GRIT - Stories of Resilience

Good morning, we are pausing new podcasts for two weeks until a new one on Monday, June 23. Meanwhile have a great couple of weeks. Jim

Dick Horgan wanted to come east, away from his home state of California, so he received a four-year scholarship to Yale, and never looked back. A lawyer with a large firm in Manhattan, handling major civil cases in federal courts, he cashed in when he turned 50, and with his wife, moved to the coastal city of Wilmington, North Carolina, reinvented his life and career, practicing estate law and tea...

I love telling stories. I love to watch peoples' faces as I tell one, making sure not to go on too long, but to keep their attention to the end. I went to the small town of Plymouth this week, just off the highway on the way to the Outer Banks and met with a number of Social Workers for the county's Department of Social Services. They see the misfortunes that afflict young people every single day...

Dr., Ramesh Krishnaraj, a graduate of UNC Medical School with a Master's Degree in Public Health from UNC talks about vaccinations, addictions, depression and his own crisis of alcoholism in a wide-ranging conversation about wellness and getting better. He believes in a holistic approach to practicing medicine, looking at the whole person. He believes in wellness, saying "not being sick d...

Richard Tevere had just turned 23, when about 3:50 am, February 17, 1970, as a Ft. Bragg MP, he opened the back screen door and walked into the bedroom where he saw a woman and a man lying on the floor. He walked down a lit hallway and looked into two small bedrooms, then went further inside to the living room and kitchen. He was the first person inside. He was the first witness to testify in the...

If you were in trouble in the last 45 years in Raleigh, North Carolina or points east, and you had Rick Gammon as your lawyer, you knew you had one of the best. From a traffic case in District Court to a capital case of murder in Superior Court, from serving as co-counsel in the prosecution of a sitting Lt. Governor to defending a former Governor, Rick has treated them all the same. Rick is also a...

Dana Stevens - a highly successful screenwriter of feature motion pictures and television. The Woman King starring Viola Davis The City of Angels starring Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan Safe Haven from the book by Nicholas Sparks For the Love of the Game - Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston Reckless - a legal drama for CBS In the works - 28 Summers from the book by Elin Hilderbrand Back by popular reques...

Why would you represent a guilty client? How can you represent someone charged with murder in the first degree? How can you be currently representing ten such people? Why would you do that? I asked Dick McNeil, a former US Marine, who can tell you the number of months and days he served in Viet Nam, those very questions. His answers were simple and direct. He once tried a capital case three times....

What do you do when you are drinking so much that you black out? What do you do when, as result of alcoholism, your life is spiraling out of control? Geoff Hulse, with the loving support of his wife and law partners, went to a facility in Atlanta for ninety plus days where he began the road back to sobriety and away from the illness of alcoholism. It has now been over sixteen years since that ride...

For more than three weeks they came, every night, lines out the door, waiting hours to get a stool at the oyster bar or a table in the dining room or lounge. Everyone seemed to want one last visit, one last meal, one last memory. For some of us, we came back the final night, Sunday, March 30 to say hello to friends of some time ago, and then too quickly say goodbye once again. It was bittersweet....

The story of the 42nd Street Oyster Bar as you have never heard it before...how it came to be what it became. From its creation in 1987 by Thad Eure, Jr., and Brad Hurley until its doors close on Sunday, March 30. If you have ever been there, even once, or thought about going there, you do not want to miss this story.

42nd Street Oyster Bar - New Podcast coming Monday, March 31 38 years - a look back Conversations and pictures with wait staff and management

A look back to my times at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar in Raleigh, first as a loyal and regular customer, then as a host and finally for some time a waiter. 42nd Street is where I learned to start over. It is where I got my life back. A journey to the past. Thanks for the memories!

Glenn Blackburn was an 18-year-old college freshman in April, 1960, when he started the African Student Program at Wake Forest. His goal was to bring an African student to the United States and present him to the Board of Trustees, saying he wants to become a student. Will you accept him? It took two years, and shortly after that, on behalf of the College Lecture Series, he was having dinner with...

The Fatal Vision Podcast with James McGinniss, son of Joe McGinniss and Billy Glidden is a multi-episode podcast on the true crime classic and bestselling Fatal Vision, which became the forerunner of the NBC mini- series by the same name. James and Billy take a journey through the book, reading parts of it at times and talking about Joe's writing at other places. Episode 12 is when they interview...

It is October 1962, and the civil rights struggle is in its early hours. Wake Forest College (not yet a university} joins the struggle and in the spring of 1962, votes to integrate the school. It is the first private school of higher education in the South to do so. Ed Reynold, from Ghana, starts classes in September 1962, and a month later Martin Luther King comes for dinner and speaks on campus...

Fifty - Five years ago today, February 17, 1970, Colette, Kimberly and Kristen MacDonald lost their lives in their home, brutally beaten and stabbed. Not until the summer of 1979 did a trial bring someone to justice. Jeffrey MacDonald, Colette's husband and the father of the two young girls, his daughters, was found guilty of killing all three. It was a long trial, the longest Federal criminal pro...

Sliding doors we all go through lead us in different directions many times in our lives. The decisions and choices of friends, partners, careers, places we live often determine what path we will take as we go through life. Among many such choices, two stand out for me. One is joining the United States Attorney's office, and the other is starting this podcast. In two months, April 11 I will hav...

It was likely a Saturday morning as I sat on the top bunk of my bed in the dorm that had, for a brief time, become my home, that the idea first came to me. I would write about this...all of it. I would leave nothing out. Robert Frost is right..."the shortest way out is almost always through". It was also the way, perhaps the only way, that I would find my voice once again.

How can climate change be happening and global warming be real, if the United States has been experiencing one of our coldest months in a long time with record snowfalls in some states? What if the fires in California are happening more frequently, with greater severity, or the storms and hurricanes in the South and Midwest are greater in number and intensity? Is this the way it always has been, a...

If you were a teenager in the winter months of 1961, you might remember the hit movie of that time, "Where the Boys Are". The opening scenes are a cold snowy day on an upper Midwest college campus, as friends are planning their escape to the sun of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. As weather reports are now filled with stories of extreme cold, arctic air, and the possibility of snow throughout m...

Serendipity is often referred to as something happening by accident or circumstance in your life that is happy or fortunate. The law of Serendipity is referred to as "Lady Luck favors one who tries". This definition has much more promise for me. Years ago, waiting tables at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar led to my writing a book Flame-Out, that led to my speaking to people everywhere in North Carolina...

On July 19, 1994, twelve friends gathered for an early morning breakfast on the National Mall in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. On the menu that day were fresh strawberries, salmon, oysters on the half shell, crepes, dancing and much laughter and celebration. A photographer from the Washington Post was nearby and took a photograph of them sitting at a long table with candelabra, place setting...

They live their lives one day at a time. There are still more good days than bad. They look forward to the future, but just underneath, there is some anxiety and worry. Yet through it all, they smile and are hopeful. They laugh and plan for the future. Christmas has come early for me this year. In lots of places these last weeks, I have visited with friends, some old, some new. These are their sto...

"What is it that you want?" "I want to be happy." "What does that mean to you? What will make you happy?" "I'm not sure. But I will know it when I see it." I don't think happiness works that way. I don't think it is a state of being. Rather, I believe it is a state of doing. It is in doing things that make us happier. We have everything within us to make us happier, right now...today. We just have...