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While living in Maryland I finished my teaching degree and bought my first home at the age of 21.  The broker who sold me that home stated I would do well with a real estate career.  My response was "no thank you I am not crook!"  he laughed, since he had just sold me a house.  He said I challenge you to go through our real estate course, and then, if you think it takes a crook to sell real estate, I will pay for your course.  He also said "I know you just got your teaching degree, but your real estate can go hand and hand with your teaching.  You leave  school at 3:15 and we are here until 9 pm.  You will be working directly with the Broker/Owner of our company, who also works during the day as a Grain Broker."  I took the course and learned about the Code of Ethics and decided to give it a try.  I quickly learned I loved the idea of working for myself, rather than working under someone else's rules.  So I have been a Realtor since 1970.  You are required to be an agent for at least 2 years before you can set for a Broker's license.  As soon as I could, I got my brokers license at age  23 and became one of the youngest brokers in the area.  My broker got transferred to New Orleans in his Gain profession and ask if I would like to buy his company.  I believe "energy creates energy" because at the very same time, the broker who sold me my home, and a few of the agents I had started with, had formed a competing company named Woodland Real Estate and was wanting me to join them in a partnership.  I had remained loyal to my original broker, but now that he was leaving, the best and most affordable proposition was to buy into the partnership.

As many partnerships go, it wasn't long that the husband wife team wanted to buy out my partnership, knowing I did not have the money to do so, but offered me to buy them out for the same money.  As it turned out I was visiting my parents at home in Arkansas who said if I thought I could make a go of it, they would lend me the money.  My partners were shocked, but sold me the company.

I was working on getting my GRI(Gratuate of Real Estate Institute) which typically took 3 years, but if I got Course A in Md and then went to Virgina and got Course B I could accomplish my degree much quicker by getting the Course C back in Md.  While in VA I noted that the man teaching the course was wearing a gold coat.  By asking someone what that was, as soon as I returned to my office in Md,  I had men in gold coats offering me a Century 21 Franchise.  The man, who had been teaching, was the owner of all the Franchise sales in VA and MD.  Again I struggled with the affordability.  I  was on my way to FL on vacation, so decided to wait and see what the C21 offices there thought of their new C21 franchise.  Century 21 Franchise sales started in Irvine CA and immediately spread to the East Coast when George Kettlle (the man in the gold coat) bought the rights to C21 sales on the East Coast.

While in Florida, I interviewed a small office, like mine, that now had a Century 21 addition to their company name.  She told me that overnight they had become a big name.  They now had first class training at their fingertips and had become part of a national referral program, none of which they could have afforded on their own.  She said in the short time they had been Century 21 she could see an increase in their business.  Buyers and sellers wanted to work with a national franchise, which was becoming  quickly an International Franchise company.  What sold her, and finally me, was their slogan that said "Each Office Independently Owned and Operated".  While visiting FL I was asked to list my friend's relative's condo in MD.  Not having a FL license, the best I could do was refer it to the C21 Realtor I had interviewed.  So I quickly went back to MD, went into debt with C21 buying my franchise, and then referring my first C21 referral.  I did however, advertise that condo in the Sunday paper in Baltimore and got a call from a man who wanted me to fly down to FL with him for the day to purchase it.  He said unless it is falling down or in a horrible neighborhood he was going to buy it cash.  Now these were the days we never considered Realtor safety first.  Having had a long conversation I felt I knew him well enough to trust the flight to and from FL for the day.  The C21 broker picked us up at the airport, took us to the condo and then gave us the 50 cent tour of entire area and all the gossip she knew along the way.  It was a fun day but my buyer fell in love with the area and decided he would rather have a home he could move into from MD to FL,  so we looked at homes in the same area that the C21 Broker lived in, and sure enough he found one he loved.  We had to stay over to arrange the financing the next morning with the C21 broker's favorite lender and flew back home the next day.  Now I had two referrals coming to me.  My friends that I visited earlier,  decided to sell and buy another home and so there were 2 more referrals coming my way with this one C21 Broker.  My new franchise was starting to pay for itself.

My heart was always back in Arkansas in a small tourist town I had visited many times as a child.  I had tried to get a teaching job there but since I lived so far away, no one would hire me.  My C21 franchise grew, and on my way to our National convention, we flew through Dallas, TX where I saw lots of gold coats, which surprised me.  I inquired as to who owned the C21 franchise sales in Arkansas and was told they did.  I asked for a first right of refusal for the C21 Franchise in Eureka Springs and they asked where that was?  I said it didn't matter just put that in writing, so they did.  They mentioned it might take a year before they had moved that far with their franchise sales.  Within a few months, they were wanting me to commit to the first right, so I did, and had to sell a home and a business, as well as find a new home and business in Eureka Springs.  So in May of 1978 I moved, lock stock and barrel, to Eureka, making a life long dream come true.  I brought the first real estate franchise to Eureka and my local neighbor and competitor could not understand why buyers were pulling into my parking lot and not his next door?  When I got here,  I had left computerized multiple listing service and Title Company closings for  a little town that still sold real estate on open listings and the brokers were doing the closings in their offices with abstracts of title and attorney opinions, but no title insurance.  I was shocked when I had to do a closing statement to pass my broker's exam in Arkansas!

Leaving Maryland I was debt free but had little capital to work with starting over in Arkansas.  So the building I bought, which is our office today, had a narrow stairway to the attic and that is where I made my home. I started working on building a business that was worth selling in 2007 to one of my agents.  She nor I knew that the following year was going to be one of the worst recessions in real estate that this country had ever seen.  She was paying me monthly for the business, which was paying my mortgage in my new branch office at Beaver Lake.  By the grace of God and our spouces carrying us financially, we survived!

In the mid 90s I built my dream log home on 17 acres of Beaver Lake frontage.  I then became a rep for Real Log Homes and used my branch real estate office as a model for Real Log Home sales, as well as a branch office to Century 21 Woodland Real Estate, Inc.  I continue to work in both offices covering the main office in town when needed.

To my surprise on the last day of March in 2023, our Broker,  who I had sold the company to, announced she had sold the business to the Century 21 Broker in Harrison, Chris Parks, who now owned two franchises, one in Harrison and one in Eureka Springs.  Each office has maintained their original identity and amazingly have worked very well together as sister offices.  Chris drives that hour each way every Monday and Every Wednesday to maintain being  a part of each office.  As a matter of fact, he and I and the Executive Broker of the Eureka Office, Dalton Arnold, bought the Century 21Woodland Real Estate, Inc. Building in September 2025.  So I have now come full circle of being invested in my dream that took me 56 years to build.  I was blessed to have earned the Centurion award with C21 for the second time, once in 2021 and again in 2025.  An award that we never dreamed was possible here in our little 2200 population tourist town in the beautiful Ozark Mountains.  That award turned into the Presidential Award that I was one of three in the state of Arkansas to achieve.  Having made both Centurion and received the Pinnacle Quality Service Award  in the same year, made the  Centurion award even greater.  I contribute all these honors to the wonderful  buyers and sellers that have now become friends.  Without them this award could have never been achieved.