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Humble Beginnings
At the time of my birth, my parents
were living and farming with mother's parents, John & Lilly
Weathers-Brown. I was born in the same room as my mother. The farm
was near Duncan, in north western Harnett County. Later in the third
grade we moved to Fuquay Springs (now Fuquay-Varina) where I lived until
graduating from high school.
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Background |
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At a very early age I held a number of part time jobs after school and on the week-ends. My first regular job on Friday and Saturday was at age 11 as a shoe shine boy at Adam's Barber Shop on main street. It was a great paying job for my age, plus free hair cuts. Later at around age 13 my after school job also included folding papers at the Fuquay Springs Independent newspaper. Later I expanded my part time jobs to include bagging groceries, popping popcorn at the local theater, yard work, working on tobacco farms in the summer, and taking essentially any job where I could earn money. By the 7th grade the Independent became my primary after school job. There I learned to set type (for ads), operate a metal ad casting machine, paper cutting machines, news paper folding machine, run large & small printing presses, news paper addressograph, and cooperatively with the paper editor wrote a sports column. Both the school and the newspaper office were on East Academy Street, and only 3 or 4 blocks apart. We lived on West Academy making the Independent a very convenient after school job. Through most of my teens I concurrently held several part time jobs. Priming (picking) tobacco was one of the most difficult (really hard work), but paid well because we put in a lot of hours. In my later teens when I was old enough to work in construction, I worked with my father who was a small private building contractor.. I loved sports, and started playing basket ball, base ball, and tennis in middle school. In high school I lettered in Football, Basketball, and Field & Track, was on the high school Student Council, and was voted most athletic my senior year. After high school I joined the U. S. Air Force, where I was introduced to the world of telecommunications, cryptography, and computer technology. After my my military obligation was finished (4 years) I held a number of positions as computer operator, and later as computer systems programmer. As I moved up years later into management positions I realized the need for a college degree, and pursued and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science. In 1980 I started Software Development & Maintenance
Inc. later renamed to SDM International, Inc.,
but best known as SDM. I was it's president & CEO until I
sold the company in July of 1999. SDM
was a software company that specializes in "electronic payment"
software that ran on large IBM mainframe computers
to manage automatic teller machines (ATMs) and
their networks, the debit cards (card plastics and
associated customer database), inter-bank
electronic payment networking software (ATM &
POS networks),
and electronic data exchange (EDI) software. SDM was a privately held
company with customers spanning 19 countries worldwide
including US, Canada, Mexico in North America as well as Europe, Asia,
and Latin America. In 1999 SDM was
acquired and merged with Transaction Systems Architects (TSAI), a publicly
owned company in the same
industry. TSAI is better known by it's largest operating unit, Applied
Communications Incorporated Worldwide, or ACI Worldwide, headquartered
in Omaha, NE. |
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