Charlie’s Careers

Charlie’s Many Different Careers

I began my working life at 16, in 1957, when I went to work as stock and clean up boy for McCrory-McLellan (a retailer called in those days a “Five and Dime”).  I worked part-time for the time it took to finish high school and complete my AAS degree at State University of New York (SUNY) at Farmingdale.  I took a job at Lever Brothers R&D center in Edgewater New Jersey, left my parents home, and went out on my own. I worked at Lever as a laboratory technician and then a product-testing supervisor for the six years it took to get my BS in Chemistry at Fairleigh Dickenson University in Teaneck NJ.  I worked 40 hours per week and went to college at night.  After graduating, I changed jobs and companies to J.R. Geigy Chemical Company in Ardsley NY working as a research chemist.  I married Terry Lee Perrone from West New Your, New Jersey and we moved to Rockland County, NY.  I soon realized if I wanted to get far with a career in chemistry I would have to get both a Masters and a Ph.D.  I believed that was too much educational work so; I decided to change my educational direction from science to business and labor for an MBA in Marketing at Iona College’s Graduate Division of Business in New Rochelle, NY.  When I got my masters, in June 1970, I was immediately assigned the job of coordinating the CIBA-Geigy Chemicals Division moved to Greensboro, North Carolina.  The division and my family moved to Greensboro in late 1973.  By this time Terry and I had two children, Keith born in 1970 and Melanie born in 1972.  After the relocation had finished, I was assigned a job as a Business Planner for the Dye and Chemicals Division of CIBA-Geigy Corp.  In 1975 the company embarked on a major program to acquire companies to expand our division’s business.  I was selected to lead this team as Acquisition Coordinator.  During this acquisition program, we purchased two companies and one product line.  In March 1977 I became a Christian and later in the year later Terry also became a Christian.  I was 35 years old.  The testimony of my conversion to Christ from a hardcore Atheist is in my testimony.  When the acquisition program finished in 1978, I moved to Greenville, SC as Information Systems Director in one of the companies we had acquired.  We returned to Greensboro, NC in 1980 and I became Manager of Customer Service.  I managed Customer Service until 1988 when I became Manager of Business Planning until I took a retirement package from CIBA-Geigy in 1994.  During my years with CG, at various times, I managed between 2 and 35 people.  When working in acquisitions and customer service, I often flew 4 to 8 airplane flights a week.  In 1996 I joined the board of Caldwell Academy, A Classical Christian School founded in 1994.  Two years after I retired, in 1996, I resigned from the Caldwell board so I could teach Dialectic Science (Middle School) for one year.  From 1999 until 2001 I led weekly science assembly programs at Caldwell.  In 1997 I went to work for Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham’s ministry, for two years leading weekend programs with both children’s workshops and adult seminars.  Starting in 1995 for a little more than ten years I produced a one-hour, weekly, public access TV show on Greensboro Community Television (GCTV) using footage shot from my seminars and workshops.  Immediately after I retired in 1994, I began a single proprietorship business called Creation, Dinosaurs and thE Flood (CDEF).  CDEF hosted my independent workshops and seminars and sold books and videos at these programs and 3-4 homeschool conventions each year.  Credit card processing was a part of CDEF’s operations.  CDEF also had a website http://www.sixdaycreation.com that sold books and videos worldwide. In 2001 I gave up selling books and sold only video products.  In 2011 the business was liquidated.  In August 2004 I began teaching business courses at Davidson County Community College including; Principles of Management, Introduction to Business, Business Law, Principles of Marketing, Study Skills, and Student Success Strategies.  While at DCCC I worked with both BlackBoard and Moodle learning platforms.  During my time at DCCC, I won 2 academic prizes for excellence in teaching, including a grant for $3000.  I began work as a fiction and non-fiction author in 2012 and in 2015 I published my first two books.  Today I have 15 books on Kindle and in paperback.

Contact Charlie can at “charlie@sixdaycreation.com”, 336-337-4975 (call or text).