Adam was born in Durham, NC, but he grew up in Huntsville, AL. He loved astronauts growing up because his dad, Richard Venable, worked for NASA. His formative years were spent going to Catholic school (yes-with uniforms and nuns!) and attending mass with his mother. His younger brother Eric loved taekwondo and playing the drums in the youth group band. Adam picked up the guitar in 10th grade and has enjoyed playing 90’s rock ever since. High School was harder than Adam expected, and he did a lot of soul searching there.
After graduation he became a student at the University of Alabama in 1999. These were Alabama football’s dark ages. In seven years, six different coaches ran the program. Adam’s junior year he moved to Raleigh, NC for what he planned on being just one semester of working for an engineering company. The plan was to leave for a semester and then return to and finish school at Alabama. However, two things happened. First, he realized he was a terrible engineer. Second, he made some real-honest-to-goodness friends in Raleigh. So, he made the strange and joy-inspired decision to transfer to one of the two schools in Raleigh. There was one other option, Meredith College, which as you might have guessed only accepted people with names like Meredith, Lucy, Lisa, etc. (It was an all-girls school). So that made the decision easy - NC State! Adam graduated with a BA in Religious Studies from an engineering and agriculture school. So, he got a lot of weird looks from people when he answered the standard question “So what’s your major?”
After graduation he moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico to work with students at New Mexico State University. New Mexico became the 47th state in the US in 1912. Fun fact: Santa Fe, NM (meaning “Holy Faith”) was founded in 1610 by the Spanish. That’s only three years after the founding of Jamestown VA! Adam spent two years in Las Cruces eating amazing food, watching postcard sunsets, enjoying zero humidity…and working. After that he did a brief stint in Birmingham, AL where he worked for a gastroenterologist for three months between NM and going to seminary.
In 2006 he moved to Greenville, SC to attend Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary which among other (in?)famous traits has the longest name of any seminary in the continental US except for maybe the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology of Virginia Union University. Google it. It’s real. The most important thing Adam accomplished in Greenville was to convince Lisa Smith, now Lisa Venable, to marry him. She grew up in Charleston, SC. She graduated from the College of Charleston and completed medical school at the University of South Carolina. So impressive!
Adam and Lisa have four children - Eli (13), Lucy (11), Jacob (8), and Elizabeth (1). In 2014 Adam and Lisa moved to Birmingham AL where Adam worked with students at UAB. Adam and Lisa loved vacationing at Dauphin Island, AL and Chattanooga, TN. Adam’s job took him to Colorado every year, which was amazing. As a family they loved to hike at Moss Rock Preserve. In 2021 Adam’s work took him to Huntsville, AL. Full circle! Adam enjoyed reconnecting with people he had not seen in twenty years. They missed Birmingham, but they made some amazing friends in Huntsville. Adam took up fly fishing at a creek near their house. Also, he joined a men’s exercise group called F3. That group became special to Him. The kids made new friends and loved playing on baseball, volleyball, and basketball teams.
In September of this year Adam and family made the decision to embark on a new adventure. They are very excited to see what is in store for them in Charlottesville, VA. Adam is eager to start making friends fly fishing, exercising, and watching college football.