Continued from Page 21
are better equipped to help minority
attorneys remedy these issues, and
better yet, to help the law firm as
a whole address these issues before
they begin.
So the good that we have in
place already – our diversity
and inclusion committees, our
mission statements, our targeted
scholarships – must be focused not
only on the shark bites, but on the
mosquito bites, as well. What are the
little problems that can aggregate
over time, go unaddressed, and
hurt our attorneys and our culture?
And what are the steps we can take
to make our firms more open, more
fair, and more aware of the culture
we are all striving to achieve?
There is no reason that
Columbus’s
legal
community
cannot be a national leader on
this front. The Columbus Bar’s
Minority
Clerkship
program
for “African American, Asian,
Hispanic and Native American
law students” is a wonderful
model; the Managing Partners’
Diversity Initiative is another; and
many affinity bar associations are
doing important work, such as at
APABA-CO and the John Mercer
Langston Bar Association. Our
community’s efforts must continue,
however, because the efforts are
working in at least one measurable
way: Between 2000 and 2011,
the participating law firms saw
an increase in minority partners
from 14 to 30, and in minority
associates from 31 to 42, and in
minority summer associates from
18 to 37. The progress is good but
insufficient as we continue to work
toward more open, more fair, and
more aware workplaces across the
city.
The end result will not just
be a better legal community in
which to work, for each and all
of us, but an improved work
product for
clients that
will benefit
from a wider
range of
perspectives
and
approaches
to applying
the law.
Michael Corey,
Bricker & Eckler
mcorey@bricker.com
22
Summer 2014 Columbus Bar Lawyers Quarterly
Nature, Privacy, Comradery
Keep Bringing Us Back
By The Honorable David E. Cain
Just the sound of certain words
can stir strong emotions. Their mere
mention can cause a person momentarily
to relive a time of peace or pain.
Immediate reactions can be fight or
flight. The speaker can innocently spur
the hearer’s heart to quiver, the knees to
shake. For me, the words simply name
a place: The Smoky Mountains.
Tens of thousands of grueling
footsteps, pounding chest and gasping
lungs, sore muscles and sleepless fatigue.
Those are the images that flash before
my eyes when someone says, “Smoky
Mountains.” But glorious sights and
smells, the privacy of the wilderness,
the challenges and the comradery keep
bringing us back, back to the backpack
trails. For my brother, Greg, and me,
this was the 27th year in a row that we
have done the “death march” – in the
Smokies or someplace like them – as it
came to be known in the early years,
the late 1980s.
More than 40 individuals have
joined us in one year or another – some
frequent fliers, some one-timers. The
hike has always been 20 to 30 miles
over a span of three or four days – in a
loop back to the starting place or down
a trail leading to a couple vehicles we
have left at the intended destination in
advance. We carried all our provisions
on our backs.
The last couple of years, we have
tried to have it an easier way. Pleasure
without pain. Sights without soreness.
Base-camping instead of backpacking.
Day hikes with day packs. Shed 30 or
40 pounds. Our excuse was that we
were breaking in a young one. Last year,
it also allowed our cousin, Stan Jones,
who has driven from St. Louis to join
us in 21 of the last 24 years, to bring
his friend, Steve Lowery, a lifelong nonsmoker who was in his last weeks of
terminal lung cancer. He couldn’t hike,
but he enjoyed the woods, the campfire,
the roasted brussel sprouts. It was one
of his last good memories, and right up
to the end (he died about three months
later) he talked about going on the next
one, Stan reported.
Last year’s campsite was on the
rim of the Linville River Gorge in the
northwest corner of North Carolina.
The vehicles were parked on a gravel
road about a quarter mile down a fairly
steep slope.
This year, we did “Cadillac camping”
– setting up huge tents near our
trucks and a privy – in the Elkmont
Campground operated by the U.S. Park
Service about seven miles southeast
of Gatlinburg in Tennessee. A short
drive gets you to the trailhead for Mt.
LaConte to the east or to Clingman’s
Dome to the southeast. Both brought
back raging memories of death marches
past.
Twenty years ago, we went up
LaConte on a Thursday, the first day of
an arduous 25-mile journey that would
get us back to our cars by Sunday
morning. The night before the hike
began, John Cochran, my brother-inlaw’s son-in-law’s brother, showed me
a hardened steel, curved knife so big
and nasty that I refused to even hold
it. The next day, he managed to get it
secured behind his pack. He also found
someplace to stash a quart of whiskey.
