By LINDA HACKETT
When Angel and Becky asked me to write a piece for their magazine, I was not only excited about the prospect but also realized this was a full circle moment in my life.
Years ago when I first met Angel and Becky, we were all in the real estate business and I was the one who owned a magazine!
Many moons ago Angel was a real estate attorney and would handle my closings and Becky was a fellow realtor. Times change and my two friends moved out of real estate and I stopped producing my magazine. But we stayed friends as my grandchildren and their children attended the same school and I was honestly touched when they shared with me that my magazine, had been one of their inspirations for creating Wilson Living Magazine.
So when they asked me how I found my piece of the good life in Wilson County, four things immediately came to mind – my family, my real estate business, my magazine, titled Welcome Home Magazine and my friends.
As I prepared to write the article, I finally started going through boxes I had not touched in years. I saved all the old issues of my magazine and poured through them and came upon these words I had written over 10 years ago.
“Change is good. I made a commitment to myself years ago to never get so comfortable with work that I stopped my professional growth. With that in mind, I’m pleased to announce a new era in my real estate career. We are officially Linda Hackett Realty, Inc.” (Welcome Home Magazine, April/May 2002).
I had to stop a minute and really take in those words… change is good. I wrote those words at the height of my career and at a really good time in my life.
Like many of you I call Wilson County home but was raised elsewhere, specifically, for me, Greeneville, Tennessee was my first home. Greeneville is a small town surrounded by hills and water and Lebanon reminds me so much of where I was raised. Everyone knows each other, which is both good and bad, but mostly good. When I was growing up in Greeneville I babysat for Jerry Thomas, who was a prior owner of Lebanon’s Hunters Point Golf Course.
As luck would have it, Jerry’s daughter asked me to come to Lebanon for the Invitational that Hunters Point has every year. I came down, had a wonderful time and met a good looking man named Dan Hackett. At the time, I was recently divorced and raising two kids, therefore, falling in love and moving away was not on my agenda but something felt right about all of it. So a year later, when Dan asked me to marry him, I decided to follow my instinct and soon my two children, Connie and Trey, and I moved to Lebanon.
Like many people new to the area, I didn’t know anybody and immediately wondered if I had made the wrong decision. It took me a while to find my footing but in 1989 I began my career in real estate which opened so many doors for me. I quickly realized this was my calling. I love to talk to people, love to meet new people and by then had come to love my new home and wanted everyone else to love it too.
