{"id":1307,"date":"2013-03-08T12:33:43","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T17:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ae0.92e.myftpupload.com\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2013-03-09T07:20:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-09T12:20:44","slug":"oh-henry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/?p=1307","title":{"rendered":"Oh, Henry…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>…my friend.\u00a0 It didn’t matter that it was a cold, damp, drizzly day in New Jersey, as I was going to meet several of my friends that I had worked with, prior to my retirement. \u00a0 We were all real estate salesmen, and I wound up, after several years in the business, being their Branch Sales Manager.\u00a0 Through their perseverance, hard work and successes, \u00a0they made me shine.\u00a0 For years they were my other family.\u00a0 We shared good times as well as not so good.\u00a0 I have kept in close touch with several of them, and each time I go north I will have lunch with two or three of them.\u00a0 This particular day we were meeting at one of my favorite Italian Restaurants, whose food is out of this world. Northern New Jersey,\u00a0Italian food, bread,\u00a0you can’t beat it.\u00a0 I thought there would be three or four of us,\u00a0and yet to my surprise and happiness, there were nine.\u00a0 Plus, Henry.\u00a0 He was the really surprised one as we all started arriving.\u00a0 He was having a businessman’s lunch at a nearby table, and we were like smitten teenagers, we all had to run over, give him a hug and a kiss. We all could tell stories about Henry, and I could probably tell the best ones.\u00a0 Although much younger than many of us,\u00a0he was\u00a0our precious Godfather, and he took his\u00a0title very seriously; he cared about us, he helped solve our problems, he allowed us to cry on his\u00a0shoulder\u00a0and he protected us.\u00a0 Many of my conversations with him would start with..Hen, what would you do in this case…and just as many times I would see agents huddled with him, as he tried to walk them through a situation.\u00a0 Most memorable Henry story is the day he came into the office with a commission check of $250,000 dollars.\u00a0 We of course took pictures of it, and danced around the office,\u00a0before sending it to Corporate for disbursement.\u00a0 Henry won National Awards for his New Home Sales successes, and was the pride of our New Homes Division.\u00a0 Each year as the National Convention rolled around, it was Henry who methodically planned our extra curricula activities, right down to the cars picking us up outside the Hotel.\u00a0 He introduced us to the best of the best restaurants in each City we were in…a Dallas steakhouse, a famous diner in New Orleans, the best Grouper sandwiches at St.Pete Beach, Paradise Island nightlife\u00a0in Orlando.\u00a0We all worked hard, but we certainly spared no expense or energy the week of Convention.\u00a0On this particular day, I once again found myself turning and calling across to him…what’s good, what\u00a0should I order?? Over the years, when the National Builder’s Association had their yearly convention in Orlando, I\u00a0would try to get him to visit\u00a0The Villages, and to see\u00a0the building activity\u00a0here.\u00a0 Unfortunately he has always been too busy networking to be able to come.\u00a0 Some day.\u00a0 However, the others that were at lunch want to come down on mass and see what they are missing. I feel that I have the best of both worlds, I have wonderful memories of the past…pre-retirement,\u00a0and in The Villages…post retirement, I am always looking forward to what I am going to be doing, today, tomorrow and the next, which\u00a0will be\u00a0my memories\u00a0in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…my friend.\u00a0 It didn’t matter that it was a cold, damp, drizzly day in New Jersey, as I was going to meet several of my friends that I had worked with, prior to my retirement. \u00a0 We were all real estate salesmen, and I wound up, after several years in the business, being their Branch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscthoughts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1311,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions\/1311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestvillageblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}