William K. Diehl, Jr. Interviewer: Ryan Smith Place: Charlotte, North Carolina Date: October 6, 1995

INTERVIEWEE: WILLIAM K. DIEHL, JR. INTERVIEWER: RYAN SMITH PLACE: CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA DATE: OCTOBER 6, 1995

Tape 1, Side A

RYAN SMITH: Mr. Diehl, we would just like to begin with your early

childhood. Where were you born?

WILLIAM K. DIEHL, JR: Norfolk, Virginia.

RS: How long did you live in Norfolk?

WD: [I] lived in Norfolk from the time I was born, which was October 4,

1944, which means I just celebrated a birthday two days ago, until 1959 when my

family moved from Norfolk to Kinston, North Carolina, which is in the eastern part

of the state; and [I] went to high school there and graduated from high school in

1962 and [then] I went to Chapel Hill. And when I completed Chapel Hill in 1966,

I went to the University of Virginia Law School in Charlottesville. I got my law

degree there in 1969 and I came to Charlotte to practice law in 1969.

RS: What do you remember about growing up in Norfolk?

WD: Boy, lots and lots of things. I am the oldest of six children. I have

lots of memories of a big family and the things that go along with a big family, the

goods and the bads that happen when you are in a large group of young people. I

remember starting to work when I was twelve years old as a newspaper boy, and I

am either glad or sad to say that I have been working since I was twelve, steadily.

My dad didn't have a lot of money and didn't make a lot of money. We didn't

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. want for the basics or anything like that, but I have pretty much been making my

own way from an economic standpoint for about thirty nine years now. So I have

a recollection of working as a youth: getting up at four o'clock in the morning

delivering newspapers and a good route, collecting once a week the money from

the various customers, and in the midst of all that, developing a relationship with a

girlfriend. That was kind of nice. I would always try to collect at her house when

her parents were out for something, so that I could have a little visit with my

sweetie.

I remember sports. My dad was the sports editor of the newspaper in

Norfolk and so I grew up with an appreciation for sports activity and I played a lot

of sports: football and baseball, and basketball, those being the three things that

were prevalent in those days for young people. [We] didn't have any soccer in the

'50s, and being an average athlete I have a few recollections of moments of glory

but not many. I was always short, white, fat, and slow. And I have retained all

of those characteristics in my adulthood. But I enjoy it. [I] love sports, and to this

day, [I] thoroughly enjoy sports activities. I don't play much sports anymore but

have kept myself active in my law practice in the sports area. And so I vicariously

experience those moments now.

RS: You say that you had a paper route. Was Norfolk a small town at that

time?

WD: No, Norfolk, in my life time, has been relatively a large city and it was

then. [It] certainly seemed big to me. I just went back maybe four weeks ago,

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. took my Mom to a wedding, and it was interesting riding around and seeing the

changes in Norfolk. But Norfolk doesn't feel particularly bigger as a city, certainly

the core of the city is basically the same place. It's much nicer now. They have

modernized it [and have] cleaned up some of the area that was not very attractive

and not very pretty in the '50s. But it was a big city then relative to the state of

Virginia - Richmond and Norfolk being the two cities of any size in that area -- and

so I grew up not as a country boy. I wasn't on a farm or anything like that.

RS: You said you just saw your mother a few weeks ago. Did you have a

close family growing up?

WD: I would say we had a pretty close family. My dad was a person that

because I think of the way his life was and getting into sports from the writing

standpoint, (he) was a competitive person and inspired in us competition; and so

there was a lot of competition going on among our family members, whether it

was football or baseball in the backyard, things like that, or ping-pong, or

whatever it happened to be. There was this winning notion which I am not so

sure how great that was as I look on it from a retrospective standpoint. I didn't

grow up particularly close to my father although I don't have anything bad to say

about him. He was busy. He took me places - to sporting events, things like

that. I was the oldest and I enjoyed all that, but we didn't communicate very well.

I have always had a better personal relationship with my mother.

RS: What did your father do?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: He wrote; he was a writer, a sports writer. And later he had a TV

sports show and a radio sports show. So he was in the media in the area of

sports until 1959. Then when we moved to North Carolina, it was because he

bought a radio station. We were in the radio business for about three years. He

bought, subsequently, three more stations in Florida. Then, my senior year in high

school in Kinston, he was in Florida with these three new stations; and he sold

the station in Kinston and my family moved to Florida when I went to Chapel Hill.

The only time I lived in Florida was in the summer for two of the summers away

from college I was in Florida, one working at one of the radio stations and one

selling clothes which was my other means of making a living after I got out of high

school.

RS: You said you had a close relationship with your mother?

WD: Yes.

RS: Did she work while you were growing up?

WD: No. My mother is legally blind and has been her whole life. She

never had a driver's license. So she was a home maker and a home maker and

never worked outside of the home. Now at age 72 (my dad died two years ago)

she lives in Lynchburg, by herself, very independent surprisingly, doing extremely

well. I am very pleased that she has adjusted to being more independent after

being a dependent person her entire life. I mean, she couldn't go anywhere by

herself because she couldn't get there if she had to drive. I mean, she can walk

places but if it required any distance, she was out of luck.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: How do you think it affected you and your brothers and sisters that she

was home and around all of the time?

WD: I think in a positive way. I am a believer in that -- I like to think of

myself in some areas as a little more liberal than maybe some of my cohorts/

contemporaries, but I am a believer in mothers being home with children, even big

children. It seems to provide a certain sense of stability and nurturing that we all

need even though we think we don't when we are thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen

and know everything and know more than anybody. But the fact [is] it was great

to have her there and she has always been there. So that was good, I think.

RS: How about your grandparents? Did you know your grandparents?

WD: Yeah. I knew all four of them for varying lengths of time. My

granddad on my dad's side was a traveling clothing salesman and I am named

after him. His name was Kase William and my dad was William Kase and I am a

Jr. I have kept the clever tradition going by naming my son William Kase III. But

anyhow, Pappy as we called him, lived a long life and I knew him all of it even to

the time I was married. And I have been married since 1966, which means I am

working on my thirtieth anniversary. So even into my early married life he was

alive. [He] ended up at the Elks Home in Bedford, Virginia, and he was a sprightly,

talkative person, I guess, [from] being a salesman, a clothing salesman. He had a

line and traveled extensively selling, as I understand it, navy uniforms to naval

officers all over the east coast. [He] did a lot of traveling by train and was gone a

lot, apparently. He and my dad were not that close I am given to understand. He

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. drank too much, I am told, and I experienced some of that, not in a bad way; he

wasn't a mean or hateful drunk or anything like that. But he liked his brown liquor

and apparently drank a lot of it for a long time. I can remember him at my

wedding in Wilson, North Carolina in 1966. He was there and we put him in a

room with one of the groomsmen who was an old high school buddy of mine and

[who] liked to party. He and my granddad were drinking bourbon at about 7:30

the morning of the wedding. Ricky Liggett, my friend, said pappy woke him up

and said he was ready for a little eye opener. So that is sort of an interesting

anecdote about a guy who was at that point in his seventies and ready to have a

good time at the wedding weekend.

My grandmother, his wife, died when I was five or six years old of cancer.

She was a gentle woman. Of course, I only knew her for the very small years,

when I was very young. I have a picture of her right this minute, lying in a bed,

very yellow from jaundice, where they lived in an apartment, and driving back

across town to my house [and] my father, I think for the only time that I know of,

crying. That is sort of an interesting recollection to me anyway. I didn't see my

dad cry during my lifetime except [on] that occasion [when] he told me that his

mother was dying. I think he was very close to his mother and I have heard him

express that. But she was gone when I was five, six, or seven or something like

that. So I didn't know her for as long and therefore, not as well.

My grandparents on my mom's side were an interesting couple. My

granddad was very, very, talented as an artist and as a craftsman. He worked at

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. the shipyard, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and built ships, and -- he was [involved] in

the machinery for the ships, making it, and he could do anything with anything,

whether it was wood or metal, he could make it. He didn't buy anything. He

made his own golf clubs, made me golf clubs, made his own fishing rods, made

me fishing rods. He was a tremendous painter. I still have in my office here a

couple of paintings that he did, and he helped teach me to paint. He was a very,

very kindly man and did a lot of things with me. He took me fishing a lot. We

played golf together as I grew up and had an interest in golf, and I did. He and I

and his wife, she didn't play golf, but she would walk with us. They didn't have

money, so we would go to public courses around the Norfolk area and get up early

or late in the day. I spent a lot of time with them. [I] spent a lot of time with my

grandmother. She was a great cook and seemed to have a particular affection for

me, apparently, when I was very small, when I was born in '44. So World War II

was winding down and my dad had joined the merchant marine because he

couldn't get in the service because of a bad leg. So he was gone as a merchant

marine person. I lived with my grandmother, that grandmother, and I think she

continued to have a liking for me. So I have a lot of fond memories crammed

somewhere into the back of my skull of being at her house, in trees, neat places,

hide outs. They had a garage that he had built himself that had all sorts of nooks

and crannies, and places where games were, and all of his machine shop, and I

was constantly in wonderment there. They lived close to the railroad tracks and I

have memories of trains going by and the sound of the train whistles late at night

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. [and] taking baths in the old-timey bathtub that they had upstairs. At various

times on a lot right next door that they owned (to their house) my granddad had a

golf course, a strawberry patch, a complete garden. I mean, whatever he wanted

to do from season to season, he would do it. It was very magical, so it was a

great place for me to go. On this trip I mentioned four or five weeks ago, when I

took my mom back to a wedding in Norfolk, we went there to that house. It, of

course, has been sold and somebody had put siding up in place of the cedar

shakes that were on the side, and the lot where the golf course and the

strawberry patch was is now another house. But the garage was there. It was

very nostalgic to see it all, and have all those memories come rushing back to you.

RS: Did all of your brothers and sisters spend a lot of time with your

grandparents?

WD: Well, yes and no. This grandmother was alive when I left Norfolk as

was this grandfather, and my dad's mom had already died. I am trying to

remember exactly where my dad's father was when we left Norfolk in '59, and I

am not sure I recall. But the older of my younger brothers and sisters spent time

with these grandparents more than the younger kids. I have a brother who lives in

Charlotte now, who is my youngest brother, and he is sixteen years younger than

me and he wasn't born until we got to North Carolina. And then the other ones

were small enough that I don't think they have really a recollection of spending a

lot of time with my grandparents as much as I do.

RS: So you basically had the playground to yourself?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: Oh it was, yeah, yeah. I have a sister two years behind me, so she

got a lot of grandparents' time in, too, I am certain.

RS: Do you think that their being around so often formulated and helped

you in a lot of areas that you developed over the years?

WD: Well, I am a believer in about everything that we do everyday having

some impact on tomorrow, so it would be hard to say no. I think my granddad

definitely had an influence on me, my mom's dad, Pappa as we called him, on

things that have to do with working with your hands and trying to be a mechanic.

I got into sailing in [the] mid 70s, and learning to fix engines when you are 250

miles out in the Atlantic Ocean was not something that I was trained to do, but it

was something he could do. So I had a little bit of interest and a little bit of

experience in working with things like that. And art; I don't [do] much now but I

have done some drawing and painting, and he had an influence in that area. [He]

taught me how to work oils, taught me how to work watercolors, taught me how

to work acrylics, so I would certainly credit him for that. Neither my mother or my

father were that interested in any of that type of stuff.

My granddad was interested in golf and I played a lot of golf when I was, I

guess really until I got out of college. I was on the golf team and I think my

granddad really took the time with me to help me in that area. I give him some

credit. My grandmother was a great cook for country cooking, but my mom was

a pretty good country cook too, so I am not sure which way that cuts. My

granddad on my dad's side: I got into clothing business, which is what he was in.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. He was always real pleased that I did that, but I am not sure that I give him credit

just because I ended up doing it as a way to make some money while I was in

school. He didn't really get me all fired up to be a clothing salesman or anything

like that.

