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By JAMES P. GANNON • Rappahannock New« Contributing Writer . For a dozen years, Bob Lasater jand his business partner-wife, Kathryn Sumpter, ran a thriving graphic design firm in Boston, Mass. Then last-year, they moved themselves andiheir business to a 60-acre farm Jn Rappahannock County, some 500 jniles away from most of their corporate clients. • “We probably couldn’t have done Ithis five years ago,” said Lasater, a 546-year-old native of Norfolk who atJtencJed college in Boston and started a graphics business with his wife as partner. “But with the improvements in technology, it’s become so much easier. ” ; While still in Boston, most of the couple’s business was done via telephone, fax machine and computer modem anyway, he said. So Bob and. JKathryn began searching for the perfect place to live and work—and found it in an old farmhouse along the Hughes River on the county’s southwestern edge, where Bob can step out of his office and look at the deer and fox roaming his acreage. - Lasater said he moved their business “with very little distruption,”« "and still serves the same clients. Every three weeks or so, he drives 65 'miles to Dulles Airport and flies to Boston for a few days to meet clients. “The rest of the time, with faxes and modems, the telephone and Federal Express, we get along fine” doing business near the tiny hamlet of Slate Mills. • , These urban escapees are prime examples of a trend providing new hope for growth in small-town and rural America. New technology and the rise of “knowledge workers,” whose portable skills are not tied to a factory or corporate office, are fostering a trend that could profoundly reshape the American workforce.
A new breed of mobile professionals, dubbed “Lone Eagles,” are flying the coop of urban life to lvie and work whereever they want—in Colorado ski resorts, small Midwestern towns where they grew up, or rural beauty spots like Rappahannock County—which is also my new home and workplace.
Rappahannock County Administrator John McCarthy wasn’t familiar' with the Lone Eagle term, but
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