When actor Wayne Rogers was a star on the TV series M*A*S*H, his character Capt. "Trapper John" McIntyre loved to have a drink, kick back on the sands of Korea and playa little golf (land mines were an only occasional problem.) Now, three decades later, Rogers is a successful businessman, and in some ways he is following the example set by "Trapper John."

Like an increasing number of corporate executives, entrepreneurs, doctors and other professionals, Rogers has abandoned the fast-paced, crowded high-rise lifestyle of the big city and relocated to the beaches, golf courses and laid-back way of life of the Emerald Coast.

For Rogers, though, his recent move to the Emerald Coast is a re-birth of sorts since he began his life in the southern state of Alabama. After more than 35 years as a movie and TV actor, producer and writer, Rogers has followed the path of other executives and taken up residence not far from the Gulf of Mexico beach.

"I was actually born in the state of Alabama," Rogers says in a Southern drawl not evident during many of his acting roles. "My cousin says 1 was born out on the highway, and my current address is Highway 98 East, so I've returned - I've made a full circle."

Rogers further elaborates that a series of business ventures here and in Tallahassee motivated him and his wife, Amy, to move here three years ago. Known for his financial and entrepreneurial savvy among the entertainment industry, Rogers had developed a broad client base.

"Primarily, we had a business down here in this area and I have subsequently gotten involved in several other things," he notes. "We bought 12 stores from the estate of the old Swifty Mart and they are all located over in Tallahassee and Wakulla and Leon County - in and around the city itself."

Rogers still has strong connections to Hollywood, but he demurs about any projects he may have in the works. '"All well, I don't know if it is entertaining or not but you know I do a show for the Fox Network every Saturday and Sunday," he says, "It's a weekend financial show with Neil Cavut."

So, what is it about this area that made him choose a life here as opposed to the West Coast or other major entertainment hubs? Clearly, for Rogers, it was the simplicity of small-town living.

"[It's good] any time when life is simple in what you have to do on a daily basis and it doesn't become a pain," he says. "It's true of most small towns, and I happen to like small-town life in that sense. It's easy to get to all of those things you need for services. The golf is close by, all of the sports facilities that you would want: the swimming, the fishing - nothing is a hassle. Big city? It's always a hassle."

Rogers, it turns out, was not the first executive or businessperson to seek the calm and serenity of the Emerald Coast. He may not have known it, but Rogers is part of a trend that is bringing an increasing number of former and current corporate executives and professionals to the Destin region.

Bill Fuchs, former CEO of a Silicon Valley high tech firm, grew disenchanted with life in the expensive, volatile valley and sought out a corporate recruiter to help him find a new location for his life and business.

Fuchs found his timing for a move was right on the mark. Gov. Jeb Bush's chief information officer had just resigned in the wake of investigations into his prior business dealings, and the top CIO spot was opened to a nationwide search. Fuchs wanted a shot at it but priced himself out of contention. Working for a state salary would not come close to the income he was accustomed to. While he was out of the running for the state job, Fuchs is keeping the dream alive to one day trade in the West Coast for the south coast.

Other successful cases have proven it can be done. These people re-evaluated their lives and found a better quality of life on the Emerald Coast.

Tim McDonald – Rising Corporate Star to Low Handicap

Tim McDonald was the quintessential up-and coming star for the MacTools division of Stanley Works in Ohio, a $2.5-billion manufacturer of tools. In an age of fickle company loyalties and job-hopping in the fervent hope of getting the right career points, McDonald was a company man's dream. He began in the trenches, at the bottom, as an independent distributor of MacTools - a position in which the individual absorbed the majority of risk. His career path took him quickly to the top as president of MacTools in 1995. But after two and a half years, McDonald experienced increasing disillusionment with the direction the parent company was going. The incessant grind of working against the grain of the corporate strategy and the frigid winter seasons spawned McDonald's realization of a better life... and year-around golf In 1997, he and his wife, Jan, found that new life on the Emerald Coast. While having a cup of coffee in Sandestin's Village of Baytowne Wharf recently, McDonald recalled a top reason he moved to the South. "I love to golf and you can golf year-round here; you can't do that in Columbus, Ohio." Of course, McDonald found his perennial golfing region here in the Emerald Coast after landing a position as CEO of Fort Walton Machining. The company fit his background. "The quality of the company and the intellectual capital was outstanding," he says.