RS: Norfolk is kind of a military town. You say you have some military

connections with your grandfather and your father. Did you ever entertain any

ideas of being in the military or doing anything involved, or maybe your brothers or

sisters?

WD: Sort of interesting about the military. I never had any real interest in

it, per se. I grew up being aware of it because it was there, at the naval base

there, and I was influenced by the Korean War to the extent that we had (as a

young man, young boy) in the early 50s, soldiers -- little teeny soldiers that we

played soldiers with and played war ourselves, based on what we saw on

television or in the movies. Television was just starting then, too, I didn't think

much more about the military until I was graduating from Chapel Hill and we were

in Vietnam, and I was worried about my student deferment being pulled as I went

to law school. And, you know, it never did. Various things happened, and I was

one of those that was not called.

Retrospectively about that, I tend to regret that I didn't go. I have a brother

who went to West Point and who was a tank commander in the Iraqi conflict, and

I am very envious of his experience. I was scared to death for him but I watched

that relentlessly while it went on. It was really our first television war, even more

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. than Vietnam was, because they let it be and we had all of those intricate cameras

that either the planes or the tank people had. So as another vicarious experience,

he was very successful. His group went out and went after the red guards on the

way to Baghdad and got stopped when the conflict ended. So, I wished I had

gone. I am too old now and that will be something . . . and had I had to go, I'd

probably have been as upset as anybody who had to go, and who knows what

would have happened. But [it was] something that didn't happen, that I would

have liked to have known how I would have reacted, what it would have been

like, that kind of curiosity I will always have.

RS: Have you spoken to your brother about it?

WD: Oh, at some length. Yeah. I gave him a big party at Wild Dunes

when he got back and had all my family brought down, all brothers and sisters,

and my mom and my dad were alive, well my dad was alive, and had them down

and we had a big reunion. We had a couple of late nights with some Jager

Meister, learning all about his exploits, and it was interesting, very interesting.

RS: Did it seem to affect him in a positive way? And I know war does not

necessarily always.

WD: Yeah, I think it did. He handled it pretty well. He has got two young

children that he had to leave and I think that part of it he didn't like, missed them.

But [he] seems very devoted to the army and to the mission that they had, and he

is making this a career. He has just gotten some other appointment which will

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. allow him to go on to the next step. He is a, I want to say a lieutenant colonel, if

that is the step above major and before full colonel.

RS: My father went to West Point, also.

WD: He's before being a brigadier .... general; he has just been

appointed to the war college, which I am told is a required step to keep going.

RS: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, isn't it?

WD: I am not sure where. He is right now in Seattle, but he has just

gotten the appointment and I don't know where the war college is. I know he is

going and he is real excited.

RS: That is interesting. You said he started working early on as a paper

boy?

WD: Yeah.

RS: Was that something that your parents instilled in all of your brothers

and sisters, working?

WD: Yeah, pretty much. We were not given things. My dad did it different

than I did when I had children, and I didn't like it at the time but I did it. I lived in

a neighborhood, a nice neighborhood relatively speaking, not a fancy

neighborhood but I tried to keep up with the proverbial Joneses and wanted to

have the right shoes and the right khakis. I can remember Weejuns being

something that I wanted - when they were only $14.95, and to do that I needed

to have a job, because my folks didn't have the money. So I got this job as a

paper boy and I made pretty good money. You know, I would have a hundred

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. bucks in my pocket every week that a lot of people didn't have. And [I] worked

that job all through ... I guess until I left Norfolk, which was the end of the ninth

grade. When I got to North Carolina, we had this little radio station, so I became a

disc jockey; and I worked all three years that I was in Kinston as a DJ and I

enjoyed that. [I] got a real interest in music, which has persisted until this day.

[INTERRUPTION IN TAPE]

WD: Where were we?

RS: I think we were talking about your first job working.

WD: Yeah, yeah. So I did disc jockey work in Kinston and had a big time --

became Willie KD. I started off doing weekends and nights and then I started

doing the morning show, because I could do that and still play sports. I played, by

the time I got to high school, the basketball playing days came to a screeching

halt, as it became apparent the need for 5 foot 8, 180 lb. guard is just not -- I was

in a town where we were in the state championship two years in a row, my

sophomore and junior year. We had kids getting scholarships to colleges that

were really good players. But I played baseball and I played football. And I could

sandwich my working those sports required afternoon activities so I would get up

about 4:30 or 5:00 and I would go in and I would do the morning show until 8:30

or whenever school started and then I would go to school. Then I would work on

weekends and I made, you know, I always had whatever extra money I needed

then as a result of that. And when I went to college I got a job at, initially, a place

called Varsity Men's Wear, [who] had a store in Raleigh, across the street from

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. State [N.C.S.U.] on the main drag there and [also] had a store in Chapel Hill. Then

the next year I went to work for Milton's, and Milton's Clothing Company became

my home for two years. I made a lot of money, relatively speaking, working in the

rag business.

RS: You said that you didn't do that for your children as far as your father

and the work ethic.

WD: Right. I gave them everything they wanted and didn't require them to

work at all. If they worked, they did it because they wanted to make, you know

do some extra stuff or they liked it. My son turned out enjoying the clothing

business and for a number of years, high school and then summers from college,

would work at a nice clothing store here called Tailor Richards Concord, and it had

some earlier names but it is their store now. So, but he didn't have to.

RS: Is that a philosophy?

WD: Yeah, it was intentional. I am not sure that it was a good idea now

that I look back on it. I didn't want either one of them to have to work [when]

going to college. I spent a lot of time working in college. I look back on my

academic years and I think I missed out on a lot of stuff that I would have liked to

have taken advantage of, the extra things that happen on college campuses,

whether it is lectures or plays or events, school activities outside of going to class

like student government, stuff like that. I just didn't have time for that, and so I

intentionally provided enough financial support to my children [so] that they didn't

have to do [what I did]. They didn't have to work . . . and [they] didn't work. I

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. am not sure they took advantage of any of those things that I had hoped they

would take advantage of.

RS: Did you work this hard for this kind of money to support yourself or

was this for extra spending money?

WD: Well, I paid my way through Chapel Hill and I paid my way through

the University of Virginia, and I never got a dime from my parents in that respect.

So I was on my own; when I left high school, I was on my own. I mean, I was

welcome to come home and I had a bed to sleep in and they always gave me food

when I got there, but I didn't get any money. If I wanted to go to college, I had to

pay for it.

RS: Were you the first person in your family to go to college?

WD: Yeah. I was the oldest. Well, my dad went to college.

RS: Where did he go to school?

WD: William and Mary, although he didn't get his degree. Somehow or

another, the war intervened and he stopped and he didn't go back. He got his

degree later in life after I had finished college. He went back. At the point that I

was at law school in Virginia, he was in a place called Monmouth, New Jersey at

a newspaper there, and he went to Monmouth College and got his degree. So he

ended up with a college degree and before he died he ended up teaching

journalism at Marshall University. So sort of interesting, but anyhow that is not

what you asked me.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: That's all right. And your mother, did she help you with your

education? I know that she had a handicap, but did she help you in other areas

that you felt . . .

WD: No. I mean she may have helped me with some homework sometimes

but Mom's role was mom. [She gave] emotional support, physical support to the

extent that she could, but she wasn't someone that was really helping along with

the educational process per se, I don't think.

RS: So the family moved to North Carolina in Kinston when your father

bought the radio stations?

WD: 1959, one station in Kinston. They were there two years, and then

my dad was in Florida my last year in high school with these three stations, and

we hadn't sold the one in Kinston which was sold during that year. So when the

year was up, when I graduated, the family moved to a place called New Smyrna

Beach, Florida, and they were there for three years.

RS: That is where my grandmother lives.

WD: Well, maybe your grandmother knows my dad and mom, but they

were there. We lived on Riverside Drive in New Smyrna Beach, right on the water

and the radio station was across a little bridge on a little island in the middle of the

Indian River -- I think it is called Radio Island. And the radio station was W-O-R-T,

wort -- a great name for a station. We called it "Big-0 Radio." I worked as a DJ

there the first summer I was out of college and enjoyed that - about the time the

Beatles were really making it big in 1962 and '63. The second summer I was

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. down there, I did part-time work for the station and I sold clothes because I had

been in a clothing store in Chapel Hill that year (I worked at the Varsity). I went

and got my own job in Daytona Beach at a clothing store. So I did that during the

day and I helped out at the station at night as a DJ and on weekends - my two

jobs.

RS: Interesting job growing up as a teenager working at a radio station?

WD: Oh, it was great and I still have this great affection for rock 'n roll and

music, and I think that is where it got started. I don't know how you start that

anyway other than somehow or another know you are interested in it, but I got

interested in it because it was the family business and then I just kept my interest

alive in it. In recent years I have produced two albums for two different groups

and have my own label and all that kind of stuff. So I am keeping my finger in the

music pie even today.

RS: How did your father go from the journalism and the writing aspects into

the radio station?

WD: Well, they are very similar, and I think [that] he always wanted to

have something of his own, wanted to be his own boss and always wanted to

make more money than he made and this was an opportunity. He didn't pull it off,

ultimately. He didn't make any money, he lost money, he lost the stations. But, it

was something that he felt like he had to try and he tried it and didn't ultimately

pan out, and then he went back into the journalism, which is how he finished his

career.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: You said that your dad was a sports editor involved in sports. Did that

go on not just to you but all your brothers and sister?

WD: Yeah, pretty much, more brothers than sisters. I know that the

brother that I was telling you about, that went to West Point, wrestled, played

football in high school. [He] didn't play football at West Point, although he could

have. He was a big guy; he is the one six-footer that we have in the family. His

height goes with his weight, as opposed to most of us are short and our weight is

for somebody a lot taller. But I have a brother, my oldest younger brother was

interested in sports. - played lacrosse, played football. My youngest brother, the

one who is in Charlotte here, is a tennis player and runner, so he had an interest in

sports. I think we all like all kinds of sports and have varying degrees of skill in

one or two.

RS: Have all your brothers and sisters stayed relatively within this

geographic region so that you can all still get together and maintain [your

relationships]?

WD: Right now we are all in the same area. That [hasn't always] been the

case. I have a sister who was in Florida, then she was in Colorado, then she was

in Arkansas, then she was in Houston; and recently she has come back living in

Arlington or Alexandria. And I have a brother who was out in Colorado but he is

[now] in Fredericksburg. I have a sister in Fredericksburg, now. Jimmy, the

brother who is in the army, has been - I mean he has been everywhere. He has

been in Germany, he has been in Fort Stewart, Georgia. He has been in the

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. middle of the country - let me see, what is the name . . . Fort Knox, Kentucky,

and then near Kansas City, and now he is in Seattle. So he has moved around a

bit.

RS: Back on the sports thing for a second. Do you think that you learned a

lot from sports that have maybe transcended into other areas of your life?

WD: Well, I think this competition thing that my daddy started with me has

carried over into what I do for a living, which is try law suits, which is competition

to the max. I have to sort of watch myself from being too competitive about too

many things. I mentioned that I got into sailing a few years ago. I liked it because

it was quiet and peaceful and relaxing, in addition to being a lot of hard work, and

I found myself having to back away from wanting to beat everybody that I see on

the water. You know, you see another boat going in the same direction, you have

this tendency ~ this competition [that] makes you want to beat him there, and I

have to resist that.

RS: Do you remember any early examples of when your father helped to

instill that in you? How it came about?

