Remembering Al 2

             Here are the remarks that I was privileged to make at Al Adams' Memorial Service on April 9, 2017.  I am grateful to Al's family for asking me to participate alongside Charles Meeker, Dan Blue Jr., Betsy Buford and Tom Eichenberger. 

            I am humbled and honored to have been asked to share some memories of Al today; after all memories are what a memorial service is all about.  The ones I have chosen are not about the weary and ill Al of recent times.  Rather, they are of the vigorous and exuberant Al Adams alongside whom I was privileged to practice law.

            In the interest of time, I have eliminated all of the anecdotes that came to mind during the preparation of these remarks.  I hope they may kindle stories of your own; if so, go home,  pour yourself a drink, and tell them to each other.

            I learned a lot from Al.   For example, he taught me that when you go to court, you should always be respectful of the judge, even if he or she rules against you, and that you should always introduce yourself to the courtroom clerk, the bailiff and the court reporter and thank them for their service.

            Al also taught me that a proper refrigerator always had in it a bottle of gin and a jar of Zatarain’s creole mustard.

            Most of all, Al taught me although law is a serious business, life need not be.

            Frankly, I don’t remember many details, and in some cases even the outcomes, of the many legal cases that Al and I worked on together.  What I DO remember is the fun we had, especially when our work took us to New York and other places where Al could indulge two of his great passions: good food and grand opera.

            Al loved to eat.  His appetite was prodigious, his tastes in food were eclectic and ecumenical, and he seemed to know the best places to eat in every city and town in the country, from Southport to San Francisco.  The best thing about eating with him was the palpable and infectious enjoyment that he displayed, regardless of whether we were dining  at a fancy New York restaurant or having lunch at Green’s Garner Grill.  For Al, every meal was an event. 

            Some of Al’s gusto for food probably was attributable to the fact that he liked to preface a meal with a martini (or two).  He made me the first one I had ever had, straight up with a twist, which is how I like them to this day.

            Al enjoyed feeding others as much as he enjoyed feeding himself.   He loved hosting his annual pre-Christmas party, which drew dozens (sometimes hundreds) of friends to stand outside in the cold and eat steamed or raw oysters and Smithfield ham on saltine crackers topped with his famous rémoulade sauce.   He also loved mixing Bloody Marys, cranking out oyster omelets, and otherwise acting as the impresario of the Sunday brunch at Betty’s Emerald Isle beach house that was, for most of us,  the highlight of our annual firm retreats.

            As Betsy noted, Al also loved the opera, a fascination that he attributed to his mother.   As a relatively young widow who supported herself and him on her salary as a “Red Cross lady,” she didn’t have the wherewithal or the opportunity to attend the opera, but every Saturday afternoon during the season she would tune the radio to Texaco’s broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s matinee performance, filling her house and his head with music that he grew to love.   If we were traveling to New York on business, he invariably would consult the Met’s calendar before scheduling client meetings and depositions.  He was mesmerized by every performance from the moments the lights went up until the curtain descended on the dying or dead hero or heroine.  Italian opera was his favorite.  A well-rendered Puccini aria like “Un bel di” could practically lift him out of his seat, and could engender an elbow in his companion’s ribs.  They call it “grand opera,” he said, “because it really is grand.” 

            Al was particularly proud of the fact that we were in the house for a performance of “Aida” on the night that Jimmy Carter became the first, and to date the only, sitting president to attend a performance at the Met.  Al said, “I can’t imagine a Republican president doing something like that.”

            Food and the opera were only two of the things Al loved.

            Above all, of course, he loved his Betty.  In fact, he adored her, and her sudden and unexpected death left him bereft.

            He loved his family and gloried in his children, step-children and grandchildren.

            He loved his friends, including everyone who is here today and the many others who are no longer with us.

            He loved his country.  He was proud of his Navy service, and when he arrived at his and Betty’s beach house for the weekend the first thing he did was raise the American flag.

            He loved his State, which he served so well, and flew its flag, too.

            Al loved his university.  I don’t recall ever hearing him refer to a Carolina football or basketball team as anything except his “beloved Tar Heels.”  One of his great heroes was UNC president Frank Porter Graham, with whom he shared the quaint notion that the Sermon on the Mount was a statement of sound social policy.

            He loved Cameron Park, and through the Cameron Park Association, which he created, he worked tirelessly to rid it of the rooming houses and rental properties that had crept in, bringing with them the threat of neighborhood blight. 

