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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview J-0072, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Julia Virginia Jones was born in rural Shelby County, North Carolina, in 1948. The civic and professional activism of her mother and grandmother weighed heavily on Jones's definition of femininity, and she points to her father's abrupt death as forming a defining moment in her perception of gender roles. Rather than assuming married life would offer her lifelong security, Jones came to realize that she needed to be able to support herself independently. Religion played a significant role in her family, as did Democratic politics. The religious lessons Jones learned included tolerance and the omnipresence of God. Given the changing racial climate of the 1960s rural South, Jones admits her disenchantment with her church. Jones purposefully chose an all-women's college, Queens College, to develop her academic and leadership skills. She married her husband immediately after her college graduation and decided to follow him along his career path. She worked as a teacher, which resulted in unhappiness, so she applied to law school, accepting a full scholarship at Wake Forest. After clerking two years for Judge Woodrow Wilson, she obtained an associate position with the Moore & Van Allen law firm. In 1990, she was elected district court judge. She was undergoing cancer treatment at the time of this interview: she affectionately labels her supportive friends and family as "Fighting Okra" because of okra's raw strength and tenacity, characteristics she sees in her supporters.
Julia Virginia Jones traces the development of her professional career, which culminated in a federal judgeship. She illuminates the impact her gender had on her growth in the legal field.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
You were born August 30, 1948 in Shelby, North Carolina. Did you know your grandparents?
I was very fortunate, both sets of my grandparents, lived in Shelby. In fact they lived across the street from each other, and all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins lived within about a mile of each other. So, I had a very large extended family. We walked back and forth to each other's houses. Spent the night. Very much of a community. I even knew my great grandparents. One on each side. My great grandmother on my father's side, and my great grandfather on my mother's side. So, I was very fortunate to have a long family history, and lots of great aunts and uncles too.
What do you remember most about your grandparents?
Well, my great grandfather was quite a business man. Always dressed up in his suit, even when he was in his 80s. Fairly formal. I don't have any real . . . . We were kind of dressed up in our Sunday clothes when we went to see him, so most of my memories are sort of formal showing off the grandchildren type thing. Now my grandfather on my father's side lived to be 99, and he also everyday would get up and shave, and put on a coat and tie and go sit in the living room. This was after he was blind and deaf, but people came to visit him because he was a very very interesting person. He was often on the wrong side of the law. I don't think I learned any or had any ideas about going into law because of him. He, because of some good lawyers, did not go to prison over some business deals but he was quite an interesting character.
Do you remember particular instances, or is that pretty much the broad picture?
I don't remember any particular instances.
So, your grandparents - you said that you all lived in the same . . . ..
I will tell one tale on my grandfather. My grandfather was charged with
tax evasion by the federal government. In fact, Mr. Thigpen, the senior
from Charlotte, and Guy _____ were his lawyers because Guy was his
cousin
So, you saw your grandparents as both grandparents and as sons and daughters, was that an interesting role for you to see?
Well, a little bit, particularly watching my grandmother take care of her mother-in-law who lived there. This is the same grandmother of the grandfather that got into tax trouble.
She worked outside of the home. She worked as a sales clerk in the 30s
which was very very unusual, and she worked for the Jewish family that
had the clothing store. There were, to my memory, maybe two Jewish
families in
My other grandmother, who I am named for, Julia, was just the opposite. She was a complete homebody. Her job was to be the perfect homemaker and she was. She had two separate rose gardens to cut from. In the front yard those were the flowers for the people who walked by to see. The cutting garden was in the back yard, and when my grandfather plowed for the vegetable garden, he plowed about four or five rows that were planted with nothing but flowers to cut. So, there were fresh flowers in every room, every day. Meals were, as you can imagine, country breakfast, because before breakfast we had been up picking vegetables since 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning in the summer, and would come in and eat sausage and liver mush and baked apples and sliced tomatoes always in the summer. And eggs and grits and biscuits. Lunch was generally two meats, corn bread, biscuits, and five or six vegetables, and then supper was usually cold. Leftovers from lunch, but quite a feast.
Did you go there often for breakfast?
Oh yes, because my father . . . .. it's real funny, this was his father-in-law, but my father was very interested in picking the vegetables and so usually daddy and I would go pick vegetables and then have breakfast with my grandma.
So, that was the grandmother Julia that you were named after - that was your father's side?
Mother's side. It is very confusing because my father was very active with my mother's parents. My father was the caretaker of the older generation. He took care of his parents; he took care of my mother's parents; he took care of the great aunts and uncles. He was a caretaker. He dropped dead of a heart attack at age 48, and sometimes we think it's because he just took care of too many people, but he was the caretaker for everyone.
So, did he know your mother when they were growing up? Did they grow up in Shelby?
They grew up together, and knew each other, but they really didn't start
courting until after the war - until after World War II. Mother had
finished college, and
—and daddy died in 1971. Mother, at that time, was also 48. I had graduated from college, but I had a sister who was a sophomore at Chapel Hill, a sister who was in high school, and a brother who was 14. Mother basically worked minimum wage at the hospital as a volunteer coordinator, and with social security put the rest of the kids through school. So, she certainly was an influence in my life, that you can do what you want to do through hard work. I think, also, the fact that my father died suddenly, influenced me. I've talked to my two sisters about this. Both of my sisters worked outside of the home for a long time. They are now raising children, but one was a banker for about ten years, and the other sold real estate. We all agreed, we realized that when daddy died that even if you were happily married that was no guarantee of someone to take care of you.
I'm just going to bring you back a little bit, just to talk more about your dad. Did he go to college?
He went two years to Western Carolina. He played football. He was on a
football scholarship, but in 1942 he joined the navy and he was a bomber
pilot. He flew off of aircraft carriers, and according to my uncles he
was quite a hero. That he made many hits. He only landed in the ocean
once, and they laugh about it I guess because he got out alright. He did
not talk about the war, and I couldn't decide whether he didn't talk
about it because his three oldest children were girls and he just didn't
know how to talk to girls or what, and the reason I say that is that
when I started going out with a man who was in the navy, my father
talked to him about it, but he did not talk to us. But my favorite story
about daddy . . . In the service, if you grow up in Shelby there's not a
lot to do, so you learn how to play cards. It's a big card town. I
learned to play bridge when I was in about the fifth grade, and play
bridge every hot summer afternoon from 1-3 until I graduated from high
school. Mother even taught bridge to supplement her income at one time.
Daddy taught me how to play poker, of course. So they tell the story
they are on the aircraft carrier, and it is hot down in the quarters
down below. So, they are not in uniform. Basically they've got their
skivvies on. So, they are sitting around the table playing poker, and
daddy is winning big time and he keeps winning and people drop out, and
they drop down to two people - daddy and one other man, and daddy
basically cleans house. So, the next morning they get up to go up on
deck, and it turns out that the man that daddy took all his money was
his
You said that he had some financial difficulties career wise when you were growing up. How did that affect the way that you were raised?
We were land poor. Particularly on my mother's side there is a tremendous
amount of land. As I mentioned, my grandfather was quite a business man,
and he had bought up a lot of property that was very valuable where they
put a new road, and of course that brought in new business. When he died
the land was, of course, still there and so we had all this property.
Huge farms, but we didn't have much money, and we all had nice houses.
That was the other thing. My grandparents lived on this side, my
mother's side, in a mansion because they
How did you balance picking the vegetables and selling them, and then still going to school?
