Tom & Sherry Oster

Sherry and I were both working at GE in the 1970s. We met at the water fountain! She was raised here; I was raised ‘up North’! Despite that significant liability, we were married, and moved into a duplex in the Raleigh Court area. The old GE motto was right, “we bring good things to life”: our son was born at Community hospital and our first daughter was born at Lewis-Gale. The Roanoke Valley was our personal genesis: the place where so many things began for us. We moved away in the 1980s to work with students at the University of Virginia, but now, after 23 years, we have been called back to live and work in this beautiful valley. We are involved in planting a new kind of church in Roanoke and, not too surprisingly, it is located in the Raleigh Court Area and is filled with young people and young families who will be the future of this community and who are putting together their own set of beginnings.

• Tom’s Career: Pastor, Christ Our Redeemer Church