Tom Hopkins - Senior Marketing Exec turned Bartender

While McDonald's vision led him to lead an Emerald Coast company, Tom Hopkins' vision couldn't see past the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Atlanta's 285 beltway

And there was quite a time lapse between the day he first started thinking about an escape and when he finally realized his dream. In that span he rose to become a senior marketing executive for Compaq computers with a tidy six-figure income.

"I was on my way home from work sitting in traffic on Atlanta's 285 beltway. I said to myself, 'I ought to get out of Atlanta, move to the beach and be a bartender,'" he muses. "But this was a thought I originally had 30 years ago; it reoccurred over and over. 'Oh, can I get you another beer?'"

It takes courage to undertake such a life makeover, from corporate executive to bartender at Pandora's Restaurant in Gray ton Beach, just off Highway 30-A. Many find it difficult to take a position outside of their professional track.

Hopkins moves quickly to the wall fridge and fetches another beer for a customer. His deliberate moves and the wry smile that match the gleam in his eye tell the whole story: He's doing what makes him happy He offered just a few words to sum up his life transition: "It says you made the move to something you like and want to do."

Dann Wallis - A Place To Heal A Wounded Heart

An executive recruiter didn't have to work hard to convince Dann Wallis to come to the Emerald Coast. But it took a little more work for Wallis to take another position. Wallis had discovered the area in 1979 when he and his wife sought a soul-mending setting to cope with a family tragedy. Their 21-year-old daughter had been killed in a traffic accident in a blinding snowstorm in Iowa. Their friends had convinced them to visit the area. They did and bought a condo on impulse - returning periodically over the years for the solace and serenity of the coast. Wallis made quite a mark in his industry. His career track in industrial engineering includes receiving top honors at the Navy's sonar school and a diploma bestowed by Pres. Harry Truman, who was visiting the summer White House in Key West at the time. But some of his best work doesn't even exist on this planet. "You can find part of my career legacy on the moon," he notes. "I hand-built some of the potentiometric transducers incorporated into the Surveyor, the first instrument package 'soft-landed' on the moon," he says.

Wallis' creative approach to problem solving and consensus building had made him an industry star. But it took some convincing to coax Wallis out of retirement and into the position as a director of a manufacturing consortium in Fort Walton Beach - the Technology Coast Manufacturing and Engineering Network.

"I developed the reputation as a turnaround specialist," he admits. His clients included Tappan Company, Singer Motor Products, Nichols Kusan, and the North American Division of Fairchild's International Manufacturing Group.

Indeed, Wallis was never stove-piped as a cog in a mundane quality-control role. He held senior level positions as vice president and eventually as president of the Nichols-Kusan Company.

When contacted, Wallis had set his mind to kicking back and moving to the beat of a new drum and working on his novel about two Civil War soldiers. Eventually, Wallis was offered membership in the Institute of Senior Professionals, a veritable warehouse of intellectual capital that works pro bono on community development projects.

"The quality of life on the Emerald Coast is without equal anywhere in the United States," he says. "I've lived on all three coasts - in Texas and across the Midwest and into the Northeast. What we have is not to be found in any of those areas."

John Vaughan began his life in the hinterlands of Crestview, Florida, in the early '30s. Living a hardscrabble existence, he graduated from Crestview High School in 1951 and left the area for 44 years before returning to his roots.

