So I did this from root and I'm still in UTC and not eastern.

Anyone have any suggestions?

date
rm /etc/localtime
rm: remove regular file `/etc/localtime'? y
cd /etc
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/eastern
localtime ; eastern (when I do this I get a bash error)
killall ntpd
ntpdate -b pool.ntp.org
date
reboot