Not too long after he started using both
at the top of LaConte, he buried the tip
of the machete-type knife just off to the
side above his knee. Cut it to the quick.
So, he washed it with the whiskey
and wrapped it with a rag. “If it’s still
bleeding tomorrow night, I’ll have to
sew it up with fishing line. Had to do
that for a friend of mine after he fell
on some rocks in Joyce Kilmer. Hurts
like hell, but it gets the job done.”
Fortunately, the blood clotted despite a
12-mile hike the next day.
Car camping is much different. The
tent is large enough to allow sleeping
on a cot. You can stand up and slip on
your boots rather than crawling out of
a sleeping bag onto the cold wet ground
where you try to pull them on while in
a fetal position.
Water is always the number one
concern for a backpacker. In the old
days, we dipped it out of the streams
and rivers and either boiled it or added
iodine tablets which turned it brown
and foul tasting. Then came water
filtering systems that over the years
became smaller and less clumsy. With
car camping, you can just walk to the
nearest faucet and turn it on.
When one wakes to the sound of rain on the tent while
backpacking (not too uncommon since we always hike in
April) one leaps out of the sleeping bag and scurries about
trying to keep things dry. A car camper just turns over and
goes back to sleep.
Backpackers hoist all food items in waterproofed bags far
out on a high limb to protect their food – and bodies – from
bears and other creatures. (The Great Smoky Mountains
National Park has one of the largest populations of black
bears as any similar sized area in North America.) Car
campers just throw the food into their cars.
After hundreds of hours of sitting around campfires and
searching for the meaning of life, about all we have decided
is that we were in the right setting to discuss such issues.
“I’ve had more spiritual experiences in the mountains than
in church,” Jim DeLoatch commented. Jim actually started
hiking with my brother before I did and has made it for nearly
all our trips. He recently retired from the North Carolina
parole authority and bought a house in the mountains near
Ashville.
The campfire chatter also usually involves repeating some
of our backpack lore, adventure stories that likely resulted
from bad judgment, bad weather or bad maps. Like our
first day of our first hike. Our late brother-in-law, David
Shooter, Greg and I attacked the Linville River Gorge from
the opposite side and down river from where we camped last
year. Judge Michael Holbrook, then a practicing attorney,
heard me discussing the gorge, told me he was familiar with
the area and advised me to carry a big stick to throw snakes
off the trail. With such a stick in hand and what seemed like
a 100 pounds on my back, we started out looking from the
head of a primitive trail that we never did find. Scarcely an
hour into the gorge and we were trapped in brush so thick
we had to crawl. The backpack and the stick were dragging
behind me. Had I seen a snake, I could have only perhaps
spit on it.
The five-mile, 2500-foot hike up Mt. LaConte (second
highest point in the Smokies) didn’t seem any easier than 20
years ago, even without the backpack. But the overlooks are
still spectacular (probably the best in the Smokies) except
they were dimmed by the highly overcast day this time
around.
Clingman’s Dome is accessible by a snaking highway with
numerous pull offs for sight- seeing and is a popular tourist
attraction. An observation tower – with a circling ramp for
an easy climb – is at the tippy top of the dome and boasts
of being the highest point in all the Smokies (a total of 6643
feet above sea level).
The dome still had patches of ice and snow, but lower trails
were already colorful with patches of the big- blossomed
white and yellow trilliums, tiny thyme-leaved bluets, purple
phlox, and purple and yellow violets.
Rounding out the group this year were my son-in-law,
Kenny Mullins of Columbus; my sister-in-law’s son-in-law,
Michael Bailey, and his 8-year-old son, Jackson, of Akron;
Michael’s friend, Paul Crilley of Erie, Pa.; and Greg’s son,
Nick, whose first of many hikes was in 1994 when he was
nine years old. My grandson, Lincoln Mullins, 14, (a regular
since he was seven years old) brought his friend, Skye Payne,
also 14. Those two usually had a plan: “We’re hiking on up
till we get a (cell phone) signal.”
We decided we will definitely backpack (no car camping)
again next year. And it is not just the guilt feelings, the need
for more privacy or a double dare. At this point, it’s tradition.
So far, it has served as an “acid test” for future sons in law.
Now, it’s a right of passage for their offspring. War stories
have become folklore and painful hours have become sweet
memories.
The Honorable David E. Cain,
Franklin County Common Pleas Court
David_Cain@fccourts.org
Summer 2014 Columbus Bar Lawyers Quarterly
23