After a five-year stint as a naval aviator, Vaughan began a path of study and livelihood that was as natural and pure as the rich soil of his Crestview roots. With a degree in chemical engineering, a master's in chemistry and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, Vaughan comfortably made his way through the forest products industry with Temple-Inland Container Company - a $3 billion-ayear company.

Vaughan had become the senior vice president of the company when the tug of his country roots finally took hold in 1995. He and his wife of 47 years, Sara, left the frigid Midwest to begin life anew.

A raconteur of the early life in Northwest Florida, Vaughan had the internal quest for knowledge so entrenched that he and Sara recently announced their next adventure: to learn the gritty and backbreaking work of archeological research.

The two were headed to "Wyoming to learn how to become museum curators. As a young child, Vaughan dug in the red soils of Crestview, and it seems his enduring passion is leading him 70 years later to explore the earth once again.

Judy LaMarche and Robert Stainback are intriguing, not so much for their extensive background in psychology, but for their exacting and thorough approach to rebuilding a new life for themselves - down to the analytical spreadsheets and weighting system they used to evaluate Florida communities.

They had been visiting the Emerald Coast off and on from Birmingham since 1985. They had spent so many years helping others understand their dreams that they put their own on hold. "As psychologists, we are in the dream business," says LaMarche. 'We assist people in clarifying and then realizing their dreams. When would we take the time to put our own hopes into images, then into reality?"

It's a fundamental dilemma that many executives face- delaying self-satisfaction or their own aspirations while supporting those of children, families, friends and clients.

Finally, the two had run out of reasons not to grab the life they had dreamed of "Our kids were grown with careers and personal lives of their own; there was no family need to remain in Birmingham," Stainback says.

The area's ambience was surely inviting, however, they wanted to make absolutely sure that they had evaluated all the other possible alternatives - an endeavor that consumed a year of traveling to the likes of Ponte Vedra, Amelia Island, Stuart, Jupiter, Celebration and Longboat Key. They evaluated these areas with the fervor and detail they applied to their over 40 years of research. Key factors included the natural beauty, quality of life and the fact that the area had not been overbuilt. For all the time and effort expended, it boiled down to a gut reaction to just move to WaterColor.

The real pull was not just a career change or the phase of life - or even the yearlong quest for the optimal retirement area, the two agree. "There is just a deep emotional feeling we always get when we cross the bridge driving over the Choctawhatchee Bay," LaMarche says, "It is a feeling of serenity, yet excitement; of incredible natural beauty between the beach and the bay - a feeling of coming home."

Henning Harmuth – Scientific Genius Under Our Noses

The story of scientist Dr. Henning Harmuth is rather amazing. PulseLink, a high-tech startup in Panama City, was on to a cutting-edge application involving a relatively obscure part of the frequency spectrum, ultra wideband or UWB. UWB provides the ability to see through walls and other materials with a direct benefit for firefighting and law enforcement. A worldwide search was undertaken to help the company remain in Panama City. It turns out that the answer Harmuth - was right in their backyard. He had been plying his trade all over the world…from his wheelchair in Destin. So why is a man of such scientific prominence not closer to the inventor communities? It turns out that the nexus of the intellectual universe for more than 30 years had been Washington, D.C. "I wanted to get away from the traffic in the Washington, D.C. area, especially the beltway traffic," he says. However, his connection to the area goes back to the '40s.

"In the early '40s my father-in-law bought a lot in what is now the Indian Bayou subdivision in Destin," he recalls. "He used it first to pitch a tent, then they built a hut, and finally a weekend house in 1969. My wife inherited the house about 10 years ago. We expanded it and made it inhabitable for year-round use. When my wife retired in 1998, we moved to Destin."

In spite of his paralysis and advancing years, Harmuth has been enjoying the lifestyle of semi-retirement and collaborating via the Internet with a research group in the Ukraine. His latest publication, "Modified Maxwell Equations in Quantum Electrodynamics," represents more than a milestone in physics; it reflects the ability to touch the world intellectually without compromising one's lifestyle.