WD: I can remember crying and fighting. We played this game we called

"The Passing Game" and Dad was the passer. And I would be playing with a

friend or friends and we would take turns; you had four downs to score. So he

would throw the ball, we would run a pattern, and you would defend it and try to

break up the play, or if you were on the offensive, catch the pass. I can

remember some horrible times losing and really being outrageously mad over

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. losing; and I have similar recollections of playing him in ping-pong and losing and

crying and throwing the paddle. So there is just this feeling that I can recall of not

wanting to lose anything. And I am not sure that that is all bad, but taken to the

extreme, it is certainly not all good. But, it is, you know, part of my makeup. I

deal with it. I get older. I am getting a little softer, not quite as crazy about it.

Being a lawyer, you pretty quickly learn that if you are going to get in the

arena and try a lawsuit, you are going to lose some cases. Jury is going to come

out and not going to look at you and is going to slam dunk you from time to time.

So I don't like it, but I have certainly learned the reality of it and I adapt to it. The

other thing about competition that is good is that it pushes you to do the best you

can do, which is what helps you accept losing when you know you have done a

good job. Facts are going to beat you in our business from time to time, not how

good you are or bad the other guy is. Bad lawyers are going to win cases against

you because the facts are with them and that is how cases largely are decided on:

what are the facts; how do the facts play themselves settles out. I have also

found that working hard is going to win me my fair share cases that I shouldn't

have won because I work harder than any lawyer that I know. Still, you get some

things, things happen, because you were more prepared, you read more, you

studied more, you have looked longer, and you have found the one case that they

didn't find, you found the one witness that was right there - nobody else turned

him up.

RS: That competition must have presented some sibling rivals though.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: Yeah, there were some battles among us. I was fortunate in that as

the oldest, I was also the biggest until I left home. So when I left home at

eighteen, my oldest brother was - I want to think Freddie is six years behind me -

so I had a twelve year old. I could still beat him up, and Jimmy, who turned out

to be the monster, would have been ten, and I could still handle him. And Danny

was two, so I was king of the mountain. Then I would come back home over the

years and they were all getting bigger. So now it turns out that I am the widest,

but I wouldn't want to fight any of them. I think all three of them could whip my

ass if I got into a fist-fight. So, I am now the diplomat. I am the elder statesman

and a diplomat; I control them with my mouth and not my body.

RS: As the oldest, do you see yourself as a mentor to them?

WD: To my youngest brother, yes; to the others, no. I am perceived,

because I have been successful, as being successful, and I think they admire that.

They are impressed that I have become a successful attorney and I have "things"

that they don't have. I am sure that is impressive to some degree. And I do

things for them.

Tape 1, Side B

RS: We were talking about you being a mentor. Actually, just finishing.

WD: Yeah, I don't see myself as much of a mentor to them except maybe

[to] my youngest brother, who is here and I see him a lot. I am the take charge

person of our family.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Being the oldest did you have a mentor that you looked up to growing

up and that kind of helped you lead the way?

WD: Not really. No adult sticks in my mind. I mean, the closest would be

my father, with whom I had this somewhat unusual relationship. I would certainly

give him credit for much of what I am, including a lot of my bad traits - my

sometimes short temper and yelling. I tend to yell loudly when I am frustrated and

angry. I don't want to admit that I am yelling; I tell people that I talk loudly - it is

not yelling. I yell ... I yell that I am not yelling, that I am just talking loudly! But

I close my eyes and say, "Who is your mentor?" I don't get a picture of anybody.

I feel fairly self-made to tell you the honest truth, and I don't feel like I'm

"menting" to my brothers and sisters particularly. I feel like I have "mented", if that

is a word, to a lot of lawyers in my law firm (that has grown from six people,

when I started here in '69, to twenty-three lawyers today, and fifty or sixty staff

people). I feel like I have spent large amounts of time helping, teaching, showing

by example those people how to be a lawyer, or person, or whatever it was we

were doing.

RS: You said you and your father didn't have a very close relationship.

Were the experiences that you had combative in that you said you learned a lot of

your temper from him?

WD: Yeah, he was physically active. I don't accuse him of child abuse

because I never thought about it that way, but some might. I mean, his method of

dealing discipline was to knock the hell out of you, and I got the hell knocked out

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. of me a time or two. As I got older, I resisted that and we had some literal fights.

I can remember being a junior or senior in high school and him coming at me and

me just not taking it, swinging back, and that is a trait that if you experience it,

and if you find yourself . . . Most children I think do this: they tend to "image"

their parents in many respects, and I had to a deal with that when I had children,

deal with nol smacking the hell out of somebody as a means of having them do

what I wanted them to do. And it took me a long time not to do that. I mean I

did it; I actually whacked a few kids along the way and don't like it, didn't like it

when I did it, but I did it.

RS: Do you feel a lot of resentment for that?

WD: I don't know. I have a very close relationship with both of my

children, I think. We still hug. I have a twenty-five year old very heterosexual son

that I love deeply, and when we see each other, we don't shake hands. We don't

touch each other gently; we give each other a big hug. And if he is home

sleeping in my bed - his bed in my house, I mean - I think nothing of going in and

crawling in bed beside him, and rubbing his back, and rubbing his head, even

though he is twenty-five years old. So I am very much involved with both of my

children. My daughter is twenty-two and doing her fifth year of study, although

she has her degree, and I am still hugging her. But, I have whacked both of them

and it took me awhile to realize that I was doing exactly what I didn't like about

my dad. And as they got older, I stopped. I don't think I did it in their adolescent

years, but there were some early spankings that I thought were okay and now that

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. I look back on them I am not real sure that I agree with that. I wish I hadn't done

that.

RS: Do you remember any specific reason why your father [spanked you]?

WD: No. It would be something that I had done something that he thought

was wrong and his method of dealing with it was to beat the hell out of me.

RS: You said your grandfather liked to drink. Did your father also?

WD: No, no. I have never seen my father, ever, have too much to drink

and I rarely remember him having anything to drink. So it is real interesting.

Drinking was never an issue in my home. My mother didn't drink, neither did my

dad.

RS: Do you think that was a result of possibly his father drinking?

WD: I don't know, I don't know whether he thought that or not. He

wasn't a teetotaler; occasionally he would have a beer or something, but he

didn't drink. That would be basically the way I would describe his drinking habits,

nonexistent. My mother, as she has gotten older, seems to enjoy a cocktail. On

this last trip, after the first night of the "wedding do", we went back to a our hotel

room and I bought her a little bourbon, because that is what she likes, and I

bought myself a little scotch. And I found that we were having whiskey shots at

12:00 at night with my 72 year old mommy who can't see. We were having a

ball. That was great. She said she slept better; I don't know. I know I did.

RS: Usually helps.

WD: Yeah.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: When you moved to Kinston, you moved there for your high school

years, so you were just going into high school?

WD: Going into the tenth grade.

RS: How did the move affect you?

WD: Great. I became a big fish in a little pond and I loved Kinston. That is

one thing that I have mixed feelings about as I have grown up as an adult in

Charlotte and raised my children here. It has been my home and it is a city. It

doesn't feel like a big city to me, because I have always thought of it as kind of

just sprawled and was just a big town, and I am not sure that it isn't. But to other

people, this is a big city, and I don't feel that way. And when I left Kinston, I

wanted to go back to a place where you went to the high school football game on

Friday night even as an adult. You were interested in what was going on in the

town, and you focused on the town, and if the town had a festival you

participated. Kinston was unique in that respect for me, because Norfolk was big

and Charlotte is big, and I loved Kinston. I still have great feelings for eastern

North Carolina, [and] like going back there when I have an excuse to go [but]

don't have many. There is only one person there that I would call when I go but I

still have real good feelings about that place and life at that pace and [am] sorry I

didn't get a chance to experience that as an adult. I might not have liked it. I

probably wouldn't have been able to do the things that I have been able to do as a

lawyer, but I might be a happier person, I don't know. But I loved Kinston. I

thrived there. I was a good student and you know, I was president of the senior

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. class, president of the High Wide, [was] on the student government, and co-

captain on the football team and was a [member of the] letter jacket club,

whatever we call the K Club, catcher on the baseball team. I was a big shot on

campus.

RS: Don't forget Willie KD.

WD: Willie KD, disc jockey - girls would come up and want me to play a

song for them that evening. I'd dedicate records - "Take a Message to Mary," the

Everly Brothers. So yeah, I liked it.

RS: You think that being a big fish in a small pond helped to a get a lot of

confidence in going off to college?

WD: Yeah, and in Chapel Hill it was the reverse. I became a small fish in a

big pond and I didn't have any money. So I started off with a job waiting tables,

[telephone rings] What were we saying?

RS: I think we were talking about confidence going off to Chapel Hill.

WD: Yeah. I got to Chapel Hill and didn't have any money and had a job

working as a waiter at one of the school lunchrooms, at that time, the Monogram

Club. I had to a get up at the crack of dawn; I was on the breakfast shift. I

wasn't there on an athletic scholarship, wasn't going to play any major sports,

and couldn't join a fraternity because I had a small scholarship. In those days

"need scholarships" came with the requirement that you couldn't be in a fraternity.

And so I had a girlfriend that I was all madly in love with - this little girl in Kinston

- and so I felt, I felt very small - very small in a very big place. I mean, Carolina

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. was big and that sort of stayed with me all through Carolina. I ended up working

the whole time as I mentioned earlier. [I] went from the Monogram Club to the

Varsity Men's Wear and subsequently to Milton's. So I developed this work ethic,

well part of a work ethic, but actually I mean my work schedule was such that I

was going to class, going to work, study, go to class, go to work, study, that type

of thing. So I didn't really ultimately feel overwhelmed by Chapel Hill because I

was so busy but not related so much to Carolina as it related to my own schedule.

I later did a little end-run around the scholarship deal and joined a fraternity, and

that probably provided me [with] a little better relationship with classmates and so

forth.

I didn't drink either. This is another interesting thing for me. I never

touched alcohol until I was a sophomore at Chapel Hill. I never drank at high

school, I am not sure why but I just never did. And a lot of the kids that did drink,

they drank beer. I just never had a desire to drink, so I never did. Then I went to

Chapel Hill and my girlfriend had written me a "Dear Bill" letter that summer, and

so I went back to Chapel Hill ready to party, and I did my sophomore year. I made

the first "F" I've ever made and found myself having about as good of a time as

you could have five or six or seven nights a week playing and working. My

grades were not as good my sophomore year, particularly with that "F."

RS: Do you think you didn't drink because it wasn't part of your household

growing up?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: I am sure that is one of the reasons, but I played sports and I just

didn't think I should drink, so I didn't. I didn't smoke. I still have never smoked a

real cigarette ever in my life. I don't know why. Both my children smoke, my

mom smokes. My mom smokes four packs a day at seventy-two and is told she is

very healthy. But I've never smoked a cigarette; I have no desire to even now.

So I was pretty much a straight, clean kind of person until my sophomore year,

and then I fell off the wagon big time. I drank a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon that

year, as I recall. And I see that they are back. I had me a PBR, I don't know, a

year ago that I found down in Charleston. I've been reacquainting myself with

Pabst ever since.

RS: So the transition going to Chapel Hill was a tough transition? While

you were going through school, you worked a lot...

WD: Yeah, tough to begin with in the sense that Chapel Hill seemed so big.

Ultimately it worked out fine because my own schedule was such that I spent as

much time in my "working career" as I did in my "going to school" career, and

Chapel Hill didn't seem so awesome. And then as I said, I did this fraternity thing

after ... I was a social affiliate first, and then it was [in] my junior year when I

became officially a member. By that time, I had been there three years, and knew

the ropes, and Chapel Hill didn't seem quite so big any more.

RS: What was your interest and major?

WD: Political science but you know, that was by default. I didn't know

what the hell I wanted to be or do. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. finished. I thought that I might want to go to law school, and I got in Virginia;

and I was so pleased that I got in Virginia that I went. So, well, I didn't know

where it would take me, what I would do with it.

RS: Talking about your decision to go to law school, is there anything up

until that point that had ever piqued your interest in law school?

