How long have you been a TCBA member? All 27 years. Has your career benefited from being a member of the TCBA? If so, please share. There are too many ways to count. I would start with the collegiality I have enjoyed with other TCBA members has added a sense of enjoyment to my profession. I would then add the availability of the resources, such as the abundance of good CLE, the accessibility of the TCBA building itself with the conference rooms and staff. Also the many programs that members of the TCBA volunteer to do for the benefit of the community provides many ways for each of us to get involved in something beneficial apart from our office practice.
What is your favorite book, movie, or television show? Lonesome Dove, the TV series. Full Stop. What is your favorite food? Speaking of 40 lbs, Italian food, especially Spaghetti and meat sauce. I’ll put a plug in here for Mondo’s and D’Alesandro’s. Both make Tulsa worth living in. Tell us a fun fact that no one knows about you! I played NCAA Div. I wheelchair basketball with the University of Illinois “Fighting Illini” and traveled all over the Big 10. That was almost 40 years and 40 pounds ago.
I was the first and may still be only paraplegic in If you could spend the day with one attorney/judge, Oklahoma with an “M” class rating on my driver’s dead or alive, who would it be and why? license for motorcycles. I put hand brakes on an automatic Can Am Spyder and became the first licensed I have always been an Anthony Scalia fan. The paraplegic-motorcyclist in Oklahoma. My wife and I sharpness of his mind and his sense of logic was so rare have ridden all over the Black Hills, around the Grand that even among other great Supreme Court Justices Tetons in Jackson, Wyoming, through Yellowstone he stood apart in his own way. But beyond being a National Park, across the southern Arizona desert remarkable jurist even among other remarkable jurists, outside of Phoenix, and down the Route 66 trail across he was man of deep Catholic faith. While I am a Oklahoma. The picture is of me in front of the Tetons protestant, I am inspired by his example of pursuing with my legs strapped onto the saddle seat of our Faith and spiritual growth while at the same time trying Spyder. to apply the law in an even-handed way. And I love how one of his very best friends ever was RBG. That by itself makes for a very interesting personality.