People ask me where the drive comes from. The honest answer runs back through Eastern North Carolina — through a family name I carry, a boardwalk I grew up on, and the good, hard work that shaped me before I ever built a thing.
The name I carry
My middle name is Worthington — after my mother’s people, out of Ayden, North Carolina. When I reach for my head for business, that’s where it goes. And the record backs up the feeling: my great-grandfather, Thelbert Worthington, was a merchant and a builder in Ayden — he ran Worthington’s Variety Department Store and built a landmark home that still stands in the town’s historic district.
The line
Thelbert & Ethel Worthington of Ayden → my grandmother Martha Worthington Abernathy → my mama Jane Abernathy Hahn of Beaufort → me.
A merchant’s blood, three generations deep. I come by it honest.
Summers at the Circle
My family owned Watts Water Ice right by the Circle at Atlantic Beach — back when it still roared with go-carts, the slick track, and the slingshot. Cold sweet ice on a hot boardwalk, salt and engine grease in the air, the good kind of loud. Mama had a place on East Atlantic Avenue, and that stretch of sand raised me as much as any town did.
"Out of the water I became a new creation. One step in a big journey — but everything changed."
First light, first jobs
I went to work young — fourteen years old, so young that Mama had to sign for me before they’d hire me. I’d ride my bike to open McDonald’s in the morning dark, first one there. After a few summers I crossed the street to Bert’s Surf Shop — a step up, and a step toward the water I loved.
The water and the hustle
The coast wasn’t just summers — it was work. I ran the docks as a dock hand at 70 West Marina in Morehead City and learned the waterways and the boats the way you only can with your hands on the lines. And I’m a born seller: I moved vehicles for Go Automotive in Clinton, and I’ve never stopped — cars, boats, and just about anything with a buyer. Underneath all of it is the thing I love most: helping people and fixing things.
The people who poured in
No one builds alone. Taylor Ricketts — who runs the Sports Center in New Bern — got me my lifeguard certification as a young man and has been a brother, friend, and business mentor ever since. There were others who held me up when I couldn’t stand on my own, and I don’t forget a single one.
Then came the turn
This isn’t the whole story. There was a hard road too — years I lost, a bottom I barely came back from, and a grace I didn’t earn that carried me home. That testimony has its own page, and I don’t hide it, because hiding it would rob it of its power.
The rest of the story
From addiction and a prison cell to a pulpit — the testimony of how God brought me back and sent me to build.
Read “From Prison to Pulpit” → See what we build