WD: No, no. I mean I knew I could talk. I knew I could think on my feet,

but beyond that - I had been in a play once in high school, "The Night of January

The 16th," which is a thriller that the audience [participates in]: you put a jury

from the audience in the jury box. The play is this trial of who killed this person,

and then the jury votes from the audience. Yeah, I was the defense lawyer. How

they vote determines your lines at the end of the play, whether you have won or

lost.

RS: Did you get them off?

WD: I won both nights. It should have been a good sign.

RS: See that competitive streak was still going back then.

WD: Yeah.

RS: You joined a fraternity in college. Did any of those relationships mean

something special that has kept on to this day?

WD: Yeah, I have got some good friends from those days. Probably my

best friend from those days is now the head of the department of psychiatry at the

University of South Carolina Medical University. And I stay in touch with him. I

stay in touch with half a dozen of those people that were people that I played

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. pretty hard with and had a good time with. I look back on that crowd as a pretty

good group of people, ATO.

RS: What was it like going to college in the early '60s?

WD: It was great. It was pre-drugs. I graduated from law school and had

never seen marijuana. To the best of my knowledge, never knew it, didn't really

appreciate it. I wonder how naive I must have been. I mean, it was really crazy

from 1962 to 1969, four years at Chapel Hill, three years at Charlottesville. I

mean, drugs didn't really permeate my group. My brother, not too many years

behind me, I mean they were in the middle of pot, LSD, you name it -- it was really

crazy. I feel like I was in the last group, sort of, we were into the Temptations

and the Four Tops, and the Hot Nuts were popular when I was there. They were

young men, not the old farts that they are today.

RS: They are still popular.

WD: Yeah, I went back for a thirtieth reunion in '92 and they played. They

sounded just like they sounded thirty-years ago. They don't look like they looked

thirty years ago, but they sounded the same. But anyhow, it was a real

interesting era. It was a Vietnam era of people going off to Vietnam and all of

that. But for the kids that were there, my group, it was a very naive kind of

period, I think, that sobered up in a hurry when you, or changed in a hurry, by

1969, 1970 or 1971. It was a whole different atmosphere that I saw when I

came to Charlotte to live.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Being a political science major during that time must have been

extremely interesting based upon all that was going on with JFK.

WD: Yeah, yeah. Of course, I was at school when he was shot. I

remember, like everybody, I remember exactly where I was.

RS: Where was it?

WD: I was on Franklin Street, getting ready to go to the Varsity Men's

Wear. We ran next door to a little place called Jake's, down near the Varsity

Movie Theater on Franklin Street, [that] had a TV set, black and white TV set,

over the screen and we all went running down there to see what we could see.

RS: That must have been a big shock for a college campus at that time.

WD: Oh, it was awful, awful. He was a very charismatic person as I recall,

and the stories that evolved about him later, the womanizing and all that, really

have done little to change his charisma that you remembered if you experienced.

It was so great. I mean Kennedy was such a dynamic leader and he inspired

feelings about your country and your government, and it was a very nationalistic

kind of approach to be a leader that I don't think we have seen since. It is

interesting: Clinton has some because of his age and demeanor, has some qualities

that are "Kennedy-esque" qualities, but he doesn't pull it off. And his foibles have

been so pronounced and so discussed that he is hard to take for real as somebody

that you can get inspired to lead your country. Kennedy didn't have any of that. I

mean he didn't have those problems at that time. So it was interesting. That,

too, was Camelot. It was an interesting era.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Speaking of that, I read an article actually by that Polly Paddock in the

Charlotte paper where you described yourself as a leftover from the '60s.

WD: Yeah.

RS: Did you really take this period to heart?

WD: Well I still . . .my wife says, she says you look in the mirror and you

are twenty and you weigh 160 and that is what you think you see, and maybe she

has got something. I still like the music from that era. I like the feelings from that

era. There is not much you can do about it, being a leftover from the '60s. I

mean, other than saying it, and going home and putting some Crosby, Stills and

Nash on, that is about all you can do - because it is gone. I mean, it is time past.

But I do feel that way.

RS: A time well remembered.

WD: Yeah. Yeah. It was a good period. We didn't seem to have the

divisiveness. Then the Vietnam War hit, and by the end of that period we were

killing each other, Kent State, having a real terrible time with the guys coming

home from Vietnam, and dealing with Lyndon Johnson. A lot of bubbles were

burst.

RS: Did you develop a lot of your political ideology during that time?

WD: Such as it is. What it did to me was make me very apolitical. I have

not been a very political person. I have chosen to take on the establishment as a

lawyer. I have sued the government and so my role has been more in that

capacity than going out and getting active in politics. About as active as I get in

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. politics is that if I like somebody that is running, I'll send them money. I am not

going to call anybody up on the telephone to speak of, and I am not going to be

out driving signs in people's yards. That is not me. So, I selectively send some

money to people that I think would be worthwhile candidates for whatever they

are running, but that is about it.

RS: One another topic, was religion a big part of your family?

WD: Interesting, I was a Catholic growing up and I sort of ended that by

the time I left high school and have been a non-religious member, of any type, for

thirty-plus years. I just don't go to church.

RS: Is that a conscious decision?

WD: Absolutely, [I] enjoy my Sundays. When I had children, [I] enjoyed my

time with them. [I] just never have thought that religion was very legitimate. I

have seen so many people that I thought either as preachers or as people that

went to church, they went for the wrong, my judgment, wrong reasons. They

look to see and to be seen on Sunday, and you are there because you are

supposed to be there as opposed to because you are really getting something out

of it.

RS: Was your family very religious growing up?

WD: My mom was. My dad didn't go to church but of course, my mom

was Catholic so we all went to church. It was mandatory and some of my family

members have maintained their Catholic ties and others haven't. Sort of about

fifty-fifty. My mom is still religious, still goes to church. In fact, that was the

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. highlight of our trip to Norfolk, four weeks ago. We ended up going to the

Catholic church that I went to when I was in the first grade. And I went to a

Catholic school in the first grade. It is now a black Catholic church in downtown

Norfolk, and we went to Mass Sunday morning, and it was the damnedest thing I

had ever seen. I mean it was so changed. No more Latin, and no more kneeling,

and no bells ringing, and no incense; black choir, hallelujah chorus type thing, and

hooting and hollering. It was just a whole different program. I thoroughly enjoyed

it. They passed the offering thing and I pulled out a twenty dollar bill, and my

mom said, "How much are you putting in there?" And I said, "It's a twenty." She

said, "A twenty dollar . . . what are you doing?" I said, "Mother, this has been

worth it. This entertainment has been worth it to me. I feel like twenty is cheap.

It has been a whole lot better than a production." But it was interesting. But

religion has never done that much for me. I have too many questions about the

bonafides of the people that are doing it and the bonafides of the, that is - the

ones that are talking down to you, and the crowd that is listening. I am not sure

where I shake out on that.

RS: Do you feel that religion or the idea of some taught by religion enter

this profession a great deal?

WD: Oh yeah, morals. Morals is what's right, now they call that the

Judeo-Christian ethic, I think - [it] pervades the law. So while I don't consider

myself very religious, I want to a think of myself as ethical. I don't always live up

to that either, but I think I know what is right and wrong, and to that degree I am

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. influenced by religion. The older I get, the better I am about that, about

recognizing right and wrong, and following courses, and doing/conducting yourself

in a way that you are comfortable with from a moral standpoint.

RS: Sounds like there is some learned lessons along the way?

WD: Oh, boy.

RS: Any specific ones that you can remember that were really meaningful

to you this day?

WD: I left my marriage for a year, and that was a very troubling

experience. I am very traditional about things, the long hair and the rock'n roll not

withstanding. I am pretty much of a traditional person, about family particularly. I

had reached the point where I was ready to make a change, I thought. A

precursor to that was an affair, which is from the standpoint if you are completely

ethical, I mean, it is 180 degrees from being completely ethical. If you are

stepping out on somebody that is your wife . . . and all the time protesting what

an ethical person you are, there is something inconsistent with all that and that

was a troubling reality. Always will be. Sort of interesting how we place that part

of our morals - like it is in a little container all by itself. Your relationship with

women is sort of like, "Okay, it doesn't count." It is over here, you are over here,

you are this great ethical person: John Kennedy and Bill Clinton, "We are moral,

we are leaders."

I heard Pierre Salinger the other day talk about, almost a real advocate for,

the old school, like it's okay. Of course, it isn't if you are being truly ethical, truly

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. honest, and that kind of thing has troubled me. Not that I wouldn't do everything

if I had my life to do all over again, I would probably make a lot the same mistakes

I made, because I have enjoyed them even though from some standpoint they

were wrong. But if you put me in a place where I am supposed to decide, "Well,

is that proper?" my vote is no, I shouldn't have done that. But, you know, it is an

educational process, it is a social process, it's a maturing process. By the time

you get through it all, you are dead. That's the unfortunate reality and it troubles

me as I look back on it. I hurt some people, hurt myself. I don't like that.

RS: Do you think it has helped make your marriage stronger since you have

gotten back together with her?

WD: Yeah. We have been back together now five years. She is a great

woman. She ain't a perfect woman, but she is a great woman. She has just

made judgements of what is important and decided, "I am going to run this

course," and I got to a point where I decided what is important and I ran another

course. And that was inconsistent with what was right as you look back on it.

So I am trying to run the right course at this point. I am comfortable. I sleep well

at night. I am probably not as mischievous as I once was, but I am fairly content

with my life.

RS: Do you think it had an effect on your children?

WD: Yes. They were very active in getting us back together, both of them.

I have got some great letters that I have saved that they wrote to me, and I think

what I did was very hurtful to them. I felt very guilty-'Catholic guilty'-about it.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. It weighed heavily on me and I appreciate their efforts to keep their family intact.

And I will be indebted to them, both of them, for what they did in making me

understand that you know I was acting in a fashion that was inconsistent with

long term commitments. I used the analogy of the green pasture that I jumped

over the fence for, but when the fall came the pasture was brown and I realized,

"Well, gee, why did I jump over this fence?" There is going to be another fence

tomorrow and the whole notion of commitment and making decisions and then

living up to expectations sort of got into my brain where it ought to be. So here I

am.

RS: Seems like you have a much closer relationship with your children than

maybe you and your father had.

WD: Oh yeah, yeah, I think so. It is hard for me . . . They would [be]

better [able to] tell you about my relationship with them than I would. I am

always leery about people that talk about that kind of thing. It is like people come

see me and they tell me how honest they are and I always . . . Somebody who

tells you how honest they are, the first question I want to a ask them is: "why did

you have to tell me that?" Why couldn't I reach that conclusion based on talking

to you, spending a little time with you, and drawing that deduction for myself?"

And so I am a little leery about candidly knowing or responding to that but I feel

like I have a closer relationship with them than I had with my dad; but of course,

they are running in different directions. I am looking at them as children; they are

looking at me as a parent, and I look at him as a parent, so.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Based upon the fact that you had a lot of contact with your

grandparents, have you allowed your kids or helped your kids to spend a lot of

time with your parents?

WD: They did growing up, and they spent a lot of time with my wife's

parents growing up. As they have gotten older, like anybody that is sixteen-plus,

they have got an agenda of things they are doing and they are not going

necessarily when I go to see my parents, they ain't going any more. They've got

stuff to do, so they don't see them as much. But, I bring them down here. Over

the years, I have brought my mom and dad to Charlotte so that they would see

them. As I said, when they were little we would take them and dump them with

the grandparents, which is something that I am looking forward to. I am hoping

someday that we can be dumped on with a couple of grandbabies. I was just

telling my wife this weekend, I was reading the paper this morning and Media Play

has got Cinderella and Pinocchio and all these Disney classics on video for sale

this weekend. I said, "You know, we ought to buy those . . . something we'll be

glad we had if we are blessed with having some grandchildren along the way." So

I am looking forward to that era, if it happens.

