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The Summit Staff

Tom Williams	Tom grew up in the rolling hills of upstate New York where the four seasons were felt very distinctly each year. He earned a bachelors and masters degree in Physics from the University of South Florida in 1981. From there he immediately went to work for Amoco Production Company in New Orleans, La., as a geophysicist. He spent most of his professional life attempting determine the best locations to drill oil and gas wells. His experience is with drilling in the deep water Gulf of Mexico, the Caspian Sea and the Nile Delta region of the Mediterranean Sea. He met his wife Mary in New Orleans, where they married and had three children. They moved to Houston in 1989 and then overseas in 1997 to work in Baku, Azerbaijan and Cairo, Egypt. Tom "retired" from BP Amoco in 2007. He currently lives with his wife on the east shore of Lake Livingston. Through the years he has studied Vietnamese, Greek and Russian and is now fluent in English. He does not cuss, which makes it difficult for some of the Summit staff to understand him. Deciding that "retirement" really meant "putting in long, hard days away from his lake house", Tom purchased Summit Landscape Services from John Parker and Francisco Higareda on August 1, 2007. He purchased Summit because it was a successful company with a competent, qualified staff, a great reputation and many satisfied customers. His vision is to build an even stronger company where the employees can feel proud to work and the quality of Summit's landscape, irrigation and maintenance projects are consistently recognized as second-to-none in the Houston area. While Tom has spent most of his professional life studying the earth far below the surface, he looks forward to working with the Summit team to enhance the surface of the earth, to the benefit and delight of Summit's customers. He's also completely and totally honest, which makes working with him real interesting.
John Parker	John is a native Houstonian and has been in the Houston area landscape industry for over 25 years, including time spent as owner of a plant nursery in the Heights area. He has a degree in horticulture from Sam Houston State University and is licensed in irrigation (TLI #3751) and pesticide application (TDA 0250448). John started Summit in 1994 with three employees and has grown the company to three divisions (maintenance, landscape and irrigation) and over 60 employees. He is the primary sales person and manager of the company. John’s interest in horticulture and love of nature comes from time spent in his father’s hometown of Groveton, Texas, a booming metropolis of 1,000 people. His grandfather was an avid outdoorsman and farmer. John’s interest in both started early and never waned. He will be happy to discuss landscaping at any time but will be happier to tell you about the fishing in the 1+ acre lake outside his office.
Ross Ayers	Ross is a Registered Landscape Architect (Texas A&M) with thirty five years of experience. He is a native Texan (you only have to meet him once to know) and a life member of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Ross is a Vietnam vet and a member of the Tejas Vaqueros. He is former vice president of Cornelius Nursery (15 years), was a member of the Texas State Technological Institute Horticultural Advisory board (5 years), former volunteer fireman (12 years), and, needless to say, a member of the Houston Texas A&M club.
Jason Harrison	Jason comes with 18 years experience in the industry and a great deal of practical knowledge hard-earned in the field. He is self-taught in Spanish and holds both Texas irrigator and backflow tester licenses. Jason is a native Texan and experienced outdoorsman. He enjoys hunting, camping and being a dad. If you run out of landscape/irrigation questions he'll be happy to tell you his latest kid/camping/hunting story.
Ted Clements	Has lots and lots of guns. Hand-loads his own cartridges. Loves to hunt. I try not to anger him.
Mary Williams	She is disgustingly cheerful and energetic in the morning. "Hi! I'm a morning person!" And she drinks double super caffeine coffee on top of that. She's very excited about coming to work here (that whole morning person thing.) She has some huge monster dog (Great Pyrenees?), a very brave cat, and some kids hither and yon. Mary was born in New Orleans and you can tell every time you talk to her. She runs the office but is looking forward to getting out in the field. She's really, really excited about landscaping. I think it's the coffee thing.
Marco A. Orduna	Marco comes to Summit from Stephen F. Austin State University where he graduated in Dec. 2006 with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with emphasis in Horticulture. He has been a groundskeeper at the Stephen F. Austin State University Pineywoods Native Plant Center and most recently a Horticulturist, Landscape Designer and Foreman at Florascapes here in Houston. He has also been a Horticulturist Assistant at the Houston Museum of Natural Science – Cockrell Butterfly Center. Mary says he adds a touch of "class and manners" to the company.
Hamilton Russell	New guy. Don't know the first thing about him except he looks Irish and is fluent in Spanish. Turns out he's half Scottish, half Mexican, which makes him all American. More to come.
Britney Russell	New girl. Born the same year as that other, less important, Britney. She is a bowling fanatic. Don't bet against her. More to come.
Antonio Martinez	Antonio is the original Summit Landscape employee. He is largely responsible for the success of Summit, as he is a master landscaper and excellent foreman. Antonio excels at understanding the design of a project and knows instantly what will be required and how long a project will take. His competence and confidence ensures that our projects will succeed. He is the backbone of the Summit Landscape crew.
Manuel Perez	Manuel is our primary residential landscaper and has been with the company over 5 years. He not only excels in residential installation of softscapes but is talented in pavers, flagstone and irrigation installation and repair. Manuel has received more individual compliments from our customers than any other foreman.
Santos Trejos	Santos is Summit's main irrigation installer and repairman. He has a Texas installers license and has installed more systems than anyone can remember. He is extremely talented in looking at an area and knowing what the irrigation requirements will be. For all intents and purposes he is Summit's irrigation department.
Jake Parker	Jake has an AAS, a BBA, and an MBA. Sort of an "alphabet soup" thing. And he's getting really, really old. He has years in commercial construction, more years in computer tech support, and, after working at a landscape company, is now proud to say he can tell the difference between grass (the stuff on the ground) and trees (they grow taller than grass) and bushes (taller than grass but shorter than trees.) He's also interested in old motorcycles, so if you have one cluttering your garage he'll be glad to haul it off for you. No charge.