Mark Mullery:
CLASS OF 1977
Toms River South High SchoolClass of 1977
Toms river, NJ
Mark's Story
Updated 6/20/23
Dear fellow TRHSS alumni,
After 39 years of auditing at various publicly traded corporations and government agencies, I ended my career when I retired from the VA Office of the Inspector General on Halloween, 2018. My wife Kim retired in 2014, so like in my earlier monologue below where I describe that her love of 2 wheel travel just might exceed my love of same, she had me immediately start planning more moto-tours once I joined her in retirement.
Since my retirement we have done moto-tours of the Italian and Austrian Alps, Spain, southeastern Europe, Portugal, Sicily, Ecuador and a domestic tour of the Appalachian area of the Eastern USA. I've set up photo albums for those rides in the Photo Gallery. Also, after a delay caused by Covid, the Ecuador tour operator finally posted it's website with their photos of our tour, from which I have selected to add narratives to before posting to this account. See the new photos with narratives from that ride in the "Hanna's Photos" album now in my Gallery!
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Hi gang!
Boy, its been so long since we were kids, and so long that I've been out of touch. I moved to Florida from Texas in 2004 to catch up with my spouse Kimberly, who I met at a gym in Plano, Texas in 1998.
My profession is Internal Audit, and I was getting off the plane in Dallas from an audit I just completed in Australia when, expecting to hear, "hi honey, welcome home," I get, "hi honey, I got a job transfer and I am moving to Florida - are you coming with me?..."
We live in a town called Palm Harbor, in between Tarpon Springs and Clearwater, and northwest of Tampa. There are a lot of retirees in our area. Some call this area "God's waiting room." So, the good news is we don't have to move anywhere once we retire.
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Ever since 1980, when I was a 20 year old kid in the Army stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas, I have been a "motorcycle enthusiast." In those days, the biggest event of the year for me was annual leave, where I would pack my bike up with my luggage and ride back to Jersey. I got a rush from the sense of freedom of being on the road like that. The '81 trip was a straight 1,500 miles from Texas to Jersey, then back to Texas. The '82 trip was more ambitious; Texas to Miami to Jersey. This time, I wasn't going back to Texas...at least not for another 10 years. They were sending me over to NATO Headquarters in Belgium.
Between Miami and Jersey, I stopped in Towson, Maryland, where my sweetheart at the time was attending college. We got married and she went to Europe with me. So did my 750cc Kawasaki. My father was kind enough to ride it up to the Bayonne shipyard to have it shipped to me...at Uncle Sam's expense of course.
In those days the US dollar was strong against the European currencies (this was pre-Euro days). I was paid in US dollars and because I was viewed as a low level ambassador (I was stationed at a NATO base, not a US base), I was paid relatively well...especially for a 22 year old kid. Meryl and I lived like royalty on the local economy. We had a beautiful flat about a mile from the base, I had my bike and I bought my wife a '77 Austin Morris Mini (it was an Engl...Expand for more
ish auto company then; nowadays the minis are made by BMW Cooper). I don't have enough space here or enough time to tell you all the good times we had over there. Let's just say we rode the bike all over Belgium, France, West Germany and Holland. We took the Mini to Brussels to see rock concerts.
While in Belgium I continued college study at night, matriculating with the University of Maryland. So, it made sense that when we returned to America in late '83 we would settle near the main campus just outside of Washington, DC. I got my BS degree in accounting in the spring of '85, but a couple months before my graduation, Meryl and I split up.
With my sheepskin in hand, I moved back to Jersey and landed my first internal audit gig with the Port Authority of NY & NJ. I officed on the 68th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center for the next 3 years. In '88 I landed a higher paying job across the Hudson in Edison, NJ with CSX, a railroad company that owned Sea-Land, a NJ based steamship company. I got out of the WTC 6 years before the first bombing.
Doing audits for a steamship company took me to many of the 70 ports Sea-Land operated around the world. My favorite places to go to audit were the Netherlands, Spain and Japan.
After 4 years of constant travel, I wanted a job with less travel and I was also getting fed up with life in Jersey. I wanted to get down to the Sun Belt. Initially, I interviewed internally for a couple of jobs in South Florida, but they didn't pan out. In '92 they offered me a promotion to move down to Dallas, Texas - all relocation expenses paid. I couldn't pass that up...I had loved the 2 years I lived in Texas in the early '80s as a soldier.
Using my VA home loan veteran's benefit, I purchased a beautiful house in a Dallas suburb. It was a bachelor pad I dubbed the "Palace in Dallas." The first piece of furniture I bought was a tournament size (8'x4') Brunswick Monarch slate pool table for my spacious game room. I had a wet bar, fireplace and a top notch dart board in this room along with the table. I began hosting New Year's Eve parties at my house every year. By this time, I also could afford to have a Harley Sportster and a 600cc Kawasaki in my two car garage.
So, I was basically a playboy in Texas from '92 til '98, when I met Kimberly at the Bally's gym.
Now, fast forwarding to Florida, 2005; my hobby of motorcycling reached a new level with Kimberly. I was doing an audit in the Toronto, Canada area and met a fellow who had been on a European motorcycle vacation, using an Austrian firm called Edelweiss. His photos he showed me of the trip he and his wife took to the Alps blew me away. When I got home, I shared this with Kim, who, also intrigued, urged me to look into us doing something similar. I did and we decided to try a trip to Ireland in 2005. She obviously loved the experience as much as I did (sometimes I think she loves these adventures more than I do!), because since then the motorcycle vacation has become the biggest event of the year for the both of us.
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You can check out in my photo gallery a few photos from each of our annual two wheel adventures since 2005.
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