For any business, being named one of the Top 100 in the Nation for their industry would be reason to celebrate. When Cornerstone Home Healthcare was named one of the Top 100 Home Health Agencies in the nation late last year by HomeCare Elite ™, owner Stacy Fitzpatrick was proud. But the reason why her agency received that award is what makes her proudest. Cornerstone Home Healthcare made the Top 100 Homecare Elite list because of a high level of patient care and patient satisfaction.

Fitzpatrick says that her business had been named in the Top 500 for the last several years because of the quality of her staff. She attributes the new award to on-going training and commitment of the staff to providing quality of care and positive outcomes for patients.

While the home he shares with wife, Terra, and their two children is elsewhere, Clay Hamilton says he spends about an equal amount of time in Mooresville, making it home, too. When you are a hands-on owner/operator of a business that is successful and growing, that’s how it is. Hamilton has no qualms about the time he devotes to Whites Electrical.

Hamilton was one of those lucky few who came out of high school with a direction. Beginning at 14-years-old, he became a staple on construction sites. During his junior and senior years of school, he participated in construction programs at Central Nine Career Center in Greenwood. The instructors were business professionals, contractors in the area, who led the construction of a home each year by students from Johnson, Morgan, and a portion of Marion Counties.

The experience helped Hamilton narrow his path. “I liked being around equipment and building things,” Hamilton said. “There’s nothing quite like standing back and saying, ‘Hey, we did that.’” When school ended each year, Hamilton continued to work for his instructors in their personal businesses.

The trades appealed to him, as Hamilton expressed, “because I like working hard and to have dirt on my hands. And the trades aren’t going anywhere. There aren’t enough tradesmen, and even fewer craftsmen out there.”

Although Jeff Faull was following four generations of preachers when he graduated from high school at 17, he found himself as an apprentice meat cutter on his way to a life as a butcher. He still felt the call for theological training, which led him to Cincinnati Christian University. His intentions were to complete a semester and then go back home to Indiana and the apprenticeship.

It wasn’t his pastoral calling that held him back. “I struggled with stage fright,” Faull said. “I had an unwillingness to be in front of people.” Being in front of people is one of the essential skills needed by a preacher and Faull knew it from watching his father and grandfather.

Part of the course of study at the Bible school was being part of teams sent out to other churches in the region. “A leader (at the Bible school) took me under his wing and instilled  some self-confidence in me,” Faull said. “I was coerced into giving the message at a country church in Kentucky. The moment I stepped down from that platform, I knew what I was going to do with my life.”

It was a proud moment for Bill Fite when he went to his grandmother to seek her approval to resurrect the business name of Fite Plumbing. She was excited about the revival, telling him to “absolutely bring Fite Plumbing back out!” With her blessing, the second iteration of Fite Plumbing opened on January 1, 1989. It is another proud moment for Bill Fite to host the grand opening of the new Fite Plumbing location this month.

Fite’s grandfather had operated a plumbing business for many years on the west side of Indianapolis. Several other Fite family members worked in the business. As a boy, Bill would be in and out of the plumbing supply barn next door. “We would build forts and there were always plumbing pipes in them, as grab bars or weapons, not for running water. I would ride the back hoe with him, too.” When Fite was in junior high school, his grandfather died, and the business was dissolved.

Over summer breaks in high school, Fite worked in a local plumbing business and after graduating, he worked there to pay for college. He says that he really enjoyed construction plumbing and always figured he would eventually be a builder in some way.

It is easy to take water for granted. We turnon the tap and there it is. We drink it, cook with it, and bathe in it. We even play in it. Everyone likes water. The water in Mooresville is delivered through Indiana American Water and it is Mooresville resident, Troy Bryant, who leads the team that makes sure that not only is water there when you turn the faucet on, but that it is safe and healthy, too.

Bryant didn’t grow up in Mooresville thinking he would ever shoulder that responsibility. In fact, after graduating from Mooresville High School he enlisted in the Navy. Jamie was his high school sweetheart. She followed him, they married, and had one child, Jordan, while they were serving our country. Troy and Jamie returned to Mooresville after the Navy and had two more children, Coleman and Abigail. He needed a job and General Waterworks was hiring. It took him about a year, but he got the job and starting out reading meters.

For the next 26 years, Bryant worked his way up through the ranks being promoted to supervisor and then to Superintendent in 2005. He stayed with the local organization through a purchase by United Water in 1994 and then in 2000 the company was purchased by American Water and became a part of Indiana American Water.

B. J. Pendill learned early in life that what a professor said, “Hard work is the path to success” was true in every aspect of life. It was, by the time that professor began repeating it to him daily as B. J. cleaned his horse stalls, already part of what he calls his DNA.

For him and his four siblings, it was the Bloomington family’s culture that everyone pitched in to take care of home and each other. His mother was very ill and spent a great deal of time in the hospital. “We had to grow up fast and be responsible,” B. J. said. In fact, he said, he was mowing the grass when he was only tall enough to steer it from the brace bar below the handle of the mower. He was not tall enough to reach the handle and propel it any other way.

Pushing initiative

That regular lawn-mowing experience at home turned lucrative for B. J. and his brother, Nathan. They began a lawn mowing business. “It was gratifying, and by college, we had a great business,” he said. The brothers did not leave it that. Their business evolved into a logistics transportation business. “We did a lot of commercial projects and went to school full-time,” B. J. said. “We loved the ability to go out and do something productive and then step back to see what we had created.”