A breeze from the river lifts a corner of my napkin where my sweating glass of sweet tea sits. The air is humid, carrying the scent of mud & pine trees. I look past the house to the geese squawking at each other on the pond.

  Richard Montgomery spears a meatball with a toothpick & plops it on his plate. “Can you believe how hot it still is? Did you get you some of these meatballs? Here, try ’em!” He proffers the blue casserole dish my way. My plate is already full from everything else Ann, his wife of 42 years, has persuaded me to eat. Their hospitality is overwhelming.

  Richard is, in the truest sense of the word, a good ole boy. He’s the current Chairman of Tennessee’s Board of Parole. He served as Sevier County’s House Representative from 2008-2012, & for eighteen years prior to that, proudly chaired Sevier County’s Board of Education. Richard is an institution in this part of the world, & chances are you’ve been in his presence at some point or another, if you ever attend any local fundraisers or social events. He’s an important voice for the local people & always has an ear for anyone who stops him. And boy, do people stop him. Bob’s Mountaineer Restaurant, that once anchored Seymour on its north side, was more a political gathering place than it ever was a family buffet.

  But he wasn’t born into a well-to-do background. You’ve heard the expression dirt poor? That would adequately describe Richard’s upbringing. The youngest of eight siblings, his mother died when he was just a baby, & his oldest sister Connie raised him. If times weren’t hard enough, living in a literal dirt-floor cabin, he was born with a cleft palate that was surgically repaired through the goodwill of a local doctor after he started school.

  Richard overcame many things growing up, the least of them ridicule from classmates. He was a part of the first graduating class of Seymour High School, 1967. Richard attended the University of Tennessee through scholarships & perseverance, & graduated with an engineering degree in 1971. He was then hired by Oak Ridge National Labratories. “I still can’t talk too much about that,” Richard says, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck. He retired from ORNL in 1999, ready to improve his golf game and travel with his devoted wife, who was also recently retired from BellSouth. Their only daughter, Megan, was grown & advancing in the professional world of banking, so they could be almost carefree and enjoy their cabin in Big South Fork without worrying about rushing home for some disaster. Ann found herself cuddling babies at St. Mary’s on days she didn’t fill in at the job she’d retired from after 35 years. “South Central Bell- I can’t help still calling it that- was the only life I knew,” she says, running her hand down an antique phone booth, now stored in their garage. “But I love rocking babies, & when I caught a news story about the {drug}dependent newborns, I knew I could help. It about broke my heart, but I did love it.”

The Montgomerys got a few years off before Richard was approached by the then-mayor of Knoxville to run for the office of State Representative to serve his home county in Nashville. He shakes his head when I brought up several of his accomplishments, including some road improvements that still haven’t come to fruition, six years after the bills were passed. “It was harder than I thought. Two steps forward & ten steps back, seemed like,” he admits. “You want to see change as soon as it’s voted in, but there are so many people & plans to put in place, sometimes it takes twenty years, & by then, it’s antiquated & you just have to start again.”

  But even though he’s seen Sevier County grow by leaps & bounds so that it’s hardly recognizable from when he was thirty years old, an up-and-coming politician, it’s still home. “I won’t leave. I couldn’t if I wanted to. And why would I want to?”

Richard can be found most Saturday mornings at Sevierville Golf Club, & at Golden Corral every weekday at high noon. His grandbabies need held every Sunday afternoon, though, & he’s keeping that day sacred for all the right reasons. 

I had two write two mock ups as an interview of sorts when I thought I was going to take a paid writing job for a magazine. The people are real, the names and story are not. I wrote it without ever visiting their home. 

Driving up a residential, slightly sloped, tree lined street, sprinklers whir behind black fences on immaculate lawns leading to large brick homes. You can picture the inhabitants: petite blonde women compensating with 4″ heels, rushing to get out the door, briefcases under their arm, packed with papers. Their husbands stand over the sink slurping the last dregs of coffee from a mug they got at their last conference with the Wall Steet Journal quartered in their hands. The house is quiet, apart from the clattering the missus makes on her way through the foyer, adjusting her scarf where it is tangled in an earring.

  But step inside THIS one, & you’ll find quite a different scenario.

  Meet the Millers. Hubert is an investment banker, & he’s sprawled across the polished hardwood in his sock feet playing with his daughter, Hazel. She’s a very proud two & a half. Don’t forget the half. The other little one is Magnolia, who’s busy modeling her brand new LL Bean backpack. It’s monogrammed, not for stature, but so it doesn’t get confused with anyone else’s. She shows it to me, all curls & smiles, cheeks dimpling as she says, “This is for Magnolia Beatrice Miller, but here it says Bean, & that’s what Mommy calls me.” I beam at Georgia, enraptured already by this little charming person. Georgia is their stay-at-home mother, who is cleaning up from breakfast & arranging supplies for paper mache. She’s petite & blonde, just like I figured, but has a wholesome quality about her that lets you know this is exactly what she lives to do.

  Hubert & Georgia met fourteen years ago, when they were both employed by Citizens National Bank. Hubert was a financial advisor, & Georgia was climbing the ladder, having started as a teller & was now the loan officer inside Kroger’s store branch in Sevierville. They dated, he proposed at sunset below a dormant volcano in Maui, they wed in the church her family has been members of since the 60’s, & she found out she was pregnant with their first daughter at the UT home opener in 2010. Georgia left the bank to take care of herself & prepare their home to welcome a baby. When the news came of their second daughter, it was time to expand residences. They relocated from her grandmothers quaint house in South Knoxville to an upscale subdivison in Rocky Hill. Hubert recently left the bank where he’d spent twenty two years & started his own firm, Crestpoint Wealth Management. “I wanted my time to be MY time,” he explains. “We are blessed to have friends who are clients that entrust me to handle their futures.” Hubert is enjoying the freedom that is indigenous when you run your own business. It comes with its own set of headaches, but as he reaches over to tickle Hazel’s belly, you are as sure as he is that this was the right move. He holds conferences & lunches monthly & is taking new clients. “I want people to understand money. It can be overwhelming when you need to make a large investment but want to plan for retirement. I get to know all my clients personally, that way I can better advise them.”

  We close our appointment on their back porch, watching the girls swing & play with Buster, their Boston terrier, while we sip sweet tea brewed that morning by Georgia & the sun. It’s accented with a sprig of mint. Everything is just right in this moment for the Millers. And they pray for many more days just like this.