Well, I only did that in the summer. In the winter I only worked between Thanksgiving and Christmas, after school, at the jewelry store. I did not work full-time during school. I studied a lot. I was lucky that we had a very good high school. At the time I didn't think so, but we did. School was important. My mother really valued education, and that was very very clear. I think, she had a college degree and somehow she thought it was important that her daughters, as well as her son, have a college degree. So, there was never any question about going to college. Now, I wasn't quite sure why, because you got married and raised children, and I didn't quite understand why you went to college I just knew you did.
So, did your mom work?
She started working when I was in high school, and she worked as a social
worker which was her training. She did that through a government program
with Richard Nixon, of all presidents. I don't think people remember
kind of how much money there was for social programs during that era,
but it did dry up and after that she
What was your relationship with your brother and sisters like when you were growing up?
The family order is I'm the oldest, there's four years between me and the next sister, and her name is Jean Ann. Then two years and there's Linda, and then another two years and Thomas. There's nine years difference between Thomas and me. Growing up I was the babysitter, and I had a lot of responsibility. I liked my siblings, but I was not friends with them. Basically they were the kids I babysat with. Now, as adults, we are best friends. All of us. I mean, we are so close, and even though my sisters are not close geographically (one is in Los Angeles, and one is in Connecticut - my brother's in Newton) we still see each other and talk on the phone two, three times a week. We are very very close.
I want to tell a story about money, and being rich or poor. The sister
that is four years younger than I, she thought we were poor, and I asked
her why she thought we were poor. [This is as an adult we are talking
about this, not as kids.] She
One other interesting thing about my father. When he got out of the service he got his mustering out pay, and he started an oil refining recycling. Basically to recycle oil. There was all this oil that had been used in the war, and in the war they recycled it, and so he started this process for it. He thought he would have a very successful business. Unfortunately, with the war over everybody had new oil and there was no reason to recycle, and I like to think about my father as one of the early conservationist. If only he had had business.
I haven't heard you mention religion at all as part of your growing up. Was that a large part of growing up?
I can't believe I haven't mentioned it. We went to the Methodist church.
It was up on the court square, and it's a beautiful church. My father's
family went there. Mother had grown up a Baptist, so she joined with
daddy and very active. At one point my father was chairman of the board
of stewards; I was president of the senior high MYF; my sister was
president of the junior high; mother ran the girl scouts; my aunt was
head of Methodist's Women. We went to church at least three times a
week. Twice on Sundays, and usually Wednesday nights. But, it was a
positive, happy, joyful place. Not at all a negative place, and I
enjoyed going. I did go to church actively until I was a teenager. Then
I started rebelling
Shelby, on the whole, you said there was a Baptist church and a Methodist church, and maybe two Jewish families there. Was that pretty much the split in town?
There were a few Episcopalians, and a few Lutherans. The Baptists was the
big church. I always used to refer to them as Hertz and we were Avis.
They really had all the big youth programs, and were always doing
exciting things, and having rock music in the sanctuary and things like
that. They were kind of on one corner,
What would you say you pulled out of the religion the most? What has carried through in your life?
I guess there are two things. One is that I truly believe, whether you
are Jewish or Muslim or Christian, that tolerance of all people is
important. That is what God's message is. The other thing is that God is
with me. I truly believe that. I don't believe that God micro manages.
That He comes down and says, "Julia you're going to have cancer and
somebody else is going to get a divorce." But I believe that He is very
aware of what everyone is going through, and is there with us. I had a
really unique experience growing up, because I too worked for the Jewish
merchant, Mr. Rosenthal. I learned more from him than I learned from
almost anybody other than my family. I worked for him for seven or eight
years, so it was a long time of my life and I think that helped me - it
just gave me a different view that not everybody had the opportunity to
have. It has been real interesting because through the years I've met a
lot of people that knew the Rosenthals because they would come to
Gastonia or Charlotte to worship because there
You were talking about one of the things you learned was tolerance. How was Shelby as a town? Because of all these different groups, were they very tolerant or was it a narrow sort of town?
It was a fairly typical Southern town where groups did not mix; however,
when I was a senior in high school the schools were integrated. We did
not have any riots or major bad incidents. I think people were pretty
tolerant even though they did not necessarily mix. I guess that is the
way I would put it. Shelby is just a very typical small town, but I do
think people there try to be tolerant. I left Shelby because I had been
married and then back in Shelby with my husband and he established a law
practice. When we decided to divorce, this was in 1979, Shelby was too
small to have ex-husbands and -wives practicing in different firms.
There were too many conflicts. People were having a hard enough time
with women lawyers at that point in time, much less one that used to be
married to a man lawyer, but then the other firm, "Oh my, what would we
do about that?"
Did you travel much in your family? Did you stay pretty much in Shelby because your whole family was in Shelby?
When I was growing up my family did not travel a lot, and that had to do
with money as much as anything. But it's kind of the good and the bad.
One of mother's cousins had a house up at Lake Lure which is this
fabulous mountain lake about 45 minutes from Shelby, and their children
were the age of the children in our family. So we would go up for say
three weeks and the fathers would drive back and forth, because it was
only 45 minutes. So, we would stay at this fabulous, and when I say
fabulous I don't mean fabulous because it was fancy. It was fabulous
because it wasn't fancy. The downstairs had concrete floors, poured
cement, concrete block walls. You could throw your bathing suit down on
the floor and it didn't matter! Nobody fussed at you for putting a wet
bathing suit some where. You had to get up and put it on the next day,
but nobody cared. It had a beautiful view. The water was wonderful. We
water skied. No TVs or telephones, and so it was an intergenerational
thing. You would play cards with
I'm going to keep pulling you back a little bit, if that's alright. Just to talk about your schooling. You went to Shelby . . . .
I went to the public high school, Shelby High School, which I accused of
having, how did I put it, that the principal was the coach and the
superintendent of schools was the athletic director. We had a huge
football team and a huge football stadium, which was very common at that
time for kind of medium sized towns. We also had four years of Latin,
advanced Chemistry, Trigonometry. All kinds of courses that I was able
to take that when I got to college I was way ahead of a lot
What were some of your favorite subjects in high school, or activities?
I love English. Reading books for credit is kind of decadent to me, and I
had wonderful, wonderful teachers that truly made everything from
Beowulf to Shakespeare to Catcher in the Rye come alive. I also remember
my eleventh grade teacher telling me that how her father used to hide
books. He was a professor at Converse, and of course she and her sister
always got the books he
Were you close to some of your English teachers?
Well, I was close to all of my teachers because I was a student, and a hard working student. I don't have a particular teacher . . . . Well, actually my seventh grade science teacher. I do have one teacher that I would say I was closest to for many years after school, and this was Miss Craver and she taught seventh grade science. She had arthritis and wore big clunky shoes, and she wasn't too tall, but I can remember sitting in class in seventh grade, and you can imagine. The way our schools were, you went to neighborhood schools until you wer in sixth grade, and then all seventh graders would get together. There was a guy who sat behind me flicking his cigarette lighter in the classroom, and I, of course, did not know what would happen. He was much bigger than Miss Craver. She just came back and put out her hand and in a tone of voice that was so commanding, said, "I'll take that", that he handed it over to her. I always admired her, and she always got the roughens, because she was so good. She and I stayed friends for many many years.
What, outside of class, did you do. You said it was a very big athletic school, and obviously class work too.
