You have come upon the web page for Bill, Sandi, and Emma Tepper. That's us on the left. We're glad you browsed by!
Now that you're here, we'll tell you a little bit about ourselves. About our faith , our family , our work , and our chosen public service - advancing liberty . Down at the bottom of this page are a few links to sites we've found helpful, or useful, or just cool.
First, we're married to each other (that may seem obvious, but you can't assume very much these days). We were married in Huntsville , Alabama at the First Baptist Church of Huntsville. And we are both Christians, which makes married life much better if not always much easier.
We are currently members of First Baptist of Cumming, Georgia. We have also been members of The First Baptist Church of Grayson, GA and First Baptist Alpharetta, GA. We've been made very welcome at First Baptist of Cumming and are enjoying it. If you are wondering what most Baptists believe, check out the Baptist Faith and Message. It will give you a very good overview of the common wisdom among Southern Baptist churches.
If you are curious about how to become a Christian, it's as easy as ABC:
Click here for more information from the Southern Baptist Convention.
We are also members and supporters of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty . We firmly believe in their mission and would do more to help them if we could. We first met Father Sirico in the spring of 1994 when he spoke at the annual convention of the Libertarian Party of Ohio . We joined the Acton Institute shortly thereafter and have been members ever since. In October of 1998, we visited the Acton Institute at their headquarters in Grand Rapids , Michigan for their annual dinner. We stayed at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel which is the nicest hotel we've ever visited. Check it out if you are ever in Grand Rapids .
From September 1992 to September 2002 our immediate family had just been the two of us. However, on September 17, 2002 we were blessed by the arrival of Emma Elizabeth. This link will take you to a page full of Emma! She is the absolute delight of our lives!
Our family has been reduced somewhat recently - our two "boys", Martin , age 12, and Mitchell , age 8, have recently moved to Charleston, SC, to live with a new family. Our allergies just have gotten the better of us. We really appreciate the Humane Society of Forsyth County for helping us find them a good home.
We live in Alpharetta, Georgia , just inside Forsyth County . Here is a picture of our house. We like it here. That isn't to say that we wouldn't move closer to our families in North Alabama if we had the opportunity but almost all of the engineering employment over there originates with the federal government and we've worked to hard to get non-government ( i.e., real ) jobs to ever go back. Most of our family is still in the Northern Alabama/Southern Tennessee region. A lot of our friends still live there too. Many of them still work at Dynetics where we both used to work and where we met back in January of 1991.
Emma is a part of a rather large extended family. Sandi has 4 sisters and a brother and Bill is the oldest of three. But his Mom is the youngest of 9! These links will show you Bill's family tree and Sandi's family tree . These are converted from GEDCOM standard printouts where you can click on a person and see what information is stored. Once Sandi figures out how to get the actual "tree" structure up on the web, you'll be able to see that as well. And if you have any updates - let me know!
Bill's parents , Bill & Winnie, live in a small town called Priceville . Bill's younger sister, Sherri , lives in Somerville . Sherri is married to Tom Mann and they have three great boys: Brian, Heath, and Eli. This was taken at Easter in 2004. And the youngest sister, Nancy , lives in Madison , Alabama with her family. She is married to Buddy Slaton and they also have three great boys: Tyler, Chris, and Seth. Again, an older picture - Seth turned 7 in May 2005!
Bill's grandmother, Naomi Chase and Aunt Lois Danner (picture from our wedding in 1992), and Bill's cousin Raymond Cronise and his family (picture from a couple years ago - they now also have a son, Danner) also live in Huntsville. Grandmother just celebrated her 91st birthday on May 22, 2005!
We have a lot of Sandi's family in Huntsville, including Sandi's Dad and Step Mom (Ray & Tessa Townley), Sandi's step Mom's parents (Wade & Doris Barnes) (picture from 1992), Sandi's younger step sister Jessica (picture from 2002), Sandi's next-older sister Kathie and her family: Steve, Kayla and Phillip Preston, Sandi's oldest sister Becci and her family: Rick and Karly Greif.
Sandi's paternal grandmother, "Grandma Pell" (from what the kids called her when they were little), passed away just before Halloween, 2004. She had been ill for a while and we all take comfort in her being with Jesus now.
Sandi's next-to-the-oldest sister Wendy , however, lives in Tullahoma, Tennessee . Her family is the biggest since it includes Bruce, Dawne, Chrissie, Gwen and Robert Batson. And Dawne now has a girl of her own, Destiny, and a baby boy, Dakota. Chrissie had a baby boy, Christopher, on October 15, 2003. But Tullahoma is close enough to North Alabama that we see them whenever we go over to visit. Many of these photos of Sandi's family were taken at a birthday party they had for Sandi and her Dad on March 13, 1999.
Sandi also has a good bit of family outside of Huntsville. This is an old (1992) picture of Sandi's mother, Bunny and her late husband, Richard. Richard Graves went to be with the Lord in February 2004. They used to live with her much younger brother Josh (picture from several years ago!) in Lake Helen , Florida , which is close to Orlando. Bunny and Richard had moved to Cadillac, Michigan, in 2002 so they could be close to Sandi's maternal grandparents, the Claytons , who lived in Manton, Michigan. Ginger Clayton, Bunny 's mother, passed away the day before Thanksgiving, 2004. Ray Clayton passed away in March 2008 after having just accepted the Lord in 2006. We had visited the Claytons on the same trip in October of 1998 when we visited the Acton Institute. Bunny 's father, Col. Robert Hassinger (ret) passed away in October of 2000. His wife, Sarint, still lives in Port Angeles , Washington .
Bill has worked at several companies since we moved here to Atlanta - Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, LDC Direct, and Wave7 Optics.
Now he has taken all of the lessons learned and knowledge gained in those positions to begin a new adventure.
In 2004, Bill started a new company, Provare Technology, Inc., here in Alpharetta,
Georgia.
Provare has grown to be a full service technology product improvement company. Provare - Proving Technology.
Sandi had quit getting paid in September, 2002, when she had Emma. For the past 2 years, she has worked at home being a full-time Mama. She loves this new career but it is much harder than her old one! She used to work at AT&T Wireless in Atlanta, and before that for Cingular Wireless (when they were still BellSouth Mobility).
Sandi also spent some time working for Cingular Wireless through a contract with Bechtel Telecommunications. She also started helping Bill with Provare Technology. Since November 2006, Sandi has headed up the Process Enhancement section for Provare and is also becoming a very proficient test engineer as well!
While we have taken a good bit of the last year off due to Emma, we have both been active in Libertarian politics, being members of The Libertarian Party , The Libertarian Party of Georgia , and the Libertarian Party of Forsyth County . Bill is a former Treasurer of the LPGa and is a former Chair in the LPFC . Sandi was once the LPFC Secretary. Here's a picture of us with some of the Georgia delegation at the 2000 National Convention. We are fervent believers in the cause of Liberty! If you have questions about what Libertarians believe, visit one of our favorite organizations, the Advocates for Self-Government . While you're there, you should take the World's Smallest Political Quiz. It's fun and you might be surprised by the results.
These are links to a few more pages that we've found useful or to companies that
we like. Maybe they'll be helpful to you as well!
Well, there's more to come, but that's the most important stuff to us - God, each other, our families, our jobs, and how we spend some of our time. Drop by again, and maybe we'll have gotten around to adding a few more things, like more links to our favorite web sites... you never know!
See You Soon!!
Bill & Sandi