August
It’s been a couple of years since my three youngest daughters — Mary, Christine, and Teresa — stopped describing boys to me in the way they had always described them. Before they stopped, whenever they talked about a new boy they had met and liked, they focused on how nice he was. They would say, “He’s such a nice guy. You can’t help but like him.”
Last week, I wrote about how I was able to convince a prosecuting attorney to agree to reduce a felony charge to a misdemeanor for a client who had been accused of committing a serious crime. The attorney accused me of being a whiner when I refused to stop pushing him to work with me. In the end, I got what I wanted; he agreed to reduce the charge.
A recent event triggered my memory of a case I was involved in more than 20 years ago. The case involved a man who had been charged with a serious crime. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call him “Ray.” Ray was arrested in Peoria and charged with committing a felony. Prior to the initial hearing in his case, he hired me to represent him.
Shortly after I opened my law practice in January 1983, I was contacted by a pro-life activist who had been arrested at the local abortion clinic. After his arrest, a criminal case was filed against him charging him with criminal trespass to property. I agreed to represent him and was able to get the case dismissed because, at the time of his arrest, he was standing on a public sidewalk near the clinic.
Have you ever heard of Jean Nidetch? You may not recognize the name, but you would immediately recognize the name of the business she started in the 1960s and built into a global organization. I recently read that Jean had died. The legacy that she left was the business she started and grew into a worldwide organization — Weight Watchers International.