I was in the band. I played clarinet. Our marching band was a competitive band. We would go, in the fall, to Bristol, Tennessee for a weekend. We would go to Greensboro. It was quite a time consuming . . . . I was a terrible musician. I've never been able to carry a tune. I can read music, and I was tall, and they wanted somebody to carry a bass clarinet and not everybody could do it, so I played the bass clarinet in the marching band and it was fun. We had a big time. We got to go on a lot of trips, and band trips were fun. The other thing I did, was I went on church trips, I went on church retreats to the youth camps of church. Every summer I went to camp, to private camps and to Girl Scout camps - different kinds of camps. I always enjoyed being in the outdoors, and I think I didn't really realize that until I was 30, how much it meant to me to be out doors. Now, my favorite activity is hiking along the trail.
Did you do that when you were in high school?
No, I did not. It just never occurred to me. My family didn't do it. We didn't really camp. When I'd go to camp, I would go hiking and I always loved it.
You said you had saved money when you were working to go to summer camp. Was that during high school that you went to summer camp?
Right, during high school.
And, where was the camp?
It's up in Western North Carolina. I went to a girl's camp for three weeks, two different years and met many friends, some people I am friends with today. It was your basic camp. It was not a . . . . If I was doing it over again, I would have gone to a different kind. This was a . . . . You stayed in a cabin. You played tennis. You could horseback ride. Arts and crafts. Almost what I would call a rich person's camp. If I were going to camp again, I would go to a camp where you actually camped out and learned camping skills. Even as a Girl Scout we would camp out overnight at the Girl Scout hut, but we did not really learn camping skills. I learned those as an adult, and wished I'd learned them younger.
So, throughout this time obviously you are still active at your church
and you were in the band. Is there anything that you can think of,
somebody that was
I knew education was important. That was very very important. I also knew
that you were supposed to treat people a certain way, and that was a way
that you . . . you know the Golden Rule. Everybody in my family
practiced it in spite of the fact that there was certainly racism. I
would not be telling the truth if I did not say that there was racism in
my church, in my family, in my community. That was one of the reasons I
left the church, because I had such a hard time with the fact that the
three slum lords in town went to my church. We were raising money to
send to poor people in Africa, and I just didn't get it. It was kind of
like, well why are we not raising money to have indoor toilets for these
people that live between my house and the church? That is really what
made me leave the church because nobody . . . . I asked the question of
my teachers, and did not get a satisfactory answer. I talked to my
father about it, and his answer is that you don't leave the good because
of the bad. That you go to church to take care of yourself, and try to
show by example. That was not good enough for me at that time. I think
he is exactly right now. At the time I was too rebellious. I can
remember my cousin who was my age. We were going to start our own
church, we were so mad about
What was your church going to be like?
We were certainly going to have all races. We were going to raise the money to take care of people here. We were going to teach tolerance. So, that is why I left the church. It's interesting. I have talked to a number of people my age that had similar feelings about that time.
Even in my family, there was that symbiotic relationship. My grandfather had a Black man who worked for him, and my grandmother. James ate three meals a day at our house. He was epileptic. He got his medication. When my grandfather died, James went away and actually my uncle found him basically on the side of the road. So, my aunt and uncle then, even though they didn't have a garden, didn't really have any work, James came to their house every day and they would find something to do, but he would get his medicine and food until he died. It's just one of those Southern history issues that we have to deal with. One on one my family did a lot for both White and Black families that were not as fortunate. That was just another thing you did. I mean that was another value. If you had more than somebody else, you gave to them even if you didn't have a lot. I don't know how to explain it any better than that.
I know you said that you and most families had help in their house.
Rochelle was our cook and babysitter, and she came when I was about six, and she was probably fourteen, maybe. No, she was probably sixteen because she had had a child. I guess she was about sixteen, and she came to work for us and she and I are close to this day. She raised her daughter, her daughter graduated from college, is a teacher, and Rochelle . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
. . . .. hospital, and while she worked for us she did some training for that, and we encourage her to do that. She is a very special person. In fact, my first hospitalization was in `75 and I called Rochelle before I called my mother to see if she could come and stay with me.
Did she have a child while she was working for you, or was it before?
My memory is she had just had Peggy before she came to work for us. I know that is right because I was old enough and I don't remember her being pregnant. She must have had Peggy right before coming to work for us.
You said that you are close now. When you were growing up were you aware that she worked for you? How was that relationship?
I was aware that she worked for us, but I treated her just like I treated my mother. She got the same respect. She was the authority figure. I would have never sassed her, and I felt much more that she was a member of the family than that she worked. I'll share a little story about my cousins. I really felt like Rochelle was much more of a family member than someone who was working for us. I hugged her, kissed her, went to her house. I knew that she worked for us, but that was not the important thing, and I did what she told me to do.
So, when you were in school, there were Blacks, there were Whites. You were saying it was an integrated school?
It didn't integrate until I was a senior in high school.
So, how was that before? Was there another school?
There was another school, and I really didn't think that much about it because that's the way it was. In fact I was much more concerned about the church situation than the school situation.
How as the church situation?
Well, meaning that the churches were not integrated and not only were they not integrated but the slum lords went to the churches.
So, what was it like when your senior year when they decided to integrate?
It was not a big deal, frankly. Again, it was fairly smooth. I can remember eating lunch with a girl who was in my class. I just don't have a memory of it being big deal at all.
You said that you went to Queens College. You went straight to college from high school?
Yes.
What made you want to leave Shelby and come to Charlotte?
Well, I wanted to go to a small woman's college, so I applied to Queens
and Salem and some other schools. There was a two year college in
Shelby, but that was all. So, to get a four year education I had to
come. Charlotte is almost like
What was Charlotte like?
Well, SouthPark wasn't here. Everything was up town. Those are the main
differences. You shopped up town, and SouthPark wasn't here. Park Road
shopping center was here, but that's about all. A lot of it is the same.
Myers Park was the same; the churches were there. Kind of my world in
Charlotte is very much the same because I live not in the Myers Park
neighborhood but in Elizabeth which is a small older neighborhood.
There's a drug store on the corner, and now there's a grocery store
that's not too far. I don't go to SouthPark. My mother calls and says,
"Oh I see something in the newspaper at Belk's at SouthPark, could you
go pick it up for me?" And I'll say, "Mom, I'll pay the UPS charges to
have it shipped to you rather than drive to SouthPark." I don't drive in
What were your impressions when you first left home, and you were a freshman? Was it a sense of freedom?
Well, that is what I was going to say. Yes, again because I was the oldest child it was a tremendous sense of freedom. It was great. I can remember my room, and my roommate whom I am very good friends with today. It happens to be a lawyer at Hunton and Williams in Richmond who's been there twenty-three years now, believe it or not.
Was she from Charlotte?
She was from Spartanburg, South Carolina.
What was her name?
Her name is Virginia Powell. I think she was president of the Richmond
Bar a year or two ago. A very outstanding woman, but we just happened to
be
Did your parents come visit you much, or did you go home much after that?
I went home at Thanksgiving, Christmas, but not that often. I liked college a lot, and I had a boyfriend in Shelby who I eventually married, but also he went off in the Navy for a couple of years while I was in school and so I would go to Washington & Lee, and Davidson for weekends, and it was big fun.
You said that you were a student. You loved classes. I'm assuming English was again one of your favorites, but do you remember teachers in particular?
