Lakeway Area profiles



By:Staff Reports, Citizen Tribune January 24, 2005

Janish looks forward to fatherhood, service to Morristown Brian Janish will remember today's date - Jan. 24 - for as long as he lives. There's no doubt about that.

It will stick fast in his mind not because it was the day Alfred Hitchcock's first film debuted in London in 1927 or because on this day in 1948 a prospector discovered gold in California's Sutter's Creek, although both of these things are true.

What's on Janish's near horizon, he says, is far more frightening than a Hitchcock flick, and promises to be more precious than gold. Today Janish, budget manager and human resources director for the city of Morristown, becomes a father for the first time.

His wife, Erin Rachel Janish, went into labor this morning, and the baby - Harry if it's a boy and Eleanor if it's a girl - is expected some time this afternoon.

"I'm excited, but I'm scared," Janish said. "I've never changed a diaper. I've held one baby in my life, and that was a couple weeks ago. I held my niece, who is about four months old. "I held her for all of about 20 seconds before she started crying and I just immediately gave her back," he added. "That's really what I'm nervous about. I don't know the proper way to hold them, to feed them, to change their diapers, to put them in a car or to carry them around."

Janish says caring for the family's pet rabbit, Sam; the hamster, Ham-Ham; and cat, Kitty, did little to prepare him for the impending rigors of fatherhood. "The good thing is my wife has already had three. Tyler is 10, Grant is 8 and Haley will be 6 soon. She's laughing at me and my nerves. She'll really help me a lot."

The story of the Janishes' courtship is not a typical one. They met on a roller hockey rink, and their friendship grew during after-game socials. Erin is a defensewoman from Minnesota, and Brian is a goalie who hails from Michigan. When they first met, Erin's hockey exploits were limited to in-line play, but before she got pregnant - at Brian's urging - she'd moved to the ice rink and was developing her game. They married in August 2003 at a private service at the home of Brian's mother and stepfather, Cindy and Tom Jenkins. Janish, who graduated from Morristown-Hamblen High School West in 1994, began work as the city's budget director and human resources manager in July 2001. He moved to Morristown in 1992 when his father, Harry, relocated from Rochester, Mich. to East Tennessee.

Janish graduated from Walters State Community College in 1996, then earned his bachelor of science degree in business administration at East Tennessee State University two years later. He earned a master's degree in accounting from ETSU in 1999, and in December 2004 finished his master's of business administration at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

"Brian has an unlimited future," said Morristown City Administrator Jim Crumley, Janish's boss. "For a young man with the education, responsibilities and experience that he's already had, he can do what he wants to do with his future. "I'm pleased to have him working with the city of Morristown," Crumley added. "He's been a terrific addition to our staff. He brings a professional examination of our budget, (and) he put back good systems and processes into our human resource development. He's a strong professional in our business." Erin gradated from Georgia Tech with a degree in psychology, and recently earned her teaching certificate. She plans to begin looking for work as an elementary school teacher this summer. The reason Janish knows he'll be a father today is because doctors induced labor on his wife. Janish was in the delivery room when his first child arrived. But amid the joy at becoming a father, his thoughts never drifted far from the horror of changing his first soiled diaper, and how he might be able to avoid the task.

"I'm already thinking of the excuses I can have in my head, but I know full well they're not going to work."

Citizen Tribune 2005