Skills

Ted Tipton looks out at Watauga Lake in northeastern Tennessee every day. Nobody has a more poignant view of it because 47 years ago Tipton built a dock along the waterfront and a small restaurant up a staircase from it. Since then, he's seen his Lakeshore Resort and Marina grow to a spread of 450 boat slips, heated swimming pool, motel and a string of furnished cabins that peek down on the emerald water through a bank of trees. A visitor to the Appalachian foothills will stand on the marina dock and stare out over the lake, mesmerized. Tipton will look at the visitor in equal, but different, wonderment.