KCC Profiles: Sherry

Sherry graciously accepted the role of first female KCC profile. Thanks for being a good sport!

Who is Sherry:

I was born in Fairfield Alabama, a small community near  Birmingham. I Lived on the University of Alabama Campus , go Crimson Tide, while my father finished school, we moved to Savannah when I was two.  My father was a biology professor at Armstrong before he went to work at CDC in Atlanta.  While at CDC he lived in Atlanta and Central America researching diseases carried by Mosquito’s.   My mother was a housewife and Bookkeeper.  I am one of five children, two brothers and two sisters, both of my sisters currently live in Savannah, one of my brother’s lives in Richmond Hill and the other brother lives in Spokane, Washington.  I have several nieces and nephews.

Professionally I worked for a short time at an office supply store, when one day Johnny Mercer visited  the store.  One of my coworkers said he liked his hat, about a week later, a hat just like the one he was wearing arrived in the mail for my co-worker.  After that I worked for a Shipping Company based in London, I was the import manager.  It was interesting meeting people from all over the world.  The owner lived in London and Switzerland, and was Romanian, ran the Free Romanian Press and later ran for President of Romania. His wife was the heir to Pilkington Glass, a large glass mfg. in England. 

I left the shipping company one week before my son was born and stayed home for 5 years to raise my son.  That was the most rewarding time of my life, I loved raising my son.

When my son started school I went back to work, this time in the construction industry. I started with a small company that merged with J.T. Turner Construction, while there I had several different jobs including being Mr. Turners assistant to several years in the field as project manager.  I left J.T. Turner to work at, what was at that time, JSK Engineering.

I am married to John Kern, and have a son from a previous marriage. Our son currently lives in Dallas Texas and works for a corporation known as ADP. He is an implementation Consultant II, Dallas Team.

Hobbies and Interest:

At different times of my life I have had different interest.  I used to love the beach, I would go in March and sit between the sand dunes so that I would have a tan by St. Patrick’s Day.  I was a Huge University of Alabama Football fan when coach Bear Bryant was there and I went to the Heisman Trophy Award Ceremony in New York when he was a speaker.  Then I became an avid FSU fan and would go to games in Tallahassee. 

For six years I crewed on a sailboat and we raced in several races including the Calibogue Cup at Hilton Head.  The first boat  was a 25’ C and C and the second boat was a 32’ Morgan.  We would almost always come in second or third in these races, the Ocean Queen, owned by Colonial Oil almost always won.  It was a little unfair since they had every new gadget available, even their own sail-maker on board.  During this time the movie gator was being filmed here and I was asked to crew on one of the boats that they wanted for background.  When I arrived the owner of the boat had assembled an all girl crew and I was the only one that could sail.  Needless to say, I’ve never worked so hard while the other girls got to sit there and be pretty. But I did get to hang out with Burt Reynolds during the time we weren’t sailing.

When my son was young he competed on a swim team and I was very involved with that for several years, first as a Mother, then a Timer, then a Stroke and Turn judge. 

Then I met John Kern, he is an avid golfer.  One night we were on a date and he took me to his house and there sat a set of women’s golf clubs with bag.  I didn’t have to be brilliant to figure out I was going to take up golf, in fact he had a tee time the next day with us and another couple, talk about being thrown into a sport.  Since then we have been playing regularly and I have a hole in one that I got in a Georgia Power Tournament at Henderson.  This also happened to be closest to the hole pin, and it allowed us to win the tournament.  That was an exciting day.

Probably the last passion is gardening, I have always enjoyed this hobby, not to mention that it is great exercise.