section update
Acceptance Speech of C. Edward Dobbs at the Atlanta Bar Association
Bankruptcy Law Section David Pollard Award Luncheon on May 11, 2012
T
hank you, Al (Alfred S. Lurey introduced Ed), for that
generous introduction. Most of you know that Al is a
past recipient of the David Pollard Award and it is was
my privilege to introduce him on that occasion in 2007. To
follow in his footsteps, and the steps of others who are past
award recipients, is indeed an honor. For that honor, I would
like to thank the members of the Atlanta Bar Bankruptcy
Section for selecting me as this year's recipient. As I look
out into the audience, I am truly humbled, for I see so many
who are equally if not more deserving of this award.
Next, I would like to recognize those members of my
family who are here today. My wife Elly, who for the past
4 years has represented District 53 in the Georgia House
of Representatives. And my two daughters – Peyten, an
English teacher at The Westminster Schools who is to
be married next month, and Whitney, an advertising and
marketing manager at The Morrison Agency in Atlanta. My
son Palmer, who lives in New York, could not make it to
this event, and perhaps that's just as well as he is easily
embarrassed by his father's speeches.
Finally, I would like to recognize and thank my colleagues
at Parker, Hudson, Rainer & Dobbs who are in attendance
and especially my faithful, competent, diligent and reliable
assistant, Lori Pilon.
Experience has shown time and again that it is often
foolhardy to entrust a microphone into the hand of an
attorney. That is especially the case when the audience is
not a jury, the topic is not legal, and the attorney does not
stand before a judge with a time clock. In any event, I will
endeavor not to take advantage of the circumstances that
give me a mike for a moment.
This award has prompted me to reflect upon 62 years of
life, of which 38 years have been dedicated to the practice
of law in Atlanta; to take stock of where I have come from;
and to ask myself a question often asked by the ancient
Latins, "Quo Vadis" – or "Where are you going?" Not to
worry -- I don't intend to bore you with stories of my youth or
my proverbial bucket list. But I would like to address what
my reflections have called to mind that is applicable to all of
us. And that is the life journey that each of us is on and the
journey metaphor that is so pervasive throughout literature
since the earliest of times. The journey is a fundamental
pattern of human experience; and in literature focuses upon
the personal transformation of the traveler in the course of
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THE ATLANTA LAWYER
June/July 2012
the journey. These adventure stories provide magnified
versions of choices that all of us are called upon to make
in our own lives. They reveal to us the truth that, while it is
good to have an end to journey towards, it is the journey itself
that matters in the end. In truth, the journey is the reward.
The journey in art and life share similar patterns -- the first
stage is birth and nurturing; the second is the separation
from the security of our family and friends, a call to adventure
where we cross the threshold into a new world; the next
stage is the initiation, where we are challenged, encounter
a wise teacher, attain a more mature understanding of life
and emerge forever altered by these experiences; and the
final stage is the return to home, with an emphasis upon
family and reflection and preparation for the end, as every
grand tour must end.
How we conduct ourselves on our personal odyssey not only
affects how we are perceived, but also defines who we are.
Our steps along the way cannot be retraced. Omar Khyyam
in his famous Rubaiyat poem took note of the immutable
record that we write for ourselves in our life travels, saying:
The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.
The journey theme is prominent in such early works as
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Bunyan's Pilgrims
Progress, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Swift's Gulliver's
Travels. We see it again in more recent works, such as
Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kerouac's On the Road and
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. And who can forget Ishmael
in Melville's Moby Dick, who, bored with the life of a land
lubber, hired himself out to a whaling ship and was the sole
survivor on a riveting voyage with Captain Ahab. Or Leopold
Bloom whose day-long journey through Dublin is convey