Fibro keeping my system from working.
After college I worked in Purchasing for a legal services company in Ada, then for an insurance agency.
Customer service, inside sales, cost accounting and other jobs kept me working as I recovered more and more from the brain damage. We had no idea then that a big part of my health problems were from Fibromyalgia.
For a while I sold the outside parts of big tour buses to repair shops, owners and operators. I invented, designed and engineered stainless steel tail-light conversions for 5 different models of 40 ft long buses and headlight conversions for a couple of models, as well. They changed the style of the bus to look like newer models.
The most fun I had was being the character voice for and operating an animatronic Elsie the Borden Cow in grocery stores. I was filling in for someone else, but had a blast while it lasted. MOOO! I sang and told cow jokes to dairy department customers who only saw a moving and talking Elsie standing on the porch of a little barn, not the person inside driving the movement.
We always find lots to do in Central Florida. When Hurricane Andrew devastated Miami in 1992, I organized the first large-scale shipment of relief supplies from Orlando to Miami. A local organization had been offered a semi-truck and driver to go to Miami the next morning, and put out a call on local radio for rush donations.
An avalanche of items was brought to their location all at once, soon turning into giant piles of new, used, clean, usable and unusable goods; it overwhelmed the group. I was just in the right place at the time. I had stopped by to take some blankets, pillows, water, clothes, tarps, tools and food to donate. There was an obvious problem. I met the group president, who told me he didn't know what to do. I told him that I did, and that if I had to do it myself would make sure it got done. It took all night, but once everyone could see a plan going into place and how to sort and stack, they pitched in. Some called friends and family to come out to help.
When the full tractor trailer reached the Cuban American Club in Miami the next day, everything in it was clean, neat, sized, bagged and marked for immediate distribution. It was
a very rewarding experience to work together to help others in our own state. We were told it was very much appreciated and an encouragement to those who had lost so much.
A couple of weeks later, when the first civilians were allowed in to work, I went down with a disaster relief team hastily assembled by the local Habitat for Humanity. An ad in the local newspaper recruited thirty total strangers. We left the fairgrounds in Orlando at midnight on Friday of Labor Day weekend. We all paid our own way, brought our own supplies and tools and tents, food, etc. We had to be self-sufficient for the time we would be there.
Our group did emergency roofing and stabilized interiors of homes in Perrine. The residents we were asked to help had received no help since the storm two weeks earlier. Camping out in August heat in the military-controlled area of devastation, we got 21 houses "in dry" in 4 days. It was a remarkable event.
A tornado hit Dale's office and the town of Winter Garden, FL a few years ago. Several people died in a retirement village and the local hardware store was destroyed. Relief coordinators gave me 15 youth volunteers from a church in a nearby town. Our team did emergency repair and cleanup on several residences.
We love to canoe and kayak on local rivers and we swim in the back yard every chance we get. Dale loves to play golf when time and money allow. That's been tough lately.
To fill a last-minute emergency, Thanksgiving of 2002 I arranged for the delivery and use of a forklift for an annual charity food distribution. A regional grocery store chain, Publix gathered together surplus items from 10 of its stores. A large group of community volunteers worked late into the night to sort 2400 boxes of food. The boxes were then delivered by other volunteers on Thanksgiving morning. About 800 local families in need were given some great food.
Business friends loaned me the forklift; others loaned pallet jacks. A friend and I owned some flat carts. The event organizer had failed to arrange for a qualified forklift driver, so I changed our holiday plans and drove the forklift from 3 pm on Wed until 1:00 am. then 7:30 am to 11:00 am Thanksgiving. It felt good to do for others when just 18 months earlier I could do almost nothing, even for myself.
The most significant thing that has happened in recent years - more significant even than finding the first really effective treatment for Fibromyalgia and discovering the malfunction in the natural flow of Serous Fluid - is that March 21, 2002, I became a Christian.
Click here and you can read all about that:
On June 15th, 2004 I left Orlando to drive to Ada, OK to be baptized. I made a long trip of it and saw some friends and met some strangers.
I was baptized in Ada on schedule, June 24th. July 3rd I was back in Orlando for our 33rd wedding anniversary, then Sunday, July 4th I joined the First Baptist Church Orlando.
I could have been baptized here, of course, but that was not what I was supposed to do. There are baptism photos on a link at the end of my Testimony. The entire trip was remarkable and very special to me and for my friends.
Anne H