RS: We talked about your childhood some, a little bit of your education at

Carolina, and then moved on to a little race, and actually some politics, and your

marriage. Was there any racial feelings growing up in Norfolk?

WD: Yes, there were. Interestingly enough, I was part of massive

resistance when integration became the law of the land following the Brown

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. decision. The state of Virginia, and Norfolk in particular, their response was to

close the schools rather than to integrate. So in 1958, rather than schools be

integrated, they closed them; and we went to school in churches for the fall of

that year, my last year as a student in Norfolk. The first half of the year, there

were no schools. Various "white groups" gathered and they got the teachers and

the teachers came to talk, and the parents pooled their money and paid them, and

we went to church school. We didn't have science and we didn't have sports,

but we had math, English, history and whatever. Then the schools opened, and

the junior high that I was attending was populated by blacks for the first time. I

can remember the police and the escorts and standing there watching these black

kids come to school and sort of wondering about it all. My father was, and

interestingly enough, a very conservative man and the older he got, the worse he

got - more and more he got like Rush Limbaugh. But he was very much a man

for all the people as a sports writer and news person in Norfolk. He got an award

by the Jewish Christian, some group that obviously crossed all religious lines and

color lines, and they gave him an award because he was very active in helping

their group. So, I didn't grow up hating black people. I didn't grow up very much

around black people. Once we got through massive resistance and schools were

integrated, I certainly wasn't an anti-black person. And I had dealt with my

southern heritage and my racial conservatism just growing up white my whole life.

I feel like I have made great strides. We have an integrated law firm here, black

lawyers, black people that work here. And I have sort of been at the forefront of

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. that. I am pretty much for all of the black causes that are meritorious for

education and equal rights and so forth [and] have been my whole life.

RS: You said your father was very conservative. Did your parents feel the

same way?

WD: No. Particularly when they got older. No. My dad, as I said, the

older he got, the more like Rush Limbaugh he got. And that presented a lot of

problems for me, a lot of our verbal confrontations later in life. And one of the

reasons we didn't get along would be over things like issues regarding blacks. I

would never call him a racist, but the older he got, he was about as far away from

being a liberal as you could get.

RS: How about your mother being the fact that ....?"

WD: Very dependent on him and follows him like a shadow. Talking to her,

for instance, we talked a great deal about O.J. on this last trip that I took her on

and her view of what ought to happen was always interspersed with some racial

overtones that I don't like.

RS: That is interesting, since she is blind and can't see color. But

obviously it is just a product of the people she was with.

WD: Yeah, her own environment and her own dependency and whatever

else acts on people that are seventy-some years old.

RS: Do you think that any of these attitudes ... do you think that maybe

that is another way of you resisting some of the stuff that your father did?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: Like I said when they got older, and I don't want to a paint him too

unfairly because I don't mean to, but his conservative views clashed with my

views. When you have a discussion and you didn't agree with him, then it

deteriorated into an argument which made it unpleasant. And I spend my life

dealing with unpleasant realities as a lawyer. When I go to see my parents, I don't

want to have an argument. I don't go there to argue or go there to fight. I go

there to [say], "How are you doing?", and you know, some positive stroking of a

very pleasant nature, non-controversial topics. I am not there for a debate. And

the more you go with him, the more you debate; and the more you debate, the

more unpleasant it got. And it would deteriorate into an argument, and I would

scream, as I mentioned earlier, and he would scream. You know, we ain't going

anywhere, we are not making any fun. It is not what I wanted my life to be like.

RS: You said you didn't grow up around a lot of blacks. When you moved

to Kinston, was there a large population or not?

WD: There were blacks, but we had a black school and a white school.

They were never integrated. The first time after Norfolk that I went to school with

blacks was Chapel Hill, but there weren't many blacks in Chapel Hill in 1962.

There weren't many women and there weren't many blacks. I go back there now,

and it is half black and half women, so you know times have changed remarkably.

RS: Do you think for the better?

WD: I don't know.

WD: You asked me about things, were they better? And I don't know the

answer. I know personally my relationship with blacks is better. I mean, I enjoy

people and I try to be color blind, literally. I have mentioned to you my interest in

sports. I represent the Hornets. I also represent Dell Curry and Larry Johnson and

[am] pretty close to Kenny Gattison and Mugsy Bogues and Hersey Hawkins, and I

represented David Wingate. So I have had some time to spend with these black

athletes, and I find myself, you know, having a real easy time and I am not

conscious, literally, of the color that they are.

One of my partners here is a black lawyer. I enjoy he and his wife, and we

have spent some time together. For me - it's easier, it's better. I look at our

society and I just have to wonder. I mean, I don't know the answer. And when I

think about it in any depth, or where I could discuss it with others, including black

people, I am not sure what you'd hear. It seems to me [that] we have a long way

to go. We still have a lot of terrible racism in this country. This thing we have

just experienced here with this O.J. trial demonstrates it, and I have seen it. I see

it in our judicial system. I am around judges who tell racist jokes, I am around

lawyers who make racist comments, I am around law enforcement people who

continue to be racist. I have friends who think nothing of using the "N" word. I

don't know where we are. It seems like we have come a long way, but I wonder

where in the hell we are. I mean, we still have so many people that seem so

ignorant of what they ought to be doing on this particular subject that makes you

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. think maybe we haven't got very far at all. You see more black people wanting to

be with black people. We have had this integration push now for thirty-five years.

It has been that long since Brown . . . wasn't it '54? Forty years, yeah. So, in

Charlotte, busing is over in the sense of busing for racial equality in the schools, to

balance the schools. More schools are returning to either being all-black or all-

white. And the blacks themselves, it strikes me from time to time, seem to

appreciate their black identity. So I am not in the middle of it on a day-to-day

basis because my practice hasn't included that, but as an observer - to show

where how far we have gone to really making any meaningful progress in that

area, I have made some progress is about as good as I can tell you.

RS: To a certain extent, isn't some progress better than no progress?

WD: Oh, sure, sure. But you wonder, why in the 1990s does it make a

damn what color anybody is? I mean, what's the logic? There isn't any. You

know, you hear somebody telling [someone] at a Panther football game last

weekend in Clemson, South Carolina, to be around people that are talking about

niggers and stuff like that, I just wonder where in the world are we? Why are you

doing this? Why is it cute?

RS: Did you find a lot of that growing up in Kinston?

WD: No.

RS: No?

WD: No. I am not around people that [are like that] because I just don't let

myself be around people that do that, except occasions when you are in large

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. groups and you don't have much control over who you are with. And I stand up

to [that] - I don't want to hear that. If somebody asks me, "Do you mind if I tell a

racist joke?" I say, "Yeah, I mind. Don't tell a racist joke to me." So I feel like I

am doing what I ought to be doing, personally, about it but I am just wondering at

this point, 1995, why in the world is anybody doing it, why do I have to? I don't

have an answer for that. So when you say, "Is it better?" I don't know whether it

is better or not. It is probably better than it was forty years ago, and to that

degree, it's better. But the fact that it is not completely gone is a little scary.

RS: Is it never something that you thought as an interest that you might

want to do in your practice?

WD: No, it isn't. I have been oriented to building this law firm, and a large

part of my practice has been the family law area, criminal law area, and big case

area, so I haven't. I did some civil rights work years ago. I just haven't been

called upon to do it in more recent times. Of course, civil rights have become less

favorable in the court system through the entire Reagan-Bush era, with all the

appointment of very, very conservative Republican judges. I mean, it ain't like it

was when I began practicing law in 1969. So, for whatever the reason, I haven't,

particularly in the last five or ten years, devoted as much time to that subject as I

did in the first fifteen years of my practice.

RS: Speaking about your beginning of practice of your career, I would like

to try to do employment on maybe another day. Let's try to finish up education.

Once you graduated [from] Carolina, you decided to go straight into law school?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: Yes.

RS: A lot of people today don't do that. Is that something that you have

looked back on as a good thing?

WD: Yeah, I did. It was good for me. I really didn't take advantage of

Carolina for all the things that it offered. I got to law school, I was married, I had

a job, my wife had a job, I was trying to get a law degree. I found myself much

more responsible, much more attuned to studying, study habits, and learning to

be a lawyer as it were. We had a great, young, married crowd in Virginia, eight or

ten couples. We were inseparable after our first year; we did everything together,

cooked together, tripped together. Most of us would hang around during the

summer, we all had jobs. Nobody had a lot of money and it was a great

camaraderie that still exists with about five or six or seven or eight of these

couples. We go back for five-year reunions and it's like we were together not five

years ago, but two days ago. So, it was a real positive period and a good thing

for me because I went from kind of weaning my way through Chapel Hill

sometimes on black beauties to stay up all-night to learn something that I should

have been studying all year, to a real program of developing study habits of

reading, and doing things along the way, and research, and so forth.

RS: Do you think it was easier being married or...

WD: Yes, absolutely. No temptations, no road trips, just there grinding it

out, and learning to do it, and knowing that it helped to do it that way. For me, it

was good to go right away. I am not sure if I had gone out and worked that I

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. would have ever gone back to school, so it was probably pretty good that I did

what I did.

RS: Was your wife working at the time?

WD: Yes, she taught school. She equates it to her investment. She calls

me — it's like I was a stock that she invested in thirty years ago and now I am

supposedly paying dividends.

RS: What did she teach?

WD: She taught math.

RS: To what level?

WD: Junior high.

RS: Does she still teach today?

WD: She came to Charlotte with a job in 1969. I started to work. She

was paid $600 a month as a teacher, and I was offered $650 a month as a

lawyer. So we both had jobs. She was pregnant with my son and she taught for,

I guess, August to December. She took her break, and my son was born

December 30, four weeks early, premature, so she didn't go back and she never

went back. So she has not worked outside of the home since he was born, and

that has been twenty-five years ago.

RS: Back to law school. Did you have any specific interest that may have

brought you on to family law?

WD: [I] liked the professor, Walter Wadlington, still friends with him. Good

guy. [I] liked the subject, it is practical. Then, and perhaps even now, it is the

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. poor sister; people don't want to be family law lawyers, they don't want to be

criminal lawyers, they want to be Wall Street lawyers or something that sounds a

little more high falutin. But I liked it, and I liked him, and I thought I would like

trial practice. I took a lot of those . . . kinds of courses, a trial-ad course, moot

court — and I got all the way to the finals of the moot court competition at school.

The longer [that] I was there, the more I realized that what I wanted to be a trial

lawyer, as opposed to some other kind of lawyer. I came to Charlotte, and this

firm was not a family law firm and it wasn't a trial firm, but we made it into one.

So, it just happened. You know, it wasn't so planned. It was like most of my life

just happened, and not much planning.

RS: It can be a good thing, not planning.

WD: Sure. The best times I ever had I didn't know I was going to have

until I had them.

RS: Did you have any interests in law school outside of just classroom

work?

WD: Well, I sold clothes for three years at the same place, actually became

the manager of a store one year, my last year. I worked as much as I [could] and

I sold a lot of clothes to my fellow students and my professors. I made a good

living selling clothes to lawyers and students. So that was a consuming interest.

I maintained my interest in sports. I became the first sports editor; we had a

newspaper called the Law Weekly and it was published weekly. Until me, it had

been about laws and stuff like that. I became the sports editor and I wrote sport

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. articles, and I was the quarterback on the law school Law Weekly [team]. We had

a football team and our big game every year was to play and beat the Law Review

[team], which I referred to as the LAURA VUE when I wrote the article of our great

victory. So, I maintained my interest in sports. [I] developed an interest in wine

which maintains to this day. [I] continued my interest in music; I was sort of the

captain of the rock 'n roll team for our young married friends. And I think those

were good outside interests that kept us having a good time.

RS: How did you develop your interest in wine?

