In  our opening blog, we said a few works about Wicker By Design and its history.  A few more thoughts are in order and a promised tease at Thad.  We mentioned that we move to Durham, NC in 1982.  The move was for Thad to join a three person non-profit, the Self-Help Credit Union, whose mission was to create economic opportunity to those "left out" of the economic "pie."  These persons included African Americans, Lantinos, folks in the rural areas of NC, women headed households, among others.  Self-Help did this by making home mortgage and commercial business loans to those who could not qualify from the conventional business sector.  We have been very successful.  Over the passed 25 years, we have grown to nearly 250 people and perform a whole variety of financial services to the poor and disadvantaged.  Recently, Thad received a "life time" achievement award for his service from the National Federation of Community Development Credit  Unions. 

Over the years, Thad has supported Susan at portrait photography trade shows, financial issues and Wicker By Design's photo prop web page.  The joke on Thad is that at one time, he was willing to spend a substantial amount of money on a web venture.  Susan talked him out of it and pointed out how much we could gain for our own web page for the same amount of money.  That began the birth of the expansion of our web page to include a search able gallery of nearly 1000 images by top photographers, portrait prop advice, one of the most complete lists of trade associations anywhere and many other pieces of useful information beyond our product.