Marc Ruff:  

Well lets see, life of an army brat. Started school in Hawaii and finished in Texas. 10 different grade schools and 1 college....After freshman year in Fulda, Germany, I was sent stateside to live with the grandparents in Bridgewater and enrolled at East. 16th birthday came, I started to smoke, cause it was "cool". There was the peer pressure thing too. Junior year was better, as we could DRIVE! Life was definitely looking up! Senior Year was at Coronado in El Paso. All new people. I was the new kid on the block, again. I took 3 classes, was out around 11ish daily and then worked in the afternoon at McDonalds, later at the Bella Napoli. After graduation, I decided to get out of the food industry and try something different. I went to work for Atlantis Pools in El Paso and began to learn the swimming pool industry. I was making minimum wage (1.90 per hour) and started to get in good physical shape. Jerrilynn and I were living together and life was a party. I did this for a year and had decided to go to Lubbock, Texas to attend Texas Tech to seek a degree in Advertising. In 1981, I quit school. Was pretty burned out on it. 16 credit hours short of my degree. I though at the time that I would pursue it sometime in the future, but switch my focus from advertising art to fine art. I had been waiting tables while attending school and then decided to get a job in the other business I knew. So I got hired on at Empire Pools in Lubbock. There I became employee of this family run business and really went as far as I could with them. The time I worked with Empire Pools, I learned the swimming pool trade from the bottom up. We built swimming pools, serviced pools, maintained pools, remodeled pools, installed hot tubs, and even did some building construction. I learned plumbing, steel tying, cement work, tile setting, electrical, plastering, welding, digging, and guniting - all the trades associated with pools and then some. After 5 years, I was ready to get out on my own. I took one of the guys I had trained and we started a company and named it Bathing Sun Productions. Out on our own, we started as subcontractors for Blue Haven Pools, a national company that had moved into the area. We sometimes traveled to the surrounding towns to work. Sometimes as far east as Dallas and north to Amarillo, west to Hobbs NM, and south to Midland. Meanwhile, JerriLynn had been in the restaurant/bar business during my years at Tech and the beginning years at Empire Pools. In January of 1982, we had our first daughter. That was a major change to our lifestyle, although more to hers than mine. JerriLynn became a full-time mom and really fell into the role. In 1984, my second daughter was born. It was kind of a miraculous thing and like our first - not planned at all. You see, JerriLynn had had cervical cancer and surgery and was told that she would not be able to have anymore kids after our first was born. So now we had 2 girls and I was the full-time breadwinner. Times were pretty tough and running a business kept me quite occupied. We were learning as we went. We made many mistakes and really messed up our credit. I am a workaholic by nature and did not really know how to keep up all ends of a business and family, so really failed at both. The kids were home-schooled at first, then attended a school at our church. Eventually they entered public school and exceled there. During the winter months we had to find other things to do to earn an income. We tiled interiors and did some painting. I worked as a waiter part-time to keep money coming in. A friend of mine introduced us to the events coordinator at the Civic Center and we were hired on as stagehands. We were part of the local crew unloading semis and setting up for rock, country, and theater acts that came through town. This was very fun work, and we took work calls whenever we could. Being self-employed made it easy to schedule around shows. Lubbock was not Union dominated, so we were able to move up the ladder as we grew more experienced in this field. I learned to operate spotlights and even the old carbon arc lamps that required so much nursing. After several years I was added as a rigger which made me premium pay and put me in the rafters pulling motors in the sky to hang all the trusses holding the lighting and sound equipment. This was fun work and it paid well. We had backstage passes and saw many famous acts and broadway productions from backstage. We worked symphonies to Heavy metal acts. Mexican bands to rodeos. It was cool. We got a lot of T-shirts and paraphenalia. We had offers to go on tour with some of the groups, but usually had to decline. The pay was good, but the lifestyle would have been too tough to maintain. After 18 years in Lubbock, and in 1994, JerriLynn gave me an ultimatum. Either she was going to leave or we needed to leave Lubbock. See, she was born in San Antonio and spent much time in west Texas, and really was never fond of Lubbock. She missed El Paso and the desert southwest. Me....I was happy not to be moving every 2 years like I had to growing up as an army brat. If it wasn't for her insistence, I would probably still be in Lubbock! So, since I was in the pool business and did not desire to go back to El Paso, I looked to Arizona for a place to relocate. I had been purchasing much of my pool materials from Arizona manufacturers and had read about the Pool Industry in Phoenix. I decided to send out resumes to some of the more prominent pool builders in Phoenix that I had seen showcased in my pool industry publications. I set up a number of interviews and set out in February 1994 for Arizona with a collection of my pool designs and pictures of my work. I interviewed with 5 companies and decided on a mid-sized builder that did very custom work. My intent was to be a pool salesman only, as I knew I could not continue to do the physical work for the rest of my life. In April 1994, I signed on with Rondo Pools in Phoenix. I became one of 5 pool designer/salesmen that they had on staff. I really liked all the staff and began a new journey into the life of a commissioned salesman in one of the largest and most competitive swimming pool markets in the world. I had much to learn. This was a much faster-paced and more cut-throat world than Lubbock, Texas. My laid back style and trusting attitude would be put to the test. Being paid on commissions only was an additional shock. I would not get paid until I sold a pool, it went through the company's processing department, plans were created, permits were secured, and the excavation process was complete. It took several months before I adjusted to a new way of life. Several months passed before any income came in. We did some stagehand work out here also. The acts wer...Expand for more