WD: Going to Washington, D.C. and sneaking it back into Virginia across

the Potomac River, hoping that you weren't going to get pulled by somebody who

had been watching a liquor or wine store. But, just going up there and shopping

in Georgetown, and going to Georgetown Liquors, and having people tell you

about it. "Try this and try that."

RS: Why did you have to sneak it?

WD: Because it was against the law at that time to transport wine from

D.C. into Virginia; couldn't do it.

RS: So it was a big thrill to get it back.

WD: Oh, yeah, right. You could always take a blanket to stuff those boxes

in the back of your car, and cover them with a blanket, and head back and hope

that they didn't pull you.

RS: And you decided to come to North Carolina upon graduation, or is that

just where the first job brought you ?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: Well, I interviewed my senior year of Virginia and went through that

process and this firm in its form in 1969 came to Virginia. At that time, of the

four lawyers in the firm, three had graduated from Virginia. So they had a Virginia

connection and they came up and interviewed. I interviewed a firm in the

Washington area. I interviewed some firms in the Norfolk area, where I had grown

up, but I liked North Carolina. I loved basketball, still, even though I didn't play as

much, it is still my favorite sport; and at that time the ACC tournament was still

played in the old Charlotte Coliseum. And I thought, "Gee, you know, this might

be a good spot." My wife, who is a year older than I, when I was a senior at

Chapel Hill, she had already graduated and she taught a year in Charlotte. So I

knew Charlotte as a town, too, from coming down here to be with her. She liked

it, and I liked it, so I took the job.

RS: How was Charlotte different back then? I can imagine just seeing the

changes from the mid 60s to 1996, Charlotte must have grown up quite a bit.

WD: Yes and no. It feels the same to me today as it felt in 1969, when I

got here. There are more tall buildings, but there were tall buildings here then,

too. There were half a dozen little tall buildings, and it was still a city, and it was

still Charlotte - North Carolina's biggest city, and we still had more court than any

other places that had court. So it doesn't feel to me, having been here twenty-six

years, doesn't feel that different. We have got a pro hockey team, we got a pro

baseball team, we got a pro basketball team, we got a pro football team. But, you

know, we had concerts then that came to Charlotte that didn't come to some

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. other places. So there was something that is the equivalent of what is here . . .

now.

RS: Scaled down version?

WD: Yeah, and it doesn't feel different to me. I still consider this ... I love

the city, by the way. I am a big Charlotte promoter. I mean it is a great city, but

doesn't feel different to me.

RS: So you look back on the last twenty-six years [as] pretty good. Do you

like raising your children here?

WD: Absolutely. They both went to public schools; I am a believer in that.

They both did well, relatively well, in school. That is something I wouldn't

change.

RS: What about public education? You say you are a believer in that -

what about public education?

WD: Believer in that; wish it were safer. That is something over the past

twenty five years that has changed; schools are not as safe today as they were.

We have got people wandering around with guns and knives and so forth. I don't

recall there being as much of that in 1969, as there is in 1995.

RS: What aspects of public education do you like as opposed to private

education?

WD: I like the broad spectrum of people that you cross. I liked having

black people in my home. Bill's best friends - my son's best friends during high

school - were black. They spent the night in my house, we took trips with them

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. together. We, he lived out some of the things that I have been trying to do myself

in my own life - overcome prejudices and things like that. You are with poor

people, middle class people, and wealthy people, and you have to deal with all of

those. You are with good teachers, and bad teachers, and superior teachers, and

you have to deal with that. It is more "life-like" than the somewhat protected,

secluded surroundings of a private school that is basically lily-white. So, I thought

that was the right thing to do.

RS: Does that give you a sense of pride, that your son seems to have

adopted or taken on some of the things that you have been working on in your

life?

WD: Yeah, although he has gotten more conservative since he started out.

I mean, he went off to school. Because he didn't get [into] Chapel Hill, he went to

Georgia, which is not exactly a hotbed of liberalism - although Athens is very

similar to a Chapel Hill. You can probably drop portions of Athens in Chapel Hill

and Chapel Hill wouldn't know the difference and vice versa. The campuses come

right up to in Georgia I think it is Broad Street and in Chapel Hill it is Franklin. It is

really crazy how similar the two places are. So I am pleased with where he went

through high school. He has gotten out, he is in the real world, and he told me

the other day he had registered Republican. It sort of scared me - let me know

that my fears were justified. He is backing away from some of my liberal thoughts

that I have tried to stick in his head.

RS: What about your daughter?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: She is still at Georgia, one more year, getting a double major. She

graduated and did very well in fine arts last year, but she is back getting an

interior design degree. She is almost perfect, but I am not prejudiced, much. She

is cute as she can be and I am very, very fond of her. She is in a neat little

apartment this year, and she is living by herself, got a boyfriend.

RS: Then going off to law school?

WD: No, I don't think I've got any lawyers. I think they have seen how I

have worked for the last few years and they realize that this is a job, or at least

their perception of it would be, that this is a job that starts early in the morning

and ends late at night and includes a whole lot of weekends and countless hours.

RS: How do you feel those long hours have affected your family?

WD: I don't know. I don't know. We are still arguing about it. [I] argued

about it today with my wife, probably argued about it every week that I have been

a lawyer, I have had some disagreement with my wife about my schedule. So it is

constant; and I find the older I get, the harder I am working. It ain't turned out

like I planned. I thought I would go with a law firm and after ten or fifteen years

of working real hard, I would just kind of sit back and people would come in, and

they would worship me, and I would give them papal blessing, and they would

leave and leave money, and that I would be wealthy. And I would work, you

know, I would be playing golf on Wednesdays and knock off Friday at lunchtime,

and never work a weekend. But that just hasn't panned out.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Have you talked with your children about it? How do they feel about

it?

WD: Oh, we have talked from time to time. I think they understand; they

understand how driven I am about it. I am not complaining, I am just telling you

how it is. I like the work. This weekend I will work tonight, Friday night, till

probably seven or eight, and I will be here tomorrow, and I am looking forward to

it. I have got lots I want to do, stuff to catch up on. They would tell me, "You

know, Dad, you don't need to do that. You need to do this and do that, have

some fun, da da da." So we would have that kind of conversation if I were to talk

with them about it. When they were growing up, I sort of did my schedule so that

I would have time with them.

I was the morning man at my house. I am the morning person, anyway. So

I would get up when they were big enough to be going to school and stuff like

that. I would get them up, and I would get them dressed, and I would make

breakfast, and I would make school lunches. So I had an hour or an hour-and-a-

half with them every morning, and that was my quality time. And on Sunday

mornings I had them. We would go exploring or out to breakfast. It was our

tradition. Both of them - first him, then her, and often them - when they were

both of age. I wasn't much good in the evenings. I was home late, so I didn't see

them Monday through Friday at night a lot but I would go to their events. If they

had an event during the day, I would attend it. If they had a ball game, I would

go. I coached them; I coached him: baseball, basketball and even after I quit

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. coaching him, I kept coaching at the YMCA for a few years because I enjoyed it.

So I have taken the time to try to adhere to this notion of "[if] you spend some

quality time with the person, you can develop a relationship with them." It is not

so much the quantity as [it is] the quality; and I've taken that approach, and I

think that has probably worked, for us anyway. I think they would tell you that

they don't see me as an absentee father.

RS: What does your wife think about it?

WD: She is pissed all the time about it. We argued today. She is off to

Charleston. I have a place in Charleston and she loves Charleston. She is there

and she wants me to catch a plane and fly down tonight and come back Sunday.

I would have to come back Sunday, early Sunday morning, and I am just not going

to do that. I have got some stuff that I need to do here this weekend. I go to

Charleston plenty. So we had a disagreement about that, and we have had this

same disagreement for twenty-six years, whether it was Charleston or some other

place or something else she wanted me to do or "don't work this weekend," or

"stay home this Sunday." I say, "I wish I could."

RS: Do you think that that same quality time idea, that quality time not

quantity with your kids, has worked the same way with your wife to the same

extent?

WD: Oh, I don't know. You know, it is a different relationship, so many

different dynamics, that it's hard to tell.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Do you think the profession had some effect on the marriage difficulties

that you did have?

WD: Yep. This is a ego business. And I have a big one. I am a good trial

lawyer, I have won a lot of big cases, and I have gotten a lot of strokes from my

other people. I am recognized when I walk into a restaurant, heads turn, and

people say, "That is Bill Diehl," or something like that. And so I have experienced

that over the years, and she hasn't had that. I mean, that hasn't been her style or

the way she has lived her life, and I am sure that some of the things that have run

into us or our marriage are the direct result of my lifestyle and my practice. I am

not sure how you avoid that, either.

RS: That competitive streak.

WD: Yeah. Win this, win that.

RS: There throughout. This is the kind of career I would think that fosters

that to a certain extent.

WD: No question about it, no question about it. If you are going to be a

trial lawyer, you don't want to be a trial lawyer that always loses.

RS: It's not a good thing.

WD: That is not exactly your goal.

RS: Do you think that the profession as a whole has a lot of relationship

problems, both with children and . . . spouse.

WD: No question. I represent so many wives of lawyers that I know that

to be true.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Do you find that a lot in your practice that lawyers are a common

client?

WD: All of the professions have that. Not just lawyers, doctors. And now

so many marriages are breaking up. Over fifty percent of the people that are

married get divorced. That's the statistics. Labeling it as a profession problem is

not fair to the profession, because garbage men and computer experts are having

the same problems that lawyers and doctors, and architects, and accountants

have.

RS: Do you think it's mainly a time problem, in that the profession just

requires time?

WD: I don't know. It is hard to generalize about that, why marriages break

up, and might have absolutely nothing to do with the time problem. But I think if

you are trying to generalize, good lawyers, especially trial lawyers have mammoth

hours devoted to what they do. Imagine what we have just seen - this case that

has had so much of our attention, this O.J. case - with these eight or nine

lawyers in California that have been doing one thing for nine months. You know

that they are working from sun-up to sunset; and then they are busting their butts

on the weekend. You have no time for anybody. So you can see how that might

adversely affect the person that is left at home.

RS: No doubt. Do you think as a career goes on, that it's going to lighten

up? I know you said that it is getting worse.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: No. I don't think that it is going to lighten up. I mean, unless I just

stop doing it, I don't think it is going to lighten up.

RS: Is it something that you want to keep doing until you retire?

WD: I don't know that I will retire. I mean, I have this notion that I am

going to drop dead in my tracks. I can't imagine being retired; I really can't. So,

I don't think about retiring.

RS: How does your wife feel about it?

WD: She is ready for me to quit yesterday.

RS: Arguments everyday?

WD: Yeah. We're ready to a be in Charleston - open a bait shop. There is

no telling what she has in mind for me to do. When I had a sailboat - and I had a

sailboat for thirteen years, a big sailboat, we were heading for the Caribbean,

never to be seen from again. But Hugo spoiled that so I am out of the boat

business; I am not going to the Caribbean.

RS: Unforeseen problem?

WD: Yeah. He was a big unforeseen problem.

RS: Well, that gets us up through law school. I think that is a good

stopping point for the day. How does that sound?

WD: All right, great!

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. INTERVIEWEE: WILLIAM K DIEHL, JR. INTERVIEWER: RYAN SMITH PLACE: CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA DATE: NOVEMBER 28, 1995

Tape 2, Side A

RS: Mr. Diehl, I have just a few question for you to figure out some

problems with the last interview, just like names-wise. I was wondering what

your mother's full name is?

WD: Dorothy Virginia Hebert and Diehl.

RS: And Kase is spelled K-A-S-E?

WD: Right.

RS: And your teacher's name in law school that you said piqued your

interest in family law was Walter-

WD: Wadlington.

RS: And finally, I just need to a get a quick run down of your brothers and

sisters. I didn't get all those names.

WD: Joanne, Freddy, Betty Jane, Jimmy, Danny.

RS: Okay. I would like to start today by revisiting just a few issues in law

school before we start on your career. Did you work at all during the summers of

your law school career?

