December 15, 2003 News and Notes
News anf Notes Thomas M. Messana of Ruden, McClosky, Smith, Schuster & Russell, P.A., recently moderated a panel at the American Bar Association’s Business Law meeting in San Diego on “Bankruptcy Crimes.” This meeting was held in conjunction with the 77th Annual National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges. Mark Eiglarsh of Robbins, Tunkey, Ross, Amsel, Raben, Waxman & Eiglarsh, P.A., Miami, recently received the Millenium Movers “Shaker Award,” in recognition of his work over the past decade with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and other children’s charities. He also recently spoke to the speech and debate class at John F. Kennedy Middle School in North Miami Beach. Glen J. Torcivia of the Law Office of Glen J. Torcivia and Associates, P.A. has recently been appointed the city attorney for the City of Belle Glade. David J. Lillesand of Lillesand & Associates, P.A., in Miami recently made multiple presentations at Stetson University College of Law two-day seminar on Special Needs Trusts. He spoke on the Basic Eligibility Rules of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for attorneys new to special needs trust planning, on individual case law and legislative SSI changes to advanced attorneys, and participated in an extended panel presentation at the Special Needs Trust V advanced seminar. William P. Sklar of Foley & Lardner’s West Palm Beach office was recently appointed co-chair of Governor Jeb Bush’s Homeowners’ Association Task Force, that work’s to improve the relationships between homeowners’ associations and their members. Matt Firestone of Pohl & Short, P.A., in Winter Park, recently participated in a panel discussion of homeowner association issues at a meeting of the Orange County Homeowners’ Association Alliance. Sylvan “Sonny” Holtzman of Holtzman Equels was elected to a newly created Transportation and Expressway Authority Members of Florida directorship at a recent joint meeting of TEAMFL and the Florida Transportation Commission in Jacksonville. Joanne S. Richards of Stoll, Keenon & Park, LLP, recently spoke at the University of Kentucky on the topic “Understanding and Protecting Biotech Intellectual Property,” in Lexington, Kentucky. Brian L. Tannebaum of Tannebaum, Planas & Weiss has been appointed to serve a one-year term on the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce Pillar Trustee Board of Directors. Charles J. Kovaleski, president, Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund, Inc., Orlando, has been elected president of the Board of Governors for the American Land Title Association, which represents title insurance companies and their agents nationwide. Nancy J. Van Sant of Sacher, Zelman, Van Sant, Paul, Beiley, Hartman, Rolnick & Waldman, P.A., Miami, has been elected vice-chair of the Judicial Nominating Committee for the Third District Court of Appeal. Carlton Fields has added eight new associates to its Tampa office in various practice areas. The eight new associates are Lori Baggett, Kristy Parker Brundage, Nicole C. Kibert, Suzette Marteny, Mac Richard McCoy, Kenya J. Reddy, Shuman Sohrn, and David J. Walz. Baggett joins the labor, employment, and immigration practice group. Kibert joins the real estate and mortgage financing practice group. Marteny joins the intellectual property and technology practice group.McCoy joins the litigation and dispute resolution practice group. Parker Brundage joins the construction practice group. Reddy joins the antitrust and trade regulation practice group. Sohrn joins the bankruptcy and creditors’ right practice group, and Walz joins the litigation and dispute resolution practice group David W. Singer of Hollywood was recently elected treasurer of the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center Alumni Association Board of Directors. Martin E. Doyle of counsel with Sacher, Zelman, Van Sant, Paul, Beiley, Hartman, Rolnick & Waldman, P.A., recently addressed the issues and legalities surrounding merger and acquisition business in the state at a Miami seminar titled “Mergers & Acquisitions in Florida: The Art of Doing Deals.” Wm. Andrew Haggard of Haggard, Parks, Haggard & Bologna, Coral Gables, was recently appointed to serve as chair of the Student Affairs and Athletics Committee of the Florida State University Board of Trustees. Haggard also served as a guest speaker at a recent Florida State University forum where he addressed the student body with a presentation titled, “I’m a Trial Lawyer and Damn Proud of It.” Also, the firm’s Daniel D. Dolan II, recently served as co-chair of the Dade County Trial Lawyers Association’s Masters of the Courtroom seminar at the University of Miami School of Law and Michael Andrew Haggard served as a panelist at the event, discussing professionalism and ethics. Doris Goldstein of Jacksonville wrote an article on “New Urbanism” featured on the cover of the November/December issue of the ABA magazine Probate and Property. Dorothy Clay Sims of Sims, Amat, Stakenborg & Henry, P.A., Gainesville and Ocala, recently published an article titled “Cross Examining the Neuropsychological Witness” on behalf