Photograph by Audra Melton
Atlantans is a first-person account of the familiar strangers who make the city tick. This month’s is Michelle and Melissa Cary, as told to Rachel Garbus.
Melissa Our dad was a commercial plumber in Manhattan. He built the first Twin Towers, Columbia University—he even worked on Barbra Streisand’s house. His brother in Atlanta kept telling us about the opportunities here.
Michelle We moved down here from Brooklyn in the summer of 1978. I had never felt heat like that in my life; I thought I was going to drop dead in the car.
Melissa It took a while for Dad to get the business going because he was this Yankee plumber in the South. So he started making flyers with the little tear-offs at the bottom with his phone number.
Michelle Melissa and I got involved because in the beginning he couldn’t afford help, and we wanted designer jeans. George Ash and Gloria Vanderbilt were big back in those days. So, he told us, “You want them, you better get on a truck and earn them.” We spent our summers staying out of trouble, working, and making money. We were 8 and 10 years old, but when you’re ripping out walls and not getting in trouble for it—it was pretty fun.
Melissa I got my plumber’s license at 19. I was the youngest female plumber in the Southeast, maybe even the country. Michelle joined a few years later. Dad sent us out to work with everyone; we were supposed to learn the best and the worst of every plumber. He added us to the name in the ’80s.
Michelle We had beige business cards with brown raised writing: “M. Cary & Daughters.”
Melissa Dad never really had a doubt we could do it. Our mother is an extremely capable woman. They used to renovate houses together. She worked in the business too, in the office. But our grandfather gave Dad a lot of grief for putting us in the company—he had that old-fashioned mentality, “girls have no place doing that.” And guys…
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