Tom Gartman:
CLASS OF 1982
Jordan Vocational High SchoolClass of 1982
Columbus, GA
Tom's Story
Life
Marriage: I was supposed Margie DiLeonardo on Monday, June 7, 1982, but we had to go to Alabama to get married because of her age. We had to postpone the wedding to June 8 because the courthouse was closed in honor of Jefferson Davis' birthdayÂ
no joke.
Home: Cleverly discarding several college scholarship offers, we moved to North Carolina where I went to work as a laborer on a construction crew in Hampton, Virginia. It was only a few months before I was running the crew.
Children: March 20, 1983 Joshua Thomas Gartman was born in Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City, NC. I subsequently figured out what causes children and haven't done it since.
Divorce: Summer of 1984, Margie and I separated and, about a year later, divorced.
The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated: Just before Christmas, 1984, I ignored doctor's orders and went to work with pneumonia. That night I was awakened by a herd of buffalo tap-dancing on my chest. My landlord called an ambulance and I was rushed to Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City where I was diagnosed with pericarditis, an inflammation of the tissues around the heart. I spent four days in intensive care and eight more in a cardiac ward surrounded by ailing octogenarians. On day three, Margie came to visit me. I asked how she had gotten there. She had no car and no driver's license. When she told me that she had driven my uninsured, Chevy Impala, with no headlights, no wipers and no tags about thirty miles through the high winds and sheets of rain, with our not-quite-two-year-old son running around loose in the car and "kinda" left it in a sixteen foot deep ditch, doctors and nurses came pouring out of the woodwork with expressions of extreme concer...Expand for more
n. My heart monitor was setting off alarms all over the fourth floor. I then spent two days in a private ward learning to "pedangle." I gained eleven pounds, (They gave me the uneaten meals of the recently deceased in my ward.) and a $150.00 towing bill during this little vacation. On a trip to Columbus the following Fall, I was told by several friends that I should not be there because I had died of a heart attack the previous winter.
New Job: Fall of 1985, I got a job in Kitty Hawk, NC at a construction company that was only twenty miles from my house instead of sixty-five.
My future begins: I was given an old Minolta SRT-201 35mm camera as a gift, then told that I would have to work it off. I started my part-time job at Jim's Camera House in Kill Devil Hills, NC selling cameras and working in the photo lab and studio one to four days a week.
Another New Job: October of 1992, my primary employer, Outer Banks Contractors, announced to their employees that they had declared bankruptcy and would be closed by the following spring. Jump now while there are still some lifeboats! I went to work at Ferguson Enterprises in Kitty Hawk as the warehouse manager.
I'll take this job because I want longer hours and a cut in pay: I left Ferguson to go to work full time at Jim's Camera House. In March of 1997 the business changed hands and I was made store manager against my will.
December 31, 1999: Thomas Gartman, Photographer got its first job as an independent photography studio at a New Year's Eve party at the Carolinian Hotel in Nags Head, NC.
Now: I live in Manteo, NC where I keep house for two geriatric cats, Jay and Lola. In my spare time I photograph family portraits and weddings for a living.
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