            He loved his house on Woodburn road and enjoyed recounting its history.  When he and Betty reluctantly decided to downsize, he sold the house to Joyce Fitzpatrick and Jay Stewart on the condition that he had veto power over any of their political yard signs.  (A right that he exercised only once.)  At the closing, he cried.

            He loved sailing.  Of all my many happy times we spent together, none was happier than my week-long sailing trip to the Virgin Islands in 1988 with Al, Betty and the late Heman Clark.

            The point is that Al simply loved life.  Indeed, he loved it so fully, and lived it so ebulliently, there are too many such memories to recall or recount at one sitting, or even in one day.   He himself once summed it up perfectly as we sat on his porch drinking our martinis.  “I have,” he said, “the best time of anyone I know.” 

            Indeed he did.  And because he did, those of us who were fortunate enough to be his friends and neighbors and colleagues had a great time, too.

Remembering Al

            I was filling my car’s gas tank on Friday night when my iPhone alerted me to an incoming text from my friend Joyce Fitzpatrick.  Her message, which was accompanied by an emoticon shedding a tear, simply said “Al Adams just died.”   Within seconds a second text conveyed the same sad news.  That one was from Tina, Al’s faithful and gregarious aide whose diligent care allowed him to stay at home as his health declined.

            I’ve thought a lot about Al since then, and although my thoughts understandably are tinged with sadness over his passing, most of them have been happy thoughts, because from the day I met Al until the last time I saw him, being with him always made me happy.

            I met Al in February, 1973 when I reported to Suite 1500 in the old BB&T building to begin practicing law with Sanford, Cannon, Adams & McCullough.  I had just been released from the U.S. Navy after four years on active duty.   Marilyn and I were new to Raleigh; in fact, she was new to North Carolina.  We had a brand new baby, a brand new Ford Pinto, and an apartment sparsely furnished with a few pieces of rental furniture.   Al had not been around when I had interviewed with the firm, but in what I later learned was a typical gesture,  he immediately took me to his Cameron Park house to ramble about in the attic and borrow a spare dresser and several other items.

            I determined early on that the law firm had hired me without having any clear idea about what I was supposed to do, so I began making the rounds of the partners’ offices looking for assignments.  In Al’s case an “assignment” took the form of his rummaging through the files stacked on his desk, handing me one, and saying something like “maybe you can figure out what to do about this.”  I quickly learned that in most instances (but not all) he already had figured out what to do, and that his open-ended methodology and lack of instruction was just his way of measuring my skill and assessing my judgment.  He must have been satisfied, because we worked together closely for the next 15 years without so much as a single cross word.

            Frankly, I don’t remember many details, and in some cases even the outcomes, of the many legal cases that Al and I worked on together.  What I DO remember is the fun we had, especially when our work took us to New York and other places where we could indulge two of Al’s great passions: good food and grand opera.[1]

            Al’s appetite was prodigious, his tastes in food were eclectic and ecumenical, and he seemed to know the best places to eat in every city and town in the country, from Norfolk to New Orleans to New York.  The best thing about eating with him was the palpable and infectious enjoyment that he displayed, regardless of whether he was dining  at  Locke-Ober or having lunch at Green’s Garner Grill.  For Al, every meal was an event.

            He was especially fond of seafood, particularly oysters.  In addition to the Grand Central Oyster Bar, where he inevitably ordered the oyster pan roast, his New York favorites included Gage & Tollner, a seafood restaurant on Fulton Street in Brooklyn that had been in business since 1879.  It was located in a building listed in the National Register of Historic Places where the replacement of the original gaslights with electric bulbs was the only obvious concession to modernity.   In the 1980s it was not always easy to persuade a cab driver to take you there from Manhattan, but the chef was the fabled Edna Lewis and the waiters, who wore military-style chevrons on their sleeves reflecting their years of service, were ageing black men from Goldsboro and other  Eastern North Carolina locales.  Al’s favorite dish, an appetizer, was baked clam bellies on toast, an affectation he shared with legendary New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin.     

                Al enjoyed feeding others as much as he enjoyed feeding himself.   He loved hosting his annual pre-Christmas party, which drew dozens of friends to stand outside in the cold and eat steamed or raw oysters and Smithfield ham on saltine crackers topped with his famous rémoulade sauce, the special ingredient of which was Zatarain’s creole mustard.   He also loved mixing Bloody Marys, cranking out oyster omelets, and otherwise acting as the impresario of the Sunday brunch at his Emerald Isle beach house that traditionally marked the conclusion (and, for most of us, the clear highlight) of our annual firm retreats.

