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This story occurred on Saturday, November 22, 2025, story being published Thanksgiving 2025, Thursday November 27, 2025

There’s something oddly comforting about sitting inside a grocery store again. Thirty-six months after walking away from a 35-year career as a grocery salesman (a job I started back in 1989), I still don’t mind the hum of shopping carts and the smell of rotisserie chickens. So last Saturday, November 22, I plopped down at the Starbucks inside the Kroger on Kingston Pike in Farragut with a Cold Brew Peppermint Mocha  and no particular agenda.

That’s when Alderman Joe LaCroix joined me at the table. 

We’d never met. He’d only been in office a few weeks, appointed in October to fill the seat left heartbreakingly vacant by the sudden passing of Alderman David White in August. I knew the basics: Joe and his wife have two grown kids; my wife and I raised three. Beyond that, we were strangers.

For the next hour we just… talked. About marriages that have lasted decades, about watching kids turn into adults (and trying to figure out this new phase of parenting from the sidelines), about the little victories and frustrations that come with family life. No Farragut politics. No pending agenda items. No “what are you going to do about traffic on Everett Road?” questions from me, no rehearsed talking points from him.

Just two guys who’ve lived a lot of life, discovering we have more in common than either of us expected.

Eventually our cups were empty, the weekend rush was picking up around us, and it was time to go. We shook hands—firm, grocery-man style—and promised there would be plenty of time later for the heavier stuff.

There will be. Issues will come up. Votes will be cast. Debates will happen.

But sometimes the best way to start covering someone new in public office isn’t with a list of questions. Sometimes it’s just sharing a cup of coffee, finding the human being behind the title, and letting trust begin there.

Saturday felt like a good start.

Here’s to more conversations—some over coffee, some over tougher topics—with Alderman Joe LaCroix in the months ahead.