My two things at Queens were English and Chemistry. After Dr. McCuen dragged me out of the line to be her lab assistant, I fell in love with her. She was a wonderful woman. She was one of the first women to get a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Chapel Hill, and her husband died young, and she ended up teaching at Queens forever, and we became very very close. She encouraged me to major in Chemistry, and I took a lot of Chemistry and then the day came for the semester of my junior year, Shakespeare and the Chemistry course I needed were taught at the same time. Well, it was a no-brainer. I took Shakespeare over Chemistry and ended up majoring in English much to her disappointment. But, it was again, they are going to give me grades for reading a book.
Do you remember being involved in organizations?
At Queens I was involved. We had a Greek community, and I was in a sorority, and I was president of the panhellenic council. I was also on the honor council for a short term period. Seems like I filled out a term for somebody. I don't remember.
We were not encouraged . . . There were no teams. There were no sports
teams. We had to take P.E. to graduate, but you didn't play tennis or
basketball or volleyball. This was in the era that they didn't think
women sweated. It was ridiculous. So, really it was just going to
classes and being in
Queens at that time was a woman's college. You had said that you just knew you wanted to go to a woman's college. Why did you know that's what you wanted to do?
I wanted to do that because that is where the best professors were. If I couldn't go to Chapel Hill. The only other place I had thought about going to was Duke, and I gave it pretty serious consideration, but I really felt like that I needed the smaller school coming from a small town, and really the reason is because they had fabulous professors. For example, we had a major in Russian. Ted __________ taught Russian. You could take Russian literature. We had several women who graduated fluent in Russian. We had the Chemistry majors. We had several people go to med school. They really encouraged graduate school. You had to take the GRE to graduate. That was just part of your senior semester, whether you were going to graduate school or not. It was very academic, and that was why I wanted to go there.
You hear a lot today about women's colleges. The whole debate about they actually instill more confidence in women. Do you believe that?
At that point in time there was no question. I had leadership skills. As
a result of being head of the Panhellenic council, I was on the
President's Board and developed leadership skills that I never would
have developed in 1966 through 1970 at a coed school. Now, I think that
has changed. I think that women, just
I know that you said growing up education was always important, but you weren't sure why. Did your parents expect that once you graduated to come back home?
Well, this is really weird, but they expected me to get married.
Really. Did you get married right away?
In fact I did. I lived up to their expectations. I married my high school
sweetheart. He had been in the Navy and wanted to go back to college. He
had dropped out. So, we moved to Boone and he went to Appalachian, and I
went to Appalachian also to get a Masters in Education, and taught
freshman English. It's a real lesson in money. He had about $200 he got
from the GI bill, a month. I got about $150 from teaching. Our apartment
cost $65. I think that included utilities. Now our apartment was a
bedroom, a living room, a tiny little kitchen and bathroom. I used to
joke and say that from the bathroom you could open the front door, make
up the bed, cook the breakfast. It was tiny, but it was all we needed,
and it worked out great. I've never felt as rich monetarily as those
years at
So, you married after you graduated from Queens?
Right. A month after I graduated from Queens, and then we moved to Boone that fall and went to Appalachian.
What made you want to go into teaching?
Well, that is the only thing women did. I mean, I didn't particularly
want to be a teacher. I knew I didn't want to be a nurse. My father
insisted . . . You talk about the small women's college. When I went to
Queens there was not a major in Education. You could not major in
Education. You had to major in an academic subject. Now you could take
Education courses and get certified to teach, which I did, but I majored
in English. So, when we went to Boone I couldn't get a job, and so this
was the best money I could get. So, that is what I did. I taught
freshman English for my scholarship at Appalachian. We were there two
years, and then Bill decided to go to law school, and he got accepted at
Chapel Hill. We moved to Chapel Hill. In the meantime we moved back to
Shelby for six months because we finished in the spring, like March.
Appalachian was on the quarters. I taught at a community college for
about six months in Shelby. Then we moved to Chapel Hill and I taught at
a junior high school. I taught at _____ Junior High and Oak Grove. I
taught at two schools; one day at one, one day at the other. It was
miserable. I did not like it. I had a crummy principal. He did not
respect students, and I knew that I couldn't teach, and I did not want
to eat lunch with seventh graders. So, my husband was in law school. I
liked the women who were in his class, and I thought, well, it's three
years. You don't have to write a dissertation, and you are reasonably
assured of getting a job, and that is why I went to law school. I'd like
to say it was to save the world, to make the world a
What were your siblings doing during this time?
One sister was at Chapel Hill. One sister was getting ready to go to Davidson, and my brother was in high school.
Was she at Chapel Hill — you keep talking about being a nurse — was she?
No, nobody is a nurse in my family. What is interesting is that my
sister, when Bill and I were at Chapel Hill for law school, Jean Ann was
there for undergrad, so we saw each other a lot. People confused us a
lot, and it was pretty fun. Because she was dating a local Chapel Hill
boy who was going to college there, but who'd grown up there, and I was
teaching. The second year I taught at Chapel Hill high school, and so
there is a lot of interaction. It was real funny. They would go, "Now
wait a minute, you're not the person who dates Peter Barnes?" I go, "No,
I'm her sister." So, that was kind of funny. Or they would say to Jean
What was your favorite author or genre in English?
Well, I loved Shakespeare, but I loved all literature. Everything, and I do to this day. Now, I read a lot of Southern writers: Reynolds Price, Lee Smith. Just because I like them so much, although I read almost anything that comes my way. My junk reading is murder mysteries, and that is what I read when I don't feel like reading anything else.
What year were you married?
'70.
That was when . . . . I'm just a little confused . . . .
I graduated from Queens.
That was that same year when your husband and you were both at Appalachian. Now he went to law school in Chapel Hill?
In '72.
And that is when you followed him out?
Right.
Tell me what his impression, if you remember, of law school was.
Since he was going back to school as an older student, and really wanted to succeed, he worked like it was a job. He would go to the library and study from 8 to 5 and come home and eat supper and go back and study until 11. He thought it was very hard. He thought it was very cut throat, and it was cut throat. This was right after Vietnam, remember, '72 where we still have people who were in school to avoid the draft, and now we got people who are back home who want to go. So, it was very very cut throat, and he had a friend, one friend, and they went everywhere together, and he thought it was a struggle and hard.
How did that effect you, not being in law school?
I think it is always harder when the other person is, when it is somebody
you care about and you can't help them. I remember it was much more
difficult for me when he took the bar exam than when I took it. Because
I knew what I could do, and how hard it was for me, but I didn't know
for him. He was petrified he would fail it. It was real funny. I was
sick that summer, that was in '75, and we really almost divorced then
and later we talked about how that he thought he was going to flunk the
bar and I didn't care. I had all this surgery, and was ill, and I
thought he didn't care. We got through that, but it was very difficult
and we had to talk about it later on. Anyway, he is at Chapel Hill, so I
want to go to law school, so I apply and the first year I applied to
Chapel Hill and Central, but decided I couldn't go that year because we
didn't have any money. So, I had to work another year teaching school,
and saving money, and somehow I decided to apply at Wake Forest, and
Wake Forest offered me a full scholarship. They were desperate for women
in 1974, and so they offered me a full scholarship and I just couldn't
turn that down. So, we decided to live apart, and I would live in
Winston and he would live in Chapel Hill for his last year of law
school. That's what we did, and it was a tough transition from Chapel
Hill to Wake Forest. I had been wearing blue jeans and t-shirts, and at
Wake Forest they wore suits and ties. I didn't, but it was tough.