            Somewhere along here I probably should mention that some of Al’s gusto for food probably was attributable to the fact that he liked to preface a meal with a martini (or two).  He believed that the only indispensable ingredient of a true martini was gin, and that it should be kept in the freezer or refrigerator.  He made me the first one I had ever had, straight up with a twist, which is how I like them to this day.

            Al also loved the opera.  If we were traveling to New York on business, he invariably would consult the Metropolitan Opera calendar before scheduling client meetings and depositions.  Although he often said that the plots of most operas could be the basis of a country and western song, he was mesmerized by every performance from the moments the lights went up until the curtain closed on the dying or dead hero or heroine.  Italian opera was his favorite.  A well-rendered Puccini aria could practically lift him out of his seat.

            Al attributed his love of opera to his mother.   He explained that as a relatively young widow who supported herself and him on her salary as a “Red Cross lady,” she didn’t have the wherewithal or the opportunity to attend the opera, but every Saturday afternoon during the season she would tune the radio to Texaco’s broadcast of the Met’s matinee performance, filling her house and his head with music that he grew to love.   In the mid-1950s, After Al had graduated from UNC and was serving in the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes Training Center outside Chicago, he took a weekend pass and went into the city.  While he was walking around gazing at the Wrigley Building, Soldier Field and other famous sights, he found himself in front of the Chicago Lyric Opera, where the evening’s offering was Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman.”  He had never attended an opera performance.  He went up to the box office and asked if any tickets were available.  There were, and because he was in uniform, the price was cheap (Al remembered that it was around $10), so he paid and went in.   As soon as the overture began and the curtain went up, he was enthralled.  “It was,” he said, “even more magical than I had imagined.  I loved everything about it: the singing, the sets, the costumes — everything.  I was hooked.  That was when I realized that they call it ‘grand opera’ because it really is grand.”

            Of the many opera performances that we attended together, the one that occurred on December 5, 1978 is particularly memorable.  After working in Boston for a couple of days Al and I took the shuttle to New York, where we had depositions scheduled the next day.  Al had the cab driver drop me and our luggage at our hotel while he went on to Lincoln Center to see if there were any “turn-in” tickets available for that evening’s sold-out performance of “Aida.”  About an hour later I opened my door to a knock to find Al, his face wreathed in glee, holding up two tickets in the dead center of the orchestra section.  “I got great seats,” he said, “but there must be something going on at Lincoln Center, because they said we need to be seated at least 10 minutes before the curtain.  We’ll have time for a drink, but we will have to have a late dinner.”

            We arrived at the opera house to find that the NYPD had deployed their familiar blue sawhorse barriers to set up a check point outside the entrance, and when we had settled into our seats the house was abuzz with rumor and speculation.  Just before the lights were due to go up, an announcement said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the President of the United States and Mrs. Carter, Governor Carey and Mrs. Carey, and former mayor Beame and Mrs. Beame.”  Everyone turned to face the parterre to see Jimmy Carter, in black tie, waving from the front row.  Needless to say, Al was ecstatic.

             According to Alistair Cooke, the famous BBC reporter, that night was the first and only time that a sitting President had attended a performance at the Met.  As far as I can ascertain, no sitting President has done so subsequently.

            I could go on, because writing this has evoked even more happy memories, such as my 1988 Virgin Islands sailing trip with Al, Betty and Heman Clark, but the point is that because Al loved life so much, and lived it so ebulliently, there are simply too many such memories to recall or recount at one sitting.   He himself summed it up perfectly.  “I have,” he said, “the best time of anyone I know.”  Indeed he did.  And because he did, those of us who were fortunate enough to be his friends had a great time, too.

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[1]           Al’s other great passion, of course, was politics — a topic that I will largely leave to others.   He had run for the state senate in 1972 but lost in the Republican sweep that propelled Jesse Helms into the U.S. Senate and Jim Holshouser into the Governor’s Mansion.   In 1974 he made a successful run for the N.C. House of Representatives, where he would serve five terms.  In his very first term he teamed with fellow members of Wake County’s legislative delegation Ruth Cook, Bill Creech, Bob Farmer, Joe Johnson and Wade Smith  to pass legislation merging the Wake County and Raleigh public schools.  For the next ten years he rose steadily in the ranks of the General Assembly’s leadership, eventually serving as chair of the House Appropriations Committee and joining forces with legendary legislators like Liston Ramsey, Billy Watkins, and George Miller to provide funding for public education and progressive legislation of various kinds.  Of the many measures he sponsored, he was particularly proud of the bill that set aside places for public access to North Carolina’s beaches, including his beloved strand at Emerald Isle.