WD: I have been working since I was twelve years old. When I finished

Chapel Hill undergraduate, I got a job. I had worked at Milton's which, when I

worked there, was a real good men's clothing store and I was interested in that

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. field. I was able to get a job in a store in Charlottesville called Ed Michtom's. And

it was one of the two nice traditional clothing stores in Charlottesville. So I left

law school - I'm sorry - I left undergraduate school, got married, had a one-night

honeymoon, and went to work the next Monday at Michtom's, I worked all

summer, and I worked continuously at Michtom's from June of 1966 until I

graduated in June of 1969. I never stopped working there. I would work full-time

in the summer; actually worked full-time during the winter. I would work forty-

hour weeks [when I went to] law school.

RS: Did a lot of students during those times have legal jobs during the

summer?

WD: Some of them did, not a lot; but there were a number of people that I

knew that had clerkships in the summer months away from Charlottesville, as well

as a lot of lawyers in Charlottesville, like lawyers in Chapel Hill, used law students

for clerks year round and during the summer.

RS: While you were in law school, did they use the Socratic method?

WD: I never quite understood the Socratic method. I'm told that was how

we approached it. It certainly didn't emphasize practical aspects of being a

lawyer. The closest thing you got to practicality was moot court and trial practice.

We had a trial practice class you could take your third year. But those were not

the key aspects of going to law school at Virginia in 1966 to 1969. It was the

traditional courses and a few electives, as you got toward the end of the day, and

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. those electives were standard electives at that time, sort of "pre" all the advance

courses that are now available, in specialties are now available in law schools.

RS: While you were in law school, did you use study groups to get

through?

WD: Rarely, rarely. Because of my schedule, I would leave law school and

go work in the afternoons; and then nighttime was study time for me. What I did

do was just not go home. I mean, I did most of my studying at the law school.

And to this day, I don't work very well at home. I need to be here, and in law

school I needed to be in the library. Your last year in law school, you were

afforded a carrel down in the stacks below the regular library, and that became

home base.

RS: You must have spent a lot of time there?

WD: Spent a lot of time there, a lot of time reading, a lot of time writing.

And it was good for me. I've never compared the various methods by which

people are taught. It helped me learn to think and to look for things in trying to

solve problems.

RS: So in that respect, do you think law school helped you prepare for

what you have encountered in practice?

WD: Absolutely, absolutely. I don't have any complaints about the law

school teaching method as it existed what is now approaching thirty-years ago. It

was good for me; whether it would be good for everybody, obviously I don't

know that.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: You say you developed a practical interest in family law. When you

were coming out of law school looking for a job, was family law something that

you looked for or did you look for just a general practice?

WD: The latter; I looked for general practice. The crowd I came with,

which is the same firm I am still with - although its name has changed a little bit -

these fellows had a large Virginia contingent. Two of the, well let's see, at that

time, one, two, three of the four fellows who were there were Virginia grads; and

so they came to Charlottesville to recruit, and we had a good visit. And I came

down here, and I liked them. They didn't have a litigation practice to speak of, a

little bit of litigation, but it was basically a general practice firm, business-oriented.

I didn't know what I was going to be able to do when I got here, so I didn't come

here to do family law, per se. That sort of happened. We had someone come in

that needed a family lawyer, and I was the new guy on the block, and so I got to

do it. And then I got to do another one, and then I got to do another one, and

pretty soon I was off and running in family law.

RS: When you arrived in Charlotte in the late 60s, early 70s, what was

Charlotte like as a city?

WD: To me, just like it is now. It's got more buildings downtown. It was a

sprawling place, it was growing. But it felt big to come to, but when you got

here, it didn't feel big, and still doesn't feel very big to me. And I guess I'll never

change that feeling. Now it is home, and I am used to it. But Charlotte is a big

town as opposed to a big city. It sprawls, and its neighborhoods are very much

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. like other smaller towns, and you tend to get hooked-up in the area where you live

and then you come downtown to work, if that is the case as it has been for me

my whole life, and you get real used to it. So you don't feel it's biggest. Like

when I go to Atlanta, it is big to me or Chicago or New York. Those are really

cities you feel like you are in a big, big place. Coming here, I don't feel that way.

Now a stranger comes here and he drives by this skyline now, and wow! There is

no question it is a city, and it looks big and intimidating and you wander among

these tall towers and you can feel that way. When they grow besides you, it is

sort of like a plant. It comes up and you see it, and you are used to it, and it just

doesn't overwhelm you. When you walk [into] the Nationsbank lobby in their new

sixty-story building, I mean it is an awesome feeling the first time you do that. But

if you have been here for a long time, it is just like, "Oh, it is the next step to

Nationsbank. It's no big deal." And it's not quite as awesome as it might

otherwise be. I have made a living over the years just suing NationsBank for

various people, and I keep threatening the other side that I am going to bring the

jury in there for a jury view of their lobby just before they go out to determine

damages - to see how much that marble costs. Although it is awesome-looking,

you know, I am used to it now. It is just simply - I do not feel like this is a big,

big, place.

RS: How would you characterize the legal community at that time?

WD: Well, then and now, it is the largest group of lawyers in Charlotte. I

quickly came to believe that it has the highest quality practice in the state. I have

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. been either burdened or fortunate, depending on how you look at it, and

sometimes I look at it from both perspectives of doing a lot of litigation around the

state. So, I have been other places and I have seen the quality of other legal

work, and it tends to drop off, in my view, in smaller places. In Charlotte, you're

going to go up against a good lawyer a lot, and I have found that very stimulating;

you go elsewhere and that's not always the case. You are going to run into

people who are slopping around and not doing their homework, and trading on the

fact that they are lawyers in name but they are not really working their butts off

as they should be. So I thought the practice was a high-quality practice when I

got here and I don't think it has changed very much. Now, in my travels, I see

good lawyers in a lot of places. I think Greensboro has got a lot of good lawyers,

Winston-Salem has got a lot of good lawyers. But it's strange how they tend to

congregate in larger cities, which is not to say that there aren't good lawyers in

smaller towns; there are. But there are a lot more of them here, a lot more of

them in the larger places. I think it's a really high level of practice here.

RS: So at that time, you [thought] the attorneys were very qualified, but

how about the bar itself, as far as the way the bar treated you as an incoming

attorney? We have heard a lot of stories in our oral history presentations about

how the older bar treated younger lawyers when they came in during that time,

and [was] it a lot different than it is today?

WD: If they treated me badly, they did it in a way that I didn't know it. I

learned a lot from some good lawyers here. And I have a few favorites who may

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. have whipped me in the courtroom but I admired them, I admired their effort. I

have always been a little bit different and I have been a little bit different all the

time I have been in Charlotte, and maybe that's helped me get treated a little bit

better. I don't know, because I have made myself not look like everybody else

and really don't act like everybody else, so that little bit of individuality that I have

developed has allowed perhaps others to treat me different than they might treat

other younger lawyers. I mean, I have heard some trite arguments from older

lawyers. They start off an argument by saying, "As long as I have been practicing

law, I have never seen anything like this." And I've always thought, "What a

crock of you-know-what." And I found myself making that argument up a couple

of months ago in a case and I caught myself. I thought, "Oh boy. You really have

gotten old." But beyond that, the bar here was probably a friendlier place among

the lawyers thirty years ago than it is now. There are still some friendships at

certain levels; and among lawyers that work with each other a lot, there is

accommodation and understanding about conflicts, and you can't be sixteen

places at once. But it is a little more cut-throat.

Tape 2, Side B

WD: . . . Charlotte lawyers all the time trying to nail each other and so

forth. I've never thought that was necessarily true, but I hear it from other

people. But first off, I am not a big "hang out with lawyers" person. So I might be

the wrong one to be asking how people are treated. I've never been real active in

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. groups of lawyers, and I guess that is because I choose not to hang out with

lawyers - I choose to hang out with other people. Lawyers sometimes have a

way of - when they get together - all they want to do is talk about being

lawyers, and their last great win, and war stories, and I found that particularly

unappealing. I was in the Trial Academy for the longest time, the North Carolina

Academy of Trial Lawyers, because it is a plaintiff's criminal law/family law type

group. I got in it many, many years ago and stayed in it and gave lectures at their

meetings and that type of thing. The more I stayed in it, the more they got active

politically and lobbying and all this kind of stuff, the less appealing it was to me.

They had a motto - it was "lawyers helping people." And I came to the conclusion

it was "lawyers helping lawyers" and quit. So I may be the wrong one to ask that

question about the collegiality of the bar because my own experience has been

fine, but I have made myself separate and I am comfortable with that. I think

that's how I will continue to be. Over the past thirty, well it is not thirty yet, but

twenty odd years - just as you get older if you are not real active with the bar

kind of stuff like young lawyers and then the bar group here and so forth, you

probably don't spend as much time measuring the relationship. I reached a certain

position at this bar that people know who I am, and I have a certain image and a

certain reputation, and for better or worse that is me, and I just sort of get treated

the same way. People don't tread on me too much but also they don't fall all over

themselves being lovey and kind. But it is a, you know, comfortable, working

relationship.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: You characterized the firm when you first got here as four or five

lawyers doing "primarily business" type firm. What kind of work were you given?

WD: That kind of stuff; it was boring. I have searched a title; I had some

corporate work to do. I will never forget Henry James gave me some research to

do on an eleemosynary institution, some sort of charitable thing. And that was

sort of like a pill I couldn't swallow. I complained about it, and I was given some

small cases to get involved in, and then I had an interesting thing happen. The

current district attorney system went into effect, if my memory is right, in 1969

and 1970. And I was a new lawyer and down the street from me [was] the guy

who was the chief district court prosecutor at that time. The superior court was

handled by a solicitor, the district court handled by a prosecutor, and they didn't

report to each other - And they were autonomous, separate offices. In the new

system, we had a district attorney, and he would run all the prosecutors for all the

courts. So while this switch was about to begin, there were a lot of people

leaving the office, and my friend who lived down the street, a guy by the name of

John Whitley, had a lot of people leaving because pretty soon there wasn't going

to a be a prosecutor's office. So he needed some help and asked me if I would be

a DA per diem/per day. I checked with the firm, and they said I could do that. So

I would get up about 5:00 and come in here and work until about 8:30, and then I

would run down to the courthouse. And I had a docket to prosecute of

misdemeanor criminal cases, generally not traffic, although I did that a couple of

times. It was basically doing (how to a describe) family crimes, assaults, breaking

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. and entering misdemeanor, unlawful concealment at stores, that kind of non-

serious misdemeanor. They published a docket everyday, and I would start and

handle that docket, prosecute it, and I would just stay there until I finished. And

often, I could finish by lunchtime and then I would come on to work. Occasionally

I didn't finish 'till late in the afternoon, and then I would come to work. I just

made myself give eight hours here regardless of what I did in the prosecutor's

office. [It] made for a long day but for about seven months I got about as good a

training as you could ever want and the firm graciously let me keep the money.

So I took two-job role for six or seven or eight months and had a great experience,

made $900 bucks a month approximately extra. I was actually making more

money than I was getting paid monthly to work here. I came in, I got paid $650 a

month is what I started at in 1969. And I was getting $900 a month for being a

per diem prosecutor. So, it was about $45 per day, and I would work twenty

days a month. So, man, I was high on the hog with dollars but I was working my

you-know-what off. There would be many nights I would be here until midnight

doing my firm stuff. But what came out of that was an exposure to the bar in

general, and the trial bar and the criminal bar in particular, and an interest in being

a litigator. I got a lot of work as a result of that and I became, you know . . .

when that stopped, I went back to full-time work with the firm. I had a little bit of

a reputation; I was in the newspaper a time or two with some cases that I was

prosecuting, and suddenly, I was a young trial lawyer. So that's how I really got

into the trial practice. And the occasional cases that came to our office, I was

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. given them to do: I must have had enough success that other people heard about

it and wanted to hire me and so what began as work in part on eleemosynary

institutions and searching a title became a litigation practice within two years, two

and-a-half years. And I was off and running.

