Mike Hasinec has spent the better part of his life looking for a house, but for the last 41 years, he’s known exactly where his professional home has been.
One of three boys born to a working family in Laurence Harbor, N.J., Hasinec was active in school sports – namely track and football – and the Scouts, where his mother served as a den mother and his father a Webelo leader.
“Because my parents worked, my brothers and I became pretty self-sufficient,” he said. “We learned to cook, iron, sew. We learned a lot of life skills.”
But at the age of 13, with his father’s employer – a local newspaper where he managed distribution – embroiled in a strike, the Hasinecs packed up and headed south.
“He just didn’t like the issues that occurred with his friends,” Mike recalled. “My dad literally quit his job with nothing lined up. We sold our house, and we moved to South Carolina.”
Neither parent claims to have made the decision with clairvoyance.
“My parents actually had some friends that lived in New Jersey in our little neighborhood, and they had moved to South Carolina several years prior to us moving, and they talked about how much they liked it, the way of life,” he said. “My parents, just on a whim, said, ‘You know what? Sounds like a good place to move.’ ”
