Tennessee, Georgia residents share revelations with aha moment tour

Southern flavor was on the menu inside the gleaming Airstream trailer sitting behind the Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

George and Angela Foster, owners of Hillbilly Willy’s Barb-B-Q, climbed inside the trailer Thursday, ready to share the “aha!” moment of their lives with a documentary crew traveling the country to record such memories. But the couple brought something of an aha for the aha crew — steaming dinner from their Browns Ferry Road restaurant.

“An aha moment for us is to be able to work for ourselves,” said Mr. Foster, who shared his and his wife’s decision to quit their jobs as an architectural manager and a bank manager and start the restaurant.

“Once she saw I was having fun and self-employed, it was only a matter of time,” said Mr. Foster.

About a dozen local residents stopped by the Airstream on Thursday during the group’s first five hours of filming. The 25-city tour, sponsored by Mutual of Omaha, wants to find people’s epiphanies, moments of clarity or life-changing decisions and put them on tape, crew members say. The tour will be in Chattanooga today before heading to Savannah, Ga., for next week’s tour stop. The crew spent the beginning of this week in Birmingham, Ala.

“Every story is different,” tour manager Katie Kirby said. “We haven’t heard the same one twice.”

The recorded messages will be posted on ahamoment.com within 72 hours and some of the clips will make it into the tour’s commercials.

On Thursday, they heard from Tunnel Hill, Ga., resident Charlie Rosenquist, whose aha moment involved her teenage son volunteering to deploy with the Army Reserve in Afghanistan. When she heard him explain his reasons for going — to protect his family, freedom and country — she realized her “baby” had grown into a man, she said.

“An aha moment is when I see or I hear something that makes something click and it becomes clear,” she said.

The Rev. Michael Feely shared his aha moments, which he said take place every day working at the St. Andrews Center, the local organization that helps more than 20 agencies work with underserved communities in Chattanooga.

Mr. Feely said he and other staff share special moments whenever they see people helping each other at the center.

As for the aha tour, he said he hopes people would watch the messages and share laughs at the good moments and empathy with the tough ones.

“Hopefully, people will be inspired or compelled to do something because of this,” he said.