Fortunately, my housemate had been in Chapel Hill also, so she and I
were the radicals at Wake Forest, but it worked out and it was good for
me to go
You had mentioned that there weren't many women when you first went to law school. Do you remember how many there were in your first year?
I think there were seventeen in my class. About 10 percent of the student body. Prior to that, in like the people who were second and third years, I think there were like maybe ten second years and about three third years.
How do you think that affected your law school education, or did it affect your law school education?
Well, I think it probably made me study harder, but as far as what the
professors did I don't think it made a difference. Some acted like
creeps. Well, it's too long of a joke, but the very first day one of the
professors told a sexist joke, and it was
Were there women professors?
Yes, there were. They were good. I don't think it made any difference at all with the professors.
Do you remember any in particular that may have influenced your career choice, or even your self?
We had a Contracts and Constitutional Law professor who was wonderful
because he taught you to think kind of outside of the box, and a lot of
people hated him. In fact, his nickname was Foggy because they thought
that he went off on these tangents. I thought it was wonderful because
he taught you to analyze things from all kinds of points of view. His
favorite line is you know just give the court something to hang their
hat on, and then figure out what you can do. I've always tried to be
open in thinking like that. Devine was his last name. I don't even
You know how you hear all these horror first year stories about the Socratic method, and their teaching style. Was that at odds with what you had learned being a teacher?
Well, I was offended, because I was a better teacher than a lot of my
teachers. So, I can remember a particular professor just boring with the
Socratic
Do you remember the incident to tell?
Oh, it was about property and about how that right of survivorship and tenants in the entirety was to protect the little woman, and about how the husband could use all the rents and profits. There was some case in which there was a dissent in that I thought the professor misrepresented, and I raised my hand and I said, "Well, I think that it says this." I don't really remember what it was. That's what it was about. I know the topic, and he basically squelched me and that was that.
Did your husband encourage you to go to law school?
That's a long story. Yes and no. He encouraged me at the beginning because he really liked women in his class, but later as we went back to Shelby in the summers and he worked with some lawyers and saw how nice it was that their wives were at home cooking dinner for them, he really felt like that you couldn't have two careers. Unfortunately, he and I both knew that you can't put the cow back in the barn after she's out, and that I was on my way. That I was going to do it, and we talked about it, and both agreed that I was too far along. This was right before I was getting ready to start. This was after a summer in Shelby. So, I went on to law school and then I ended up two years in Shelby working for Woodrow Jones and then my husband and I divorced after that. So, it was not the going to law school. It was all the other things that people divorce about that happened.
Was your family supportive?
My family was very supportive. My husband's family was not supportive because I wasn't taking care of their little boy.
Your father had passed away while you were in college, right?
Right when I graduated.
Okay, so how did that effect . . . obviously that was a great loss.
Well, it was but I think it also inspired me to go on to law school to take care of myself. I think that was a big factor.
You also knew that your mother was then by herself and that she started to work in the community. Did you go home more often because of that?
No, not necessarily. Mother was pretty independent. Now Bill and I, I will say this, my ex-husband was fabulous as far as supporting my family, helping mother, and we probably went home a little more often to help her do things, but not a lot.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
You had said that you had done a clerkship with Woodrow Jones. Was it in your third year that you decided that you wanted to do that?
Yes, first of all, I had, I think, a non-traditional route to law school.
An entire thought process. I did not interview with any large firms or
small firms because I was married and planning to return to a town and
live with my husband wherever that was. I really had no clue what
lawyers did, and this is a true story about how I clerked for Woodrow
Jones. He was sitting in the Dean's office at Wake Forest, at lunch time
one day, and I walked in and I had on blue jeans and a t-shirt. Now it
wasn't a t-shirt with a slogan, it was before that time, but still it
was blue jeans and t-shirt. The secretary got me around the corner and
she said, "Do you know where your roommate is. We've got Judge Jones
here and he's supposed to interview her at 1:00, and he's here early and
the Dean's not here, and here we've got this federal judge sitting out
here in our office twiddling his thumbs." And I said, "No, I don't know
where Judy is." Then I took a deep breath and thought about what I had
on, and I said, "But I know Judge Jones because my husband has
I did clerk for him for two years. It was a very positive experience. He
is a wonderful man. It was a great transition for me from "liberal law
school" to the real world. He was very much a real world person. Plenty
of people described him as conservative. I think he was a true democrat,
and thoroughly enjoyed working for him. We often had discussions about
women, and minorities and I think I learned a lot from him, and he
learned a lot from me. I remember when I got ready to leave, and I told
him I was going to be working at Moore & Van Allen. He had had a
woman clerk before, but she ended up teaching school. I was the first
woman lawyer who he really knew intended to go practice in the court
room. I always remember that she shook my hand and looked me in the eye,
and said, "You can do it." So, it was really wonderful. He is very
formal, and I remember the first year at Christmas, there was a
secretary and a baliff and me. He chose to have a baliff to drive his
car rather than two clerks. He had also been on the bench a long time,
and he did not need much criminal work at all. I did
I interviewed in Charlotte. At that point I was separated. Interviewed in
Charlotte and was really very fortunate. I really interviewed up and
down the East Coast, and finally decided that my sister lived in
Charlotte, I had a great network, and I had several great job offers.
So, after
You said that you had gone through a divorce, and I would assume that was pretty traumatic. Something you didn't expect. How do you think that affected you in your career, in your life?
Well, there is a slogan, "Life is what happens while you are on your way
to doing something else." That's certainly has been true in my life. I
thoroughly enjoyed
What was it like? How big was Moore & Van Allen then? Now it's eighty people just in this office.
I was number twenty. When we had firm meetings, everybody came including associates. This is kind of a funny anecdote. As I mentioned, they hired two people. The other person was a man, and they hired me. The tradition was that the newest person in the firm took the minutes. They were not about to ask me to take the minutes, so they got the other man that they had hired. I thought that was very good judgement. I didn't know for about a year and a half that the partners had decided to do that. It wouldn't have mattered, and I would have taken the minutes, but I was pretty impressed that they thought about that. There was one other woman there. She did estate work, and was out on maternity leave when I started at the law firm. So, really I was the visible woman at that point in time, although Christy was quite a good lawyer and had a great reputation. She just happened to be on maternity leave the first year I was there.
What was it like being a first year associate there?
It was interesting being a first year associate and being a woman as a
trial lawyer. They'd had one other woman, Marguerite Stevens, for about
a year, and she worked on one particular case and then she followed that
case to D.C. I think the firm really didn't know what to do with me,
quite frankly, but it was real clear
Being a young associate, in general, again I was a little bit different.
I was thirty-two, and had taught school, had clerked, had been married
for ten years, had been divorced. Life was a little different for me.
So, that when some of those bad things that happened to associates, like
you end up working ten times as hard as you think you work, that was
just sort of a you know "it's their firm". My attitude was, it was not
my firm. I think big firms, then and now, take advantage of everybody.
