Things not found on my resume, Part 2

• I cry at sappy movies, sad movies, puppy and kitty movies, touching ads.
  It cracks my children up.
• I once owned and managed a 60 seat white tablecloth restaurant in the upstate-all the while still practicing law-It was a nightmare but we got through it. Truly a Bad idea never worth repeating.
  
• I rarely read books and novels about lawyers and their cases. It always stirs me up, agitates me, makes me want to rev my engines, even as I’m trying to relax. The only exception: John Mortimer’s RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY series, soon to be forever ended. Too bad.
  
• I write poetry and was once, when in college, asked to attend the Young Poets Workshop at Columbia University in New York. My Mother hid the invitation from me, fearing I would go to New York City and become a “beatnick  hippy freak”. Jeez Mom!!
  
• Because so much of my legal work involves physical injury and death, I intensely audited an anatomy course at the Medical School of Wake Forest University and worked on a cadaver with two other medical students. Fascinating. I have since observed many autopsies and surgeries and took my oldest daughter to an autopsy at the Medical University of South Carolina two summers ago.
  
• I once actively owned and managed, while practicing law, half-interest in the Boston Red Sox Class A Farm Team in Winston-Salem. I had fallen in love with the BoSox while in school in Connecticut years before. Our star was a kid named Mike Greenwell who later took up Left Field underneath the famous ‘Green Monster’, replacing the last Triple Crown Winner major league baseball has celebrated, the great Carl “The Yaz” Yastremski.
  The best player in our Carolina League back then: Dwight “Doc” Gooden. He absolutely could and did bring the heat!
  
• I recently sang a duet in the Place Vendome Bar of the Ritz Hotel in Paris with Grace Jones of James Bond movie fame. We were accompanied by a marvelous piano player. Johnny Mercer’s ‘Moon River’, I think it was. My wife says I “need work.” Psst. Don’t tell. She’s right.
  
• For the life of me, I cannot properly or correctly pronounce the word “Coin”. It is an impossibility in my life. It always comes out sounding like “Cone”. If you want to see me squirm, try to get me to use it in a sentence. I will find a way to say anything but “Cone”.
  
• The first job I was ever offered out of law school was by the then rising giant in the Republican Party, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. I was to be a lowly but very busy Assistant Administrative Assistant staring work as a ‘Transportion Liason” (also known as “Driver”) at the Republican Convention in Kansas City when Helms was trying to help then ex-Governor of California Ronald Reagan knock off sitting incumbent President Gerald Ford. Go figure. Obviously, I went down a different path. No regrets.
  
• I will NOT go to a scary movie. I avoid them like the plague. They worry me. If you see me in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, I’ve either been drugged, abducted at gunpoint or I’m dead. Yet,  I’ll try cases, stick my head in Lion’s Mouth at trial and walk all sorts of tightropes without a net in trial. Again, Go figure.
  
• Hank Aaron is my all-time Sports Hero. Nothing Barry Bonds or these other later-day bulked-up so and so’s will ever touch his accomplishments, his grace, his skill and his personal kindness and goodness. I saw him hit his last home run in Atlanta on a cold, windy night. I am happy to say I have his autograph on a large photograph of his 715th  “Move Over Babe-Here comes Henry!” I got it from him personally. It is a double delight in my life that April 8th, the date of that great moment in sports, is also our wedding anniversary.
  
• Though I have traveled an awful lot in my life and been lucky enough to go to a lot of interesting places, I am also a “white knuckle” flier. When the pilot closes that cabin door, I get nervous. But, in the last few years, I’ve found ways to help me relax so I’m less of a worrier. I think it’s a “Loss of Control” thing with me.
  
• My all-time hero is Winston Churchill. I read and study just about anything I can find on him. He stood his ground when he wasn’t popular, when he was vilified. He early on recognized and understood the horrible threat that Hitler and Fascism were and his repeated, specific warnings fell on deaf until the firestorm came. He steadied and held England together and inspired the western world to stand and fight the Nazis. He really saved our world until help could arrive. He was smart, funny, kind, tough and talented. His writings are astonishing, his speeches even better and his paintings incredibly good. He was also a master bricklayer. He was a man for all ages, a Giant. I adore him.
  
• When I was younger, I used to get to visit with Aunt Ava, who would come to town and to our house to visit. She was beautiful, profane and quite a piano player. She was my sister-in-law’s aunt. When she walked in the room, heads turned. I used to sit on her piano bench and lighther cigarettes and refill her glass-It wasn’t water! Sometimes, she’d bring her younger friends with her. He was a good and a pretty fair singer. She’s gone now. He was Frank Sinatra, Jr. She was Ava Gardner.
  
• I have, since the fall of 1972, been a scout and handicapper for THE GOLD SHEET, the oldest national tout and sports information sheet in continuous existence, out of Beverly Hills, California. For many years, I was the Senior Atlantic Coast Conference Analyst in football and basketball. Last year, I cut back and have now taken on “emeritus” status. I’ve always found it fun and intriguing to weigh competing teams various strengths and weaknesses when compared to the betting line, the point spread, made decisions about same and then watched how it all turned out. Pretty close to the type of weighing and sifting and analysis and pondering I do on all my cases.
  
• I love to take my wife dancing on some weekends. Now, lots of time, we’re pretty worn out from all that we do during the week, and we spend a lot of time working in the yard or walking or grabbing a bite to eat out or just chasing the children around. But every couple of months, it’s time to take a few spins around a dance floor and cut a rug. I LOVE Latin music. Great fun.
  
• For all my glower and toughness, my family and others think, when you get right down to it, I am an old softy.

And five things everyone knows about me:

• I love my work.
• I love my family.
• I love my country.
• I have an enormous and sustaining faith in God.
• I love my Tar Heels!