Sharon (Shannon) Mackey ---Past, Present and Future
ADDRESS: 920 Timberline Rd.
Moberly, Mo. 65270
TELEPHONE: (660) 263-7412
EMAIL: mac@missvalley.com
My life story seems to have started at Mtn. Grove High School. I dated Kenneth Mackey
most of my high school days and we were married in Sept. of 1960. He was living in
Eldon, Mo. working as an assistant manager for Carp's Dept. Store when we married so I
moved away from Mtn. Grove. Our parents still lived there so for many years we visited
there often. In the Spring of 1961 Ken was promoted to manager of the Carps Store
in California. We lived in California until 1972. We had our three children, Gina, Gregg,
and Shannon Paul while in California.
The year of 1965 was a very busy year for us. We had Gregg, bought our own Mens
Clothing Store and purchased our first house. It was a real fixer upper and makes me
tired now to think of all the work we did. Youth is a wonderful thing. When our
youngest child Shannon, was 3 months old Ken decided we needed to relocate in a bigger
town with more income potential. Again we did things all at once. We sold our house,
our clothing store, and bought a house and a store in Moberly, Mo. and started
remodeling another big older house. We lived there for 7 years and finally built a new
house. This sounds real boring now but at the time it sure wasn't.
Not long after we moved into our new home Ken again decided to make a career move,
this time a big one. He was fearful of trying to compete with Wal-Mart and big retail
stores and thought it a good time to get out of the retail business. He had an older friend
that owned a Boiler Repair Business and was going to retire. Ken was interested in
buying this business if the owner would assist him for a while and teach him as much as
possible about the business. It worked out real well and before I knew what happened we
owned a clothing store and a boiler business. I didn't even know what a boiler was. We
soon sold our store and found the boiler business to be very good and Ken learned it very
quickly and most importantly he liked it. We have owned and operated Solomon Boiler
Works, named after the original owner, for 22 years. Our son Gregg is going to take the
business over when Ken decides to retire.
Our life has been full and for the most part very good. We do not appreciate the good
stuff until we have time to take a look back. We have 6 wonderful grandchildren who are
healthy, smart, and good looking. Do I sound like a Grandma? They are all active in
sports, so we spend a lot of time at all different kinds of sporting events and love it. Our
daughter, Gina, has 3 children and 1 stepchild. She owns a travel agency and her husband
Gary works for Commerce Bank. Our son, Gregg, has 2 children and assists in running
our company while his wife Marsha works for a sales company. Our youngest son,
Shannon, lives in Colorado and is building his own Computer Tech Business; his wife Joan
is a beautician. They just got married last August so no children yet.
Since Ken and I both work in the company and attend lots of school sporting events we
still try to have fun by ourselves. We play golf and just love it. We travel as much as
possible. A lot of our trips include golf. I also love to play bridge and go the casinos
with my lady friends. Our son Shannon is also a River Guide in the Glenwood Springs
area so we have gone rafting a couple of times and since our daughter owns a travel
agency we take advantage of trips on the Am-Trak to Colorado. I would recommend this
to anyone, it is beautiful. I also had the privilege of being a Sweet Adeline for 16 years. It
was a very enriching experience. Since I like all kinds of music, barber shop was really an
interesting form of singing and I loved it. Our future plans are to make it to Sept. to
celebrate out 40th wedding anniversary. Ken also will be 60 in October so we are planning
a big celebration. We are very lucky to be planning this as so many don't get the
opportunity. I am looking forward to the class reunion. It is so nice to see old friends.
We should appreciate the local people who work so hard to organize the reunion
and also this web page is an outstanding idea. Thank you Eddie Bill.
I know this is too
long, but 40 years is a long time to write about.
See you all at the reunion.