The type of people that work there, me included, work hard, and expect
everybody to do the same. But when the ebbs and flows and . . . . Oh,
we've decided we're not going to make associate partners after five
years, it's going to be six years . . . That just tore some of the other
people up. For me, what's another year? It's a lot of money. I
calculated one day how much money that cost me, but still it's not life,
and I think being a little bit older really helped me ride some of those
bumps. Again, as I say, I love being a litigator. The first case I tried
I thought I was going to throw up, but then one of my partners told me,
"Julia, first of all this is going to be your life's work. If you don't
like it, get another job." He said, "The neat thing is, nobody is going
to beat you up, and nobody's going to put you in jail, and unless you do
something really bad nobody is going to tell you to be quiet." He said,
"What I do is when the judge says the jury is with the plaintiff, I take
a deep breath, close my eyes, and roll." And I took his advice and was a
litigator for ten, eleven years and went on the bench after that. Still
felt like I
While you were working there was there anybody in particular that you thought of as a mentor? You were talking about there was a general support when you were a young associate.
The answer to that is no, but there were at least two people that I felt
very comfortable going to with any question under the sun. I would say
again, partially because of the age, these were young partners who were
my age, so it was more of a friendship than a mentoring. I think
mentoring is very very very important. I just can't say enough, but
again I think my age influenced it. There were at least two people that
I would go and ask any question and never be embarrassed. Interesting
thing was, there were people who came to me very early on. In fact I got
tickled one time with one of the partners, a younger partner who was
just a year older than I was, and he said "You're coming to me. I don't
feel old enough to do this, and people are coming to you." At that point
it was kind of a young firm. We were the middle ground. The people that
the younger people would come ask when the senior partners were too
busy. So, I didn't have a mentor. I think mostly though that was because
of age. Now there was a senior
You had a couple of years as an associate, then you made partner.
I made partner after, I think it was five years.
Did it change your role?
It absolutely changed my role. The men had gotten used to me as an
associate. They could handle that. They could handle that there was a
woman that was going to the court room that they were paying, but to
have her as a peer. It took a good year to define roles, and of course
at that time, and I'm sure it's still true, once you became a partner
there was a much greater emphasis on bringing in business. I think it
was true in 1985 that it was difficult for women to bring in litigation
business. You could bring in some banking business, but to bring in
trial work was really hard because you just didn't have any background.
There were some large clients that I . . . . That was the other thing.
Actually though you worked for large clients that a senior partner had
gotten, so you didn't have a lot of opportunity to go out and develop
new litigation clients. I had a hard time in the beginning, and then
someone was wise enough to say to me, "Are there any
Do you remember any cases that might be interesting as a story to tell?
Some of them were interesting at the time, and you get involved in the legal aspects, but I can't right now think of any particularly . . . . Other than going out on Christmas Eve and reposessing a truck. The first year that I was at the firm, I'd been there six weeks, and we were having our little lunch on Christmas Eve and one of the partners came in . . . . No, I got a call from the sheriff and he said "We've found the truck." And so I said, "Okay, pick it up." I felt like a terrible scrooge, but I thought about all my civil procedure work - claim and delivery, we've got the truck.
One of the things that happened at Moore & Van Allen I think was
really good, I was put on the recruiting committee early. Practically
right after I started at the firm, so I had a really good opportunity to
meet a lot of young law students. Through that I somehow became an
informal mentor to almost, it seemed, like every woman lawyer that was
coming to Charlotte. Not only ones that were interviewing with Moore
& Van Allen but a lot of people who didn't have a regular
interview but just wanted the lay of the land would call me, and I felt
very
There were about eight or ten women that worked for the medium to large
law firms, and we used to get together for lunch. In fact, Nancy Berelli
and I were talking about this the other day. Eating at Ivey's Tulip
Terrace. It was great. We would get together. There were a few women
that were in practice for themselves. It seems that there was a
difference in need among women that were at the medium sized to larger
firms. We did not have a formal women attorney's group ever. That was
kind of the six or seven of us that were in this core group. Always felt
that women ought to work with an established bar and that the best way
to achieve recognition, get appointed to boards or be president of the
local bar, was to work through that. Instead, what we did for a number
of years, two or three times a year we would get together informally. We
had a little mailing list and we would send out a mailing that would
say, "We are going to have wine and cheese at Julia Jones's house. Bring
what you feel like contributing and come visit." (Pause in tape) . . .
.. call this kind of a kitchen cabinet, and the most exciting thing we
did was one year the nominating committee for the president of the bar
had put out their nominations and we were not very happy. There had
never been a woman; there had never been a minority. So our group did a
You were saying something about enforcing standards for . . . . is it ethical standards? What was your role in all of that?
I was on different committees. The major committees are the grievance and
ethics committee. In other words we gave, on preliminary opinions. Those
were the two major committees. I was on the grievance. I reviewed
grievances made against lawyers and we made decisions about what type of
sanctions. That was a frustrating experience because the law is pretty
broad. For example, during that time, advertising once the Supreme Court
said it was a first amendment issue that pretty well took things away
from the local folks. There were other things like that. There were also
embezzlements, sexual harassment, lots of things. We dealt with
unauthorized practice of law. That was at a time that the accounting
firms were really getting into retirement plans, and we worked on some
of those issues. Where the line was. Again, there was an opportunity for
mentoring there too because some of the people who had grievances filed
against them really just didn't know you needed to return your phone
calls. I mean, there were probably more grievances. People had done the
work; they filed the brief; they filed the
You keep talking about how you travelled through this time. Is this part of keeping the connection. Was that personal growth?
Very much. I got into backpacking. I had never done it as a child, even
though I was a girl scout. We never really camped. We were girls. I
didn't do anything
The year before I went to Spain, and stayed with some friends who had been at my house for a number of years, and we just took day hikes. They live up in the Pyrenees, and so they have a little hotel. I just stayed at the hotel and took day hikes. I've hiked in Nepal, I've hiked in Switzerland. I've hiked all over the Blue Ridge and the Appalachians. I love to be outdoors, and that really developed when I was in an office. That's probably one of my biggest problems on the bench. I'm even more confined than I was as a private lawyer. I go and get on that bench at 9:30 and I don't know whether it's daylight outside until 5:00 because most of our court rooms don't have windows. I miss that. But it's like everything else., it has a trade off. Being a judge I get to go to these little mountain towns and hold court, and I'm in seventh heaven. It's like, don't throw me into that briar patch. What, you mean I have to go to Murphy? Murphy's almost in Tennessee, and a lot of people don't want to go there. It's a great place. I went on a great two day weekend hiking trip after I handled court there one week. It was fun. So, that's kind of the travelling I have done. I have had internationals stay at my house a lot. I don't ever advertise. People just hear about the fact that I've got an extra bed and bath and they show up.
Is it students? Or families?
Mostly it's students. I have had some families of students who had been with me before. Moore & Van Allen had a German intern, and she lived with me for two months during the fall of the Wall. It was so interesting having her at my house, and then her parents came for a couple of weeks.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
. . . .. you decided to run for judicial office. You ran as a Democrat, I saw. Obviously there were political sentiments there. What was your tie to the Democratic party?
Democrats are traditional values in my family. My father was a Democrat;
my grandfather was a Democrat; my grandmother was a poll worker, very
active in local politics. I grew up in Shelby which had the Shelby
dynasty which was two
You were saying before that if you would have done your pro and con list, you think you may not have gone into it?
I think that there would have been a real likelihood. Make less money,
you're tied to the bench, there's no flexibility. One of the things I
learned in life back when I taught school. I didn't like it that I had
to eat lunch with seventh graders, or that I had to get somebody to
watch my classroom before I could go to the restroom. That just drove my
sense of independence crazy. The only difference with being a judge is,
I do get to decide when everybody goes to the bathroom. So, you have a
lot less daily flexibility. You've got a jury out. You've planned to go
eat lunch with friends, or you've planned to go give a talk somewhere.
