Bob & Terri Anderson: In business COVER STORY

By Gaye Bunderson

Heritage: noun - something that is handed down from the past, as a tradition

Bob and Terri Anderson never doubted God was looking out for them. The Andersons own Heritage Reflections, a handcrafted legacy furniture store at 3175 E. Copper Point Dr. in Meridian. They are more than entrepreneurs. They are also profound believers; and, in fact, they don’t doubt for a minute that God led them to Boise and the business.

“The Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” — Joshua 1:9

Their story starts way back east in New England, where they were born and raised and where they met one another at Gordon College, a Christian college in Wenham, Mass. Marriage came first and then careers. They eventually moved to Arizona, where Bob ran an L.L Bean store for 10 years. The hot Arizona sun led the couple to consider a move to the Pacific Northwest, and they narrowed it down to three locations, including Boise.

“I talked to 30 people and told them the three choices we’d narrowed it down to, and 27 people out of 30 had a connection to Boise and told me how much they loved it,” Bob said.

So the Andersons took that as a nudge from God that their next move, literally, was to the so-called City of Trees. But their first experiences here were a tad rocky.

“We bought a home,” Bob said, “but we had no jobs and no friends. It was 2011, and we couldn’t get a job – they wouldn’t hire us.”

Both Terri and Bob earned teaching degrees in college; after the move to Boise, Bob eventually got a modest-paying substitute teaching position at Lake Hazel Elementary, while Terri found work at Heritage Reflections. While Bob’s work was inadequate at best, Terri fell in love with her job at the furniture store, to the point she even lost interest in returning to academia.