Bill Austin:
CLASS OF 1984
Brooks High SchoolClass of 1984
Killen, AL
University of North AlabamaClass of 1987
Florence, AL
Bill's Story
Life
Most of you remember that I was married before we graduated and I am proud to say that Carol and I celebrated our 20th Anniversary in March.
After high school, I played football at UNA for a year, but with a family at home, I soon figured it was time to concentrate on getting out of college ASAP. I graduated from UNA in 1987 and went to work with 3M. Six months later, 3M sold my division and I was going to have to transfer to California to keep my job.
Not being the surfer type, I quit 3M and started working for Hibbett Sports and was planning on entering graduate school to teach and coach at the high school level. A few months into my tenure with Hibbett, I was offered a position as a Store Manager in Birmingham, so we moved south and I never went to graduate school.
Moving up with Hibbett pretty quickly, I soon became Property Manager for Hibbett and was in charge of designing and constructing new stores for the corporation among other things. Moving up the corporate ladder and chasing the money and titles, I basically became married to Hibbett Sports. With a young daughter at home and a visitor she called "husband", my wife told me she was moving back to the Shoals and I had a decision to make - stay married to Hibbett or become her husband again. Luckily, I chose to move back with my family to the Shoals.
I took 3 or 4 months to look for a new career and landed with MetLife and became a licensed insurance agent. About a year and a half into my career with Met, I received a call from the state manager of an insurance company that niche' marketed prod...Expand for more
ucts and services to education employees - American Fidelity Assurance. They made me an offer I could not refuse and 13 years later, I still have the pleasure of working with education employees all over northwest Alabama to plan their insurance and retirement needs. Who would have thought that most of our old teacher's would rely on me to counsel them about their employee benefits?
My daughter Brittany graduated from Sheffield High in 2003 and is in her first year at the Mississippi University for Women (and smart men too! as their brochures state). She received one of only 10 full tuition/room/board/books scholarships given at the "W". We are extremely proud of her.
In 1993, we had our second child, Taylor. He is in the 5th grade and loves to hunt; play paintball; and shoot competitive trap & skeet. I have no clue where he gets this passion as I have never hunted in my life and am too big of a target for paintball. He is very smart (too smart sometimes); makes straight A's; and reads on a 12th grade level. Takes after his mom.
Carol is a R.N. and works as the Health Services Coordinator for Sheffield City Schools. She was diagnosed with Relapsing/Remitting Multiple Sclerosis in 2000. She is dealing with this disease as best she can. We are very blessed as it has only disabled her twice for about six weeks both times with vision loss. She went temporarily blind in one eye the first time and the other eye the second time. Please pray for God to heal her!
That should get you up to date with the Austin's. I look forward to seeing everyone at our next reunion.
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