You can't go. I mean, there's some real . . . . at least for me, because
I have certain standards about it. It's a very confining position. It's
very lonely, because you can't talk about what you are doing with other
people. I was amazed . . . . everybody told me this would happen, and I
didn't believe it, but it did. People that were lawyer friends of mine
for years treated me differently. Excuse me, they've been friends for
years, treated me differently. In fact, one friend who had given me a
birthday present for fifteen years, we went to lunch and she didn't have
a birthday present for me, and he said, "Well, I was worried somebody
would think I was bribing the judge." I said, "Listen, we're talking
tokens here anyway, and you've given me a present for ten years before I
became judge. I don't think so." And we had a good laugh about it, but
they do treat you different. They want to know what to call you, and my
philosophy about that is when I am in the courtroom, it's your Honor.
The next step is when you went into the hospital, I assume, unless there's something in between that . . . .
You mean this go around where I am now in my life? In November of '94 I
was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and took chemotherapy treatment for
six months. Then went back on the bench that summer. I was out for nine
months or so. This summer my cancer came back, and it has been more
difficult to manage than the first time. But, I am now back on the road
to recovery. What I have learned about cancer is that it is very
individual, and there are very many different treatments for the same
cancer. So, we went through a couple and they didn't do
You talk a lot about the support you've had throughout this. Is it from the bar, is it from friends, community, everyone?
I don't know what I have done in my life, but somewhere along the way
I've touched a lot of people, because the bar . . . . I was sick the
exact same time of year before, November. Max Sasser and Mary Howerton
organized a Christmas carolling to come to my house. It was the most
touching thing that they could have done. I love to sing. I cannot carry
a tune, but if you bring twenty men and about five women into my little
living room anybody can sing. So, they came and seranaded outside, and I
invited them in, and it was just unbelievable. The bar, I guess that was
the year Kathy Thompson was President, at the Christmas party they did a
big poster size card and everybody signed it and brought it. The other
judges and my secretary bring my mail to me. They take care of
everything I need to do. I don't have to worry about work. That's a real
advantage of the way our system is. Since it's not a judge docketed . .
. . we don't have our own dockets. The dockets there and whoever the
judge, whether it's . . . . As somebody said to me "There are a lot of
retired judges looking for work. They're happy to have your seat." I
don't have to worry about work, but mostly the support of coming in,
staying with me. I've lived alone, but I've never been alone and on a
personal level, I guess, from the first go-around, that was the biggest
lesson. That I am not Where the Buffaloes Run, and
Bobby Stone was a very successful insurance salesman, and then he was
diagnosed with kidney cancer. He said, "You know, I didn't build up my
business alone. I did it with a team." So, he sat down and he got out
his roledex and he picked out a hundred people, and sent them a
postcard, and said, "I'm getting ready to have this treatment at Duke,
and I really need your support. Send me cartoons, send me funny pictures
of your kids." Different things like that. So, somebody named his team
along the way the Buffaloes because they had been extinct and came back,
and that was what he was hoping for. Well, I already had a team, but I
didn't have a name. So, the name of my team, and some people won't think
this is funny at all, but I can hardly say it without laughing. The name
of my team is The Fighting Okra. Now the reason for that is that okra is
very important in my family. We are Southern, we love okra. Of course,
we love it fried, but we'll eat it any way. When my sister moved to Hong
Kong, she called back the day after the family reunion. She did not ask
how many ham biscuits were there. She didn't ask how many cakes were
there. She said, "How many
You said that it has definitely increased your sensitivity on the bench. How long were you on the bench after you were diagnosed, and you took time, then you were back on the bench for a little bit of time?
I was back on the bench for almost two years, for exactly two full years.
Did you think that you maybe ruled differently, or is it just viewing the people that come before you differently?
What I like to think is that I was more tolerant at times when I should have been more tolerant, and less patient with people that were just acting like idiots. That's kind of the two sides of it, and I think that's true. I can remember sitting there thinking these people are fighting about this? Come on, let's get a life. So, I ruled pretty quickly and took care of those folks if they were going to act like that. It's my job to do it, but on some other things that I might have been a little less tolerant of for whatever reason, that really needed a little more thought, I like to think I did that.
What do you think your biggest role is as a judge? Obviously there's the daily . . . .
The biggest role a judge has is to assure that everyone gets their day in
court. Absolutely. That is my goal. That's the balance, because you know
we don't have time to let everybody talk forever, but I like to think
that that's something I am pretty good at. I remember one time I had a
murder case. It was a guilty plea. It was a very poignant case. A good
family man who had run a family business for forty five years got shot
and killed at his business. The problem was, the evidence showed that he
may have pulled the gun first on the person who broke in, and therefore
it was going to be a very difficult capital case. It might have even
been self defense. So, the district attorney agreed to a plea. The widow
was
I know you said as a judge you've become very limited in the rules, and what you can and cannot do. What other activities do you do? I know you've come to the school, and you are involved in the mentoring program at UNC.
I do folk dancing, contra dancing, English dancing, Appalachian squares. I go off to what I call adult camp. The particular one I go to is in Brasstown, North Carolina and that's between Murphy and Hazeville for those of you who don't know where Brasstown is. It has about 250 people. I usually go the week after Christmas, from December 26 to January 1. Of course, I won't get to go this year because I'll be taking chemotherapy instead. You go up and stay in dorms and you have home cooked vegetarian meals, live music, and workshops and dancing from 9:00 in the morning until 2:00 a.m. There's also songs. They'll have a session on songs. Crazy things like party games, story telling. So, I have done that for a number of years. Gone to Brasstown to dance at the John C. Campbell Folks School. In fact I'm on their board of visitors. I'm very active with Queens College which is where I went to undergraduate, which is a liberal arts school here in Charlotte. I've been active with them since I've been back in town. I'm on their board, and do a lot of work for them. Those are the only boards I'm on, just for the reason of conflict. I used to be on the YMCA board, but it seems like we were always having some __________ so when my term was up I did not reopt to do that. I do go to the Y to work out, and hiking. Again, (pause in tape which did not return us to this line of thinking.)
Since we are on the subject of the support, and how you have coped, I read that you got involved in meditation, or used meditation.
I had been meditating formally for about a year before I was diagnosed. I
think meditation is a wonderful form of centering of your body, and
getting quiet so that you can do what cancer does for you, and remember
what is important but without having to have cancer. I really used
meditation before I got sick in a trial. I did the second trial of
Calvin Cunningham, who was charged with murder of a police officer and
he had been tried once and overturned and I tried it again in the spring
of `94. It was a very tense trial because Mr. Cunningham wanted to
represent himself in a first degree capital case with a victim being a
police officer. So, I had my work cut out for me, including death
threats to everyone - me, the defendant, the witnesses, everybody. Of
course, I couldn't talk about those out loud, I had to talk to my deputy
and different people and we resolved all that. Mostly, I had to deal
with this unruly person who really was not very smart in the courtroom,
and I had various techniques. One of them was occasionally, I would say,
"Alright ladies and gentlemen," . . . (court's in session, full
courtroom). "Ladies and gentlemen we are going to remain in session. I
do not want anyone to leave the courtroom. However, I need to take a
moment and read this paper that Mr. Cunningham has presented to me, and
I'll ask that you be silent and the deputies are here, and remember the
decorum of the courtroom. I'm just going to take a few minutes and read
these papers." I wasn't going to a bit more read those papers. I knew
exactly what they said. I just needed a few minutes to catch my
I have general questions to ask you about the profession. Is there anything else you want to add about your personal life, or anything that is important to you that maybe I didn't touch on?