of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Edward Siegel of Jacksonville has had 10 of his short stories for children included in a new series of workbooks — Focus on Reading Strategies — for middle level schools. Gerald T. Buhr of Tampa spoke on water rights and consumption management at the Water: Clearly Our Most Vital Resource seminar for water management district and the Department of Environmental Protection sponsored by the Ocala-Marion County Chamber of Commerce. Enola Brown of Enola Brown, P.A., in Tampa recently spoke on Environmental Issues in Real Estate Transactions at the NBI seminar, An Advanced Look at Florida Real Estate Law. Frank Gassler of Fowler White Boggs Banker in Tampa was named chair of the Toxic Tort and Environmental Law Section by the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel. Greg Snell, of Rice Rose & Snell in Daytona Beach, has been named chair of the Commerical law Committee of the Florida Defense Lawyers Association. Eugene G. Beckham of Beckham & Beckham, P.A., in Miami, was named 2003-04 chair of the ABA Section Officer Conference Membership Committee, liaison between the committee and the ABA standing Committee On Membership and Marketing, and membership chair of the Trial Tort and Insurance Practice Section. Jo Ellen Silberstein of Sarasota is having her art displayed at the Provenance Gallery in Sarasota. The show, which runs until December 31, is titled, Law & Art, the Artwork of Jo Ellen Silberstein. Barry Nelson, of Nelson & Levine in North Miami Beach, spoke on Asset Protection and Estate Planning Using Family Limited Partnerships at the Bar’s Tax Section Fall Meeting in Tampa. Karen Stedronsky, Bill Guthrie, and Dan Bachrach of Baker & Hostetler, L.L.P., in Orlando wrote chapters for The Florida Bar’s Third Edition of Florida Condominium Law and Practice. Michael J. McNerney, of Brinkley, McNerney, Morgan, Solomon & Tatum, L.L.P., in Ft. Lauderdale, has been elected chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of Florida College of Law. McNerney has served on the board for nine years. Leonard E. Schulte, who through most of the 1990s was the lead staff person for property and casualty insurance issues in the Florida House of Representatives, and most recently served as staff director of the House Insurance Committee, has joined the Tallahassee office of Foley & Lardner as a public affairs advisor and member of the firm’s Public Affairs Practice Group. Schulte works primarily in the areas of legislative analysis, advocacy, and drafting. Theodore (Ted) Leopold of Ricci & Leopold in West Palm Beach has recevied the 2003 Judge Learned Hand Award from the American Jewish Committee in recognition of his lifelong commitment to the legal profession and civic contributions. December 15, 2003 Regular News December 15, 2003 News and Notes
I’d never seen him do that before. He stood stock-still, as though he were defending something.Dad has never broadcast his military service, but around that time he confessed – in a long conversation on Interstate 20 toward New Orleans – that he felt people like him were “under-appreciated,” that they were being “pushed out,” their service to the nation taken for granted.We were on the way to meet up with my brother for a father-son fishing trip. Dad was driving a black Hyundai with peach-colored Georgia plates mounted in a frame that read “Vietnam Veteran.” That was new. My dad has never asked to be thought of as a hero, but somewhere in that burgeoning period of conspicuous militarism, he found the room to do something he’d never done before: publicly identify himself as a veteran, and bear on his license plate and on his person the sometimes wordless emblems of military service.When I was a boy, Dad’s Army service uniform hung in a closet in my brother’s room, along with his combat boots and black felt cavalry hat with the captain’s bars pinned on the front. Categories: Editorial, OpinionWhen I attended my first college football game in Athens, Georgia, in 1981, it was a relatively spartan affair by today’s standards.As I remember it, there were few or none of the militaristic flourishes that accompany sporting events nowadays.We sang the national anthem to ordinary fanfare, palm to left breast, but there were no F-15 flyovers, no surprise halftime reunions between returning soldiers and their gobsmacked children, no public-service announcements reminding us to support our troops. A few years ago, I returned to Athens with two of my boys and my father.When the national anthem began playing over the PA, my father turned toward the gigantic high-definition flag on the enormous new video display and stood at full attention, his right hand up to his eyebrow, saluting in the way he’d been taught. I never touched the dress uniform, but I used the hat for dress-up and possibly for one of the “Son of Rambo” home videos my brother and I shot on the VHS handheld.Dad seemed indifferent to the existence of the mementos of his Army service.If he wasn’t, he never said anything.But we didn’t bother to find out, either, because the subject of Vietnam was a no-fly zone.Dad simply didn’t talk about it, and he must have had his reasons. My father volunteered for a