So here I am, Brooks Tomlin in Charleston! A little about myself, right? I was born in Mobile, Alabama a while back to Tom and Pam Tomlin. My dad decided to become a family doctor, so he went to medical school in Charleston, South Carolina while the U.S. Navy footed the bill. As payback, dad served eight years active duty for the Navy: four years in Charleston at the Naval Weapons Station, and four more years in Jacksonville, Florida at NAS Jax. We moved to the beach in 1985, where I graduated high school and my parents still reside. Along the way, I gained a couple of sisters, Meredith and Pamela. Meredith worked with Macromedia for a while and Pamela does something with Polo Ralph Lauren in Manhattan.
After graduating Jacksonville University in 1991 and doing odd-jobs for a year, I went to the University of South Carolina, pursuing a master's degree (advanced degrees run in my family: my dad is an M.D., his father was an M.D., my maternal grandfather was a Ph.D.). While in Columbia, I met the girl of my dreams; Tina and I married in early 1996, went to Paris for our honeymoon and settled in St. Augustine, Florida. She taught kindergarten and I was office manager/building superintendent/air filter and light bulb changer/computer networker/et al for my dad's business. St. Augustine is a fun town, especially since we lived near the old part of Ancient City, able to walk or ride bikes to visit our favorite establishments or just being a local. As an avid surfer, the warm waves of St. Johns County provided many weekday evening and weekend entertaining sessions.
My career in television meteorology jumpstarted because Tina told me to get in gear or my time might pass me by. So, after a short stay in Louisiana, I was able to land a job back in Jacksonville and we resettled in St. Augustine. However, as is the case so often in the business world, my television station was bought by another company and the news department ceased to exist. Along came a station in Huntsville, Alabama, where I served as the morning/noon meteorologist and Tina taught second grade. We lived near family, had great neighbors and friends, awesome soccer league, and a wonderful church just outside Huntsville in New Market. Then, on January 2, 2002, an event happened which would forever change our lives: our daughter, Sydney, was born. Talk about ch-ch-ch-changes.
That spring, I received a call from a station in Baltimore, Maryland; I had sent them a tape and they liked what they saw (in the local broadcast business, it's not uncommon for people to move several times until they either find a good fit, enjoy the locale, or change career paths). WJZ hired me as their weekend meteorologist, beginning in June of 2000. The first winter was rough with a record snow event, yet we embraced Baltimore as our home with friends (new and old), our church and another family addition. Our son, Cale, was born on December 1, 2004 - twice as fun, right?
The day after Labor Day, 2005, as our Outer Banks (Frisco, NC) vacation/surf trip was supposed to begin, I drove up to Philadelphia to interview with KYW CBS3. Our sister station in Philly needed a morning/noon meteorologist, and seeing how Philadelphia is the #4 market in the USA (NY, LA, Chicago), I was excited to be invited to interview. Plus....the Jersey Shore is just an hour down the road. Anyway, late in 2005, I began working at CBS3 with a revamped morning team. Yeah, I woke up at 3am, but it's a fun job and I'm an early riser anyway.
Yet, things just go funny sometimes. For the past couple of years, in Baltimore and Philadelphia, we enjoyed our time up north, and have plenty of great memories and life-long friends in Maryland and New Jersey. In 2007, the time was right for us to take a step back career-wise and a step forward personally. We decided to move to Charleston (actually, I think our rental house is in Mount Pleasant a block or two from Shem Creek) as we doubted we'd get much snow for the first winter in a while! We moved just in time for Sydney to begin kindergarten (then get promoted to first grade with a couple of weeks).
So, here I am, Brooks Tomlin in Charleston! It's really fun being a father, taking Sydney to soccer school or playing with her in our backyard. Cale and I enjoy roughhousing (he's total boy), swimming, reading, playing, etc. Tina and I enjoy the few and far between times where we find ourselves without a child in the immediate vicinity. I still play adult soccer, and every now and then, I get down to the beach for some waves, hurricane season obliging (here's hoping 2008 has better waves than 2007).