I'm sure we have left something out. Everybody does. I do have two yellow
labrador retrievers. We have had four generations in our family, and I
was not a dog person. This is kind of a good little annecdote. Growing
up we had dogs, but
I was going to say I have a real green thumb. I spend a lot of time with my house plants. It's important to me to have a life off the bench. I think it would not be very good for the people of North Carolina to have a judge who did not have a life. I think I have a very full life, and I've enjoyed it, and look forward to a lot more.
Did you have any role models that were judges? When you stepped on to the bench, did you learn from somebody in that realm?
I certainly had a role model from Judge Jones. That model was one of
dignity, and the court system was our way of resolving problems. It's
like people say, it isn't perfect, but there isn't a better way. We
complain about juries sometimes. Sometimes I think juries are crazy. One
of the cases I tried last year, I was pretty surprised at what the jury
did. As far as I'm concerned, it is the best system that we have. I
certainly, as a judge, and I have done plenty of judge trials, bench
trials where they don't want a jury. I'm happy to do that. They are
interesting cases generally, but as a general rule I would want a jury
rather than a judge just because nobody's perfect. I did not have a
mentor. Certainly no woman. Really Judge Jones was the main role model.
Obviously, I spent two years with him. Again, I like to think I took the
best parts of his, which was very much formality and threw in my sense
of humor with it and had my own courtroom. In fact, when I ran for
office, one person was not going to support me because he didn't like
Judge Jones. Thought that he was too conservative, and just thought
anybody who worked for him couldn't be somebody he could support. So, I
sat down and had a talk with this person who had been a long time
acquaintance, and said just what I have said to you. Absolutely I was
influenced by him. Absolutely I think he is a wonderful person, and a
wonderful judge, but I like to think that I am my
How was it when you went even outside of Charlotte, or in Charlotte too, being a women judge? Did you run into disrespect or problems?
I did not run into disrespect partially because in the smaller towns
people are respectful of the judge no matter what the judge looks like.
In Charlotte you get much less respect frankly, and again that's a whole
other . . . . You could spend a whole day on why that may be true, and
what goes on. Partially, because in small towns they only have court a
couple of times a year, and it's a very important event, and people
still come to court to watch. I did have a deputy one day say, "I've
been practicing all weekend what to call you. I've never had a lady
judge before." And I said, "Well, while we are in the courtroom, you can
call me Your Honor." I said, "You can call me maam in the courtroom." I
said, "Outside the courtroom you can call me Judge Jones", because I
didn't know him. He was real cute, and he did great. I've certainly had
lawyers that I think just didn't think having a woman judge was
appropriate, but that didn't last long. That's usually an initial
experience, and then everybody falls into the groove. Particularly when
they realize that I've practiced. The fact that I've practiced in
litigation for a long
I hear you talking about keeping that balance in life. Having a non-lawyer, non-judge life. Would that be your advise to new lawyers, or what other advise might you have?
Well, balance is just the word of the time, and yes I would have that. I think it is very hard for young lawyers. Harder now than it was twenty years ago, and it was pretty hard twenty years ago. I was a workaholic. I can remember one time I worked like sixty days in a row, and one year I worked every holiday except Christmas. I regret that. I don't regret it a whole lot, but if I were doing it again. As one of my friends who is a therapist says that when people come with terminal illnesses nobody ever says I wish I'd spent more time at the office. I think that is certainly true, and I think firms are going to have to acknowledge it. That was kind of a little crusade I had when I was in the firm. I chose to do some stuff in the firm that, what by being on the bar council for one example. I did not have as many available hours and therefore I made less money, but I had a much happier lifetime and I think I was a better lawyer. Now there are some people that truly, that's all they want to do, and if that's what they want to do then . . . . That's the lesson I had to learn, that everybody wasn't like me, and if somebody else wanted to work all the time that I could try to provide opportunities for balance for younger lawyers. Try to provide a mentor that says it's okay to do this. It's okay to take three weeks off if you've already billed X hours, but if they chose not to do it, that's their choice. It doesn't mean that they are bad or wrong, or anything like that. That's a lesson I had to learn.
You said, how you think it's harder now, probably not just for young attorneys. Why do you think it's harder now?
I think it's just the business world. The technology. You'll hear this
from everybody. When I started practicing law they used carbon copies,
and you could talk to somebody and say, "Well, I'll get that letter
out," when you know you hadn't even started it. Now you know what you
are going to say in it, you're not lying, but now it's fax me what you
got or E-mail me what you got. There's no give, there's no everything
now. So, I think technology, if we're not careful, it's going to rule us
rather than us ruling it. I remember the first time Ted Rast, whom you
are going to be working with, I was going backpacking somewhere, maybe
to Nepal, and he said something about taking a flip phone with me. I was
just appalled. Well, since then I almost always, for safety reasons, not
for work, but almost always will take a phone. When we were in Colorado
we had the llamas carry our phone. So, that's the good part, but the bad
part would be if you were sitting up there in Colorado, looking at the
mountains and not seeing them because you were on the phone with your
partner. Again, everybody's different. I had another friend who would
take long vacations, but he had to call the office every morning. He
just said, "Okay, from 9 to 11 I'm going to call the office, and then
we'll go hiking or whatever." It drove me crazy, but he needed to do it.
So, everybody has to make their choice about how they are going to have
balance. I
What do you see . . . . You hear all these things about the change in legal community, about it once being tight net friendly and now it's moved away from that. Is that your impression?
Well, I think size has a lot to do with everything. I think people are very pragmatic. I have a friend, who for years professed that she did not believe in God but she thought that the golden rule was the economic rule that made the world go around, and that you do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. That was the whole basis of world economy basically. My theory is that if I am in a small town and there are ten lawyers, and you and I are against each other on this case, and I need a continuance because my client is sick or just because he acted as a jerk, or because I wanted to go on vacation, that you are going to say okay because next time you're going to need the same from me. So, when you pull away from that, and you are dealing with lawyers in all different towns, and they think you're not ever going to see them again after this little case, they are not inclined to be amenable. I also think clients put more pressure on lawyers with money. I guess that gets down to the root of all evil. The standard of living is very high, and to keep up that standard of living you've got to . . . . . .
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
. . . . about their physical situation, and I know that a lot of young
lawyers come out of school owing large debt. I paid my way through law
school. I taught school for two years beforehand to save money, but both
my husband and I paid our way through law school. I did get a
scholarship to Wake, but still there was no money from any other source.
I was very careful throughout my practice, and again you've heard about
my trips and the fun I've had. I didn't sit around, but I was very
careful to not get in a situation with a lot of debt. The thing I would
say to young lawyers, the number one thing I would say, is never spend
more than you earn. Then, you're not going to get into an ethical
situation where you feel like you might have to do something because of
money. You're not going to get in a situation in the firm where you have
to do something because you feel like you need the money. You can fire a
client. You can leave the law firm. You leave the door open for other
options which I think is all that matters. The fact that you are there
and you're working hard. I think mentally for most people if they are
END OF INTERVIEW