controversial war; he served a one-year tour because he chose to.Whenever I meet an Army solider or veteran, I tell them that my dad was a Huey helicopter pilot in the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967. I watch as their jaws slacken and their eyebrows pinch slightly. They often say the same thing. “Whoa.” I had heard from my brother rumors that Dad had walked out of “Apocalypse Now,” but I have never heard why or if it’s even true.Maybe he saw in Robert Duvall’s character – like my father, an officer in the First Cav, in the same felt hat that sat in my brother’s closet – too much of himself, or too little.We saw “Platoon” together when it played in Atlanta, but we didn’t talk about it after it was over. Once, at a dinner with my wife, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law, Dad volunteered a story about a training flight on a Huey while he was an instructor at flight school at Fort Rucker in Alabama.The engine blew a hole in the side of the combustion chamber, and Dad managed to land the Huey in a peanut field.While I don’t recall the details with the precision I wish I did, I remember it for one reason: My brother gently hushed the conversation at our end of the table. Dad was telling a story from his Army days, and that never happened.Dad volunteered for Vietnam, but he has never once volunteered to talk about it. The Fort Rucker story is as close as I think I’ve ever come to hearing one. The whole experience is like a blacked-out, redacted portion of my father’s personal history as it has been handed down to us.My father didn’t take a single hit during his year in Vietnam, but on either side are tales of wreckage: the damaged Huey in Alabama, and the story about how his helicopter, piloted by someone else, was shot down while Dad was on R&R not long before he returned to the United States to marry Mom. When Mom texted me a couple of months ago to tell me about the new Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War, I was attempting, unsuccessfully, to put one of my children to sleep. “It’s on now,” she said. Watching it then was out of the question, a casualty of multiple-child-induced bedtime fatigue. “Worth a watch,” she followed up. “Makes you realize what your Dad went through.”I told her that I would watch it as soon as I had the chance. But what I meant was, I wish he would tell me about it himself.And when the boys were finally asleep, the dust of my mind blown away like the circle of ground beneath a landing Huey, I realized what I actually meant but did not have the guts to say: I wish I had the courage to ask. More from The Daily Gazette:EDITORIAL: Thruway tax unfair to working motoristsFoss: Should main downtown branch of the Schenectady County Public Library reopen?EDITORIAL: Beware of voter intimidationEDITORIAL: Find a way to get family members into nursing homesEDITORIAL: Urgent: Today is the last day to complete the census It makes me proud that my dad is considered a badass by active-duty soldiers who have seen hells of their own – maybe even a slightly crazy kind of badass, who put his life in the line of fire flying into hot zones in Southeast Asia.It’s a vicarious pride, and I take it with some measure of guilt:It’s not my own, and at 46 I know that I will never have to fight in a war the way my dad chose to do.Maybe I tell that to soldiers to establish a tenuous connection with people who have given their lives over to demands that will never be made of me.Maybe I tell it to make myself seem more courageous than I really am, as if somehow some of my father’s courage passed down to me.But at times I feel as if I have as much business telling that story as I did putting on Dad’s flight jacket for a home movie, bearing the accoutrements of courage and military service that I did not earn.It may also be an attempt to solicit from strangers some iota of information on a subject about which my father has chosen to remain mostly silent.
Ghana and Deportivo Alaves midfielder Mubarak Wakaso believes how his fellow team mates in the national team conduct themselves off the pitch will be key to ending Ghana’s Afcon drought.In the past, players have been reported to indulge in actions that have derailed the focus of the team.These activities vary from confrontations with management of the team over bonuses as well as disagreements over personnel selections.The Black Stars have managed an appearance in the finals and semifinals in the last two editions of the competition.According to Wakaso the team must exhibit a different level of maturity in the upcoming tournament in Egypt to accomplish what they haven’t in the past.“Automatically we have to be under pressure because for the past three Afcons we always make it to the semi-final but yet we don’t win it.“We always have it mind to come back with the trophy but it hasn’t happened.“I think as a player we need to sit down and put things in order before we move to this particular tournament.“The problem remains how we will manage ourselves outside the pitch before we go on to play,” he told online outlet Football made in Ghana.The Black Stars will battle it out in Group F with defending Champions Cameroon,Benin and Guinea-Bissau.