Somethings you won't find out about me from any resume...

How did all this get started?

It was quite a voyage that brought me to this point.

In 1972, when I finished college in Chapel Hill, I had no idea that 33 years later, this is where I would be. I had read a lot of great books, had a wonderful time in fraternity house, cheered on my beloved Tar Heels and made about a thousand dear friends. I was a good, but not great student. Often, life was more interesting than class.

I had no intention of going to law school but at the urging of my frantically worried parents, who looked at me and went “Uh-Oh!”, I applied to Wake Forest’s Law School and they took me in. I expect they had some extra space they needed to fill up.

I was a poor law student, disinterested in its complexity, its dry-as-dust page after page of fine print cases, the lack of joy in its grinding hold and too, I’ll admit being distracted by the ladies. But, I graduated in 1975, indeed I did and too, I pass the state bar exam and then a good friend from UNC and I decided on a spur of the moment whim to throw in together and open a little law firm in Winston-Salem. I had no idea what would happen but we did it.

My first case was to search a title to a piece of real estate. His was he was appointed by a judge to represent a young lady held in the county jail on a charge of trespassing and shoplifting. I went to the Deed Vault to trace the title, he went to the jail.

In an hour, we met on the sidewalk in front of the county courthouse. We were both discouraged, frustrated, unhappy and more than a little worried.

 I had quickly come to despise the sterile land records, the total quiet of the Register of  Deeds office, the boring, hard-to-understand recitations in the streams of title to the land. I was bored.

He immediately had found the jail offensive, its smells and sounds overwhelmingly unpleasant. Inmates shouted obscenities, guards bellowed, cell doors clanked and smashed open and closed. Confusion reigned. He was agitated and did not like the feeling, not one bit.

We both blurted out to each other that this was not what we had in mind and if it was what was to be, maybe it was time to reconsider this career path. Some quick re-working of our plan was in order. All the furniture and typewriters and stationary we had bought, the lease we had signed, the letterings on the door, our parents hopes were on the line.

We switched files. He went to search the title and I went to jail. Two hours later, we met back at our office. We were happy young men. He really liked the peace, solitude, precision and coat-and-tie cleanliness of land title work. And I within seconds fell in absolute eternal love with the action and humanity of the jail and all her people.

And that took me to the courtroom and in short order, I was trying cases of all kinds, speeding tickets, family court disputes, ownership and business fights, drunk driving, all sorts of criminal cases from simple assaults and then sooner rather than later I was trying murders and sometimes worse and some medical malpractice cases too.. I went to the courthouse just about every day for the first decade of my work.

Today, my first partner and still dear friend Thomas T. “Terry” Crumpler is one of the most outstanding Real Estate and Corporate lawyers in the southeast. Still in Winston-Salem, he represents large development companies, does securities placements for many of them and oversees a myriad of activities on their behalves, doing everything from structuring deals to handling enormous sales and acquisitions. And he is still about as precise and thorough a lawyer as you can be.

After about ten years, I was asked to represent a fellow who had bought a bunch of poetry and writings from a fellow named James Dickey, the author of  DELIVERANCE and the Great American Poet (Just ask him!) of his age.
It seemed that after Dickey took the money, he then went ahead and had the material published on his own by Doubleday in New York, thus being paid again for what he already supposedly sold before.

I found a wonderful lawyer in Greenville, SC  whom I had seen lecture at a seminar in Washington DC a few months before. His name was and still is Kendall Few and he’s one of the real giants out there. We sued Dickey and Doubleday and Dickey’s right fancy-fied literary agent who had helped out of the secret, behind-the-back, smarmy deal. We got that matter worked out and Kendall invited me to come to Greenville and practice with him. So I took a great chance and a great jump at a great opportunity and moved my life and work to South Carolina. I’ve never looked back. It has been a grand ride and I have no intention of letting it end any time soon.

Please don’t think I’ve abandoned my Tar Heel roots-not a chance. In addition to having almost all my family and many, many of my friends up in the Old North State, I still practice actively up there and happily take on  cases up that way when I think I can help someone.

After about three years with Kendall, I met my wonderful wife and we decided that we wanted to raise our family in the Low Country area so we settled  down this way. I had some great partners here for a good while, Van Taylor and Tim McCoy but some years ago, I decided it was time for me to set up my own practice and so I did in Mount Peasant. Again, it has been a very successful venture and we have accomplished much for our friends and clients. I am especially grateful for the absolutely superb help I get from Renee and Andrea and Bob. Our office is small but a true little powerhouse and we plan on keeping it that way.

So, I suppose you can read about me elsewhere on this website and if you’d like to visit with me and discuss your case, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Suffice it to say, I’m still happily and hard at it and I’m awfully glad things turned out the way they did.