The Banker's Retirement

Eric's New Venture: .....but after a great deal of soul-searching and personal reflection about what’s really important to me and the things I want to accomplish in my life, I have made the difficult decision that I need to make a change. For this reason, I am announcing my retirement from Monarch Community Bank and will be stepping down as its Regional President at the end of July to start my own business.

As many of you may know, I have helped close friends from Ohio over the past 4½ years in their struggle against cancer for their daughter, Christi. The website that I created for the family surpassed one million hits and despite her passing in September of last year, the “blog” site the family still updates on a regular basis attracts visitors from across the globe.

While I knew this event would change me somewhat, what I didn’t expect was Christi’s personal battle to cause me to question my own “purpose” and what I really should be doing with my talents and skills. At the time I was honored that I could use my love of technology and the Internet to help the family share their story with loved ones, friends and literally millions of others across the globe. I feel this is just the tip of the iceberg…

Nine months ago today, cancer killed Christi and I still cannot shake the ugly and horrific images of our suffering child from my mind. We will now take a break from the high temps. The past six weeks have been terribly difficult, the hardest months we've yet experienced, yet we know how fortuate we are to have received the loving support of many. We wish "Webby" the very best in his new venture and thank him for blessing our lives by sharing his gifts!

Playing at a Cincinnati Children's museum, age 4, 2002 (another treasured photo)