RS: Do you remember your first time in court?

WD: No, not per se. I remember some early cases that I did but the first

one, interestingly enough, I do not recall. I have the most vivid recollection of the

things that I lost, as opposed to the things that I won, when I was starting. And I

learned, I hope, by some of those but there aren't many you know, "okay, this is

your first day in court." It would be interesting to go back and try to reconstitute

that first or second year and figure out when was the first time you went to

court. You know, there were some domestic cases and some criminal cases and a

malpractice case - a lawyer malpractice case that I tried fairly early in my career

and lost, shouldn't have lost, in my view, but we got "judge tossed out" against a

fairly prominent firm here. And those kind of things stick in my mind, but not the

first case.

RS: When you first started practice here, did anyone take you under their

wing, like we discussed earlier, as a mentor here at the firm?

WD: Henry James was my friend and my mentor and the reason I am here.

He had tried a few things and had some litigation experience but that wasn't what

he wanted to do. So he guided me as best as he could guide me, but what he

basically did is supported me - he let me do it and I literally went down and

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. watched other lawyers try cases. I mean, I would go sit and watch a lawyer pick

a jury, and go sit and watch a lawyer make a closing argument. I probably learned

more from that method than I did from Henry's particular coaching. What he gave

me, as I said, was the freedom to do it, and that's how I did it. And I worked

hard; I can't over emphasize that. I don't consider myself to be very smart, but I

have got lots of energy and I don't mind coming in early and don't mind staying

late and don't mind keeping looking until I find what I want. And that's been sort

of my MO for lo these many years. We need to figure out exactly how long it is.

I guess it has been twenty-six years, 1969 to 1995 is 26 years.

RS: You said you were able to go watch people at court. Did the firm

allow you to do that?

WD: Yeah, I would go down and watch Arthur Goodman, who is a grand

old criminal lawyer here, still practicing, watch him pick a jury. And I would

watch Bill Walker, who was one of my real idols and somebody that I had the

opportunity litigating against a lot in my life until his life ended a year or two ago.

But I would watch him. And I had a number of things with Warren Stack, who

was a very prominent Charlotte lawyer and I certainly observed and watched Mr.

Stack a time or two. I'd go to federal court and just watch a trial when I knew

there was something going on over there and watch other lawyers, see how they

did things. Then, I'd go back and try and figure out how I was going to do things

based on what I saw other people doing.

RS: Is that a practice that your firm keeps up today?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: No. If it is, I don't know about it. Our young people, they go with us.

So, our situation has changed where maybe litigation was five or ten percent of

what we did in 1969 and '70 and '71. Litigation is now, depending on who you

ask, seventy-five to eighty-five percent of what we do around here. So we have

plenty of opportunities for young people to be involved in cases from the

beginning to the end. And our associates don't just get one lawyer to work with-

they work with all of the partners. So a young lawyer coming here has an

opportunity to see six or seven or eight, nine, ten people litigate and how they

litigate. So the opportunity is here to learn here now, as opposed to how it was

when I got here.

RS: You said earlier, in our earlier discussions, that you did some civil rights

work early in your career?

WD: Yeah.

RS: Do you remember any of those cases?

WD: Sure. Once upon a time I had the largest verdict-it wasn't very

much; it was like $30,000 or $35,000-against the city police, for beating

somebody up. It was a great case, a great case. It wasn't a great case, it was an

interesting case where this man had gone to a see a kid that he was entitled to

visit. His wife disputed his right to be there, so she called the police. The police

came and World War III began, as far as they were concerned, and they literally

abused this guy. We took them to court, in federal court, and won. That was a

great win for me, and at that time, it was the largest verdict. Thirty-five thousand

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. wasn't much of a verdict, but it was a great verdict. And I have done, I don't

know, ten or fifteen type cases like that. Federal judges have asked me to do

cases where pro se prisoners have filed claims. I did a case for a famous bank

robber here called Willy Foster Cellars, who was in jail for a hundred years for

robbing banks, but contended that his trunk had been unlawfully searched and his

machine guns unlawfully seized by the Charlotte police and a wrecker company,

and he brought his own complaint. Judge Jim McMillan, who is now dead, called

and asked me to come over and try the case. This guy had gotten it to court and

had filed the papers, but they wanted him to have a lawyer for the trial. So I went

over and did that and we won. We won on liability; we didn't get any damages. I

think the jury concluded that a guy with a hundred years in jail probably couldn't

show any actual loss. Maybe the banks were saved in some fashion. We should

have tried that damage theory [that] there wouldn't be any banks robbed if he

stayed in jail, so give him some money. But, I have had a number of things like

that. And not too long ago, I guess in the summer of 1990, I tried a case against

the city and a policeman for violating the civil rights of some individuals and

depriving a business of its existence, a record company, and we popped them for

about a million-four verdict, as I remember, something like that, over a million

dollars that was. We tried it in front of a Republican judge, very conservative, but

I thought a good fellow and a straight shooter and he was willing to - even

though he didn't like the law -- he was willing to follow the law as a judge. And

we educated him about civil rights, and he gave a good charge to the jury, and the

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. jury smacked the city and the cop for, as I said, a million plus. So I enjoy civil

rights practice; I wouldn't hesitate to a take another good case today if it came

in. That has been something that I have enjoyed doing.

RS: You spoke of some pro se work. When you came into the bar, was

service a big part of being a lawyer? We have talked a lot about it in our class,

about how a lawyer's role is...

WD: I would say it wasn't as much a deal at that time by focus - "Lawyers

have an obligation to a help their fellow man, therefore you ought to do some pro

bono work." As a practical matter, it was just done without a lot of fanfare. In

more recent times, it has become more of a big deal and probably not to the

betterment of the bar. I mean, everybody takes a pro bono case, they want

everybody to know they took a pro bono case - as opposed to just simply doing

things, electing to do some cases that help people, and just not charging for them.

And we continue to do that here, and I continue to do it. It's just been our

practice here for a long, long time without much fanfare and without asking

everybody to go pat us on the back, make us "pro bono firm of the year." We just

haven't done that, and it hasn't been our MO either. So I don't think it was

emphasized as much thirty years ago. It is emphasized a lot now, and whether

there is more of it going on now than then, I don't know; because we did it then,

and we do it now. So, but we do it the same way then that we did now, and that

is without a lot of fanfare, and nobody is champing to get their name in the

newspaper so that you look like a hero for doing something.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: I guess I am a little confused. I understand you say that there is more

fanfare about it now, but back then was it just more of an accepted thing, where

now, it is a little more pressure to do it based upon hours within the firm?

WD: No, not at this firm because this firm doesn't operate like some big

firms. Lawyers here aren't given a set number of hours they are supposed to

work. We know what you work because so much of our practice is hourly-based

and the only way to keep up with it is with a computer; and when you have a

computer, you can punch a button and add it all up and figure out what you are

working. But no associate here is given a message "You need to bill 2400 hours,

young man or young woman." That's never been the case. We watch effort;

hours is one indicator of how much effort you are putting in. As that impacts pro

bono work, I don't think there is a correlation here. There may be in other places.

Lawyers from the most junior associate to Pender McElroy, who is my partner for

twenty-six years, do pro bono work. We will have a firm meeting and they will

talk about, "Well, I am going to take this case, and I am going to do it pro bono, or

whatever." It's not questioned. One of our associates, a really bright young lady

by the name of Anne Hester, who was Judge Justice Mitchell's law clerk until she

came with us a couple years ago, we just did a capital appeal that we were

requested to do. I mean, we had eighty grand worth of time in the case and they

awarded a small fee of $22,000, [so] there is a $60,000 contribution to the

practice of law. But we didn't run an ad in the newspaper that "Anne Hester did

this case for almost nothing." I am looking out the window and she is coming to

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. work. But that is from a very practical standpoint of how we do it here, have

done it, how to do it.

RS: You say you work a lot of hours. I mean, you have been working a lot

of hours a long time; but how, in the beginning when you first arrived, did that

affect your relationship at home?

WD: Testy, testy. I got married very young and we got through law school

and the fall of my first year here, my son was born in December, after I had

started working in August or September. So my wife had that very significant

commitment at home to a new baby, and I was working long hours. And then I

took the double job working more hours, and I don't think it had a real positive

effect on life at home as I remember that period. Coming to work, getting out of

school, getting in the real world, in the sense of "Okay, here is your job, here is

your career" - it puts pressures on you that you can't possibly really understand

until it happens. So we jumped in the middle of it, endured some of those

pressures, not without a few bumps in the road. But we survived them, and I

have been very fortunate that she is still here. I kissed her good-bye this morning.

We will have our thirtieth anniversary this June, so we have been together - she

has tolerated me - for 29 years, and she should be given a lot of credit for that.

RS: Just one last question on the beginning of your career - when you first

arrived here, how did the practice of law, the initial practice of law, shape up to

your ideas of what you thought it was going to be like?

WD: Well, I really didn't know what it was going to be like. So-

WD: My becoming a lawyer is quite fortuitous, accidental, "just happened"

kind of thing. I didn't grow up in a family of lawyers; I didn't have any inspiring

goal to be a lawyer when I was in college. I got through college and I really didn't

know what I wanted to do. I didn't think I wanted to sell clothes the rest of my

life, but I wasn't sure about that, didn't want to necessarily be in retail per se. So

I had applied to law schools and got into the law schools that I had applied to, and

thinking, "Okay, maybe I want to be a lawyer." So then I went to law school, and

Virginia Law School at that period of time really was a friendly place. We

developed a great relationship with half a dozen couples, and it was a good law

school, certainly then thought as one of the top ten law schools as I believe it

continues to be today. But our crowd - we weren't all overwhelmed with the fact

that we were at Virginia Law School. It was a good school and a nice place to be.

And I came to Charlotte, and I wasn't all overwhelmed with the fact that I was a

lawyer in Charlotte. I am glad to be a lawyer, but it didn't make me think I was

something better than the rest of the people, even though people think lawyers

think that way, and many lawyers act that way. So my expectations about it

were very minimal, and therefore, I wasn't overwhelmed and/or disappointed with

how it developed. I have come to understand that being a lawyer is a very

powerful, particularly the type of lawyer that I am, is a very powerful thing. You

have a lot to say about a lot of things that control people's destinies for literally

ten, twenty, thirty years, or 'till they die. So, if you stop to think about it, it is a

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. fairly awesome place, this lawyer place. You can make a difference in a lot of

people's lives. I don't go around thinking like that but reality teaches me that, in

fact, that is what you do. We worked this weekend, Thanksgiving. You asked me

how was my Thanksgiving, and I told you it was great. I worked on Thanksgiving

Day, for all day Friday after Thanksgiving, and all day Saturday, all day Sunday.

But what we were working on was a custody case that was very bitterly

contested and apparently insolvable until Saturday night at 6:00, when the other

side capitulated on some issues related to sharing the time with the child. And we

reached an agreement satisfactory to this woman that I was representing for a

small child a little over two years old. What we have done in that moment is that

we've made a change, predictably, in that little child's life, for the rest of her life.

And we have made a change in how the mother will live, and we have made a

change in how the father will live because you know, from basically sharing time

with keeping his baby, he has gone to eight days a month. So even in that kind of

simple example, you create a monumental effect on people's lives.

You try a criminal case, where someone's liberty is at stake, and you win,

they go on with life as a free person; if you lose, they go to jail. It is a significant

event. Try a case about money, you get a lot of money for the client, they pay a

lot of bills, their life goes this way. You lose, they have to pay money, or they

don't get the money they thought they were going to get, their life goes in another

direction. So it's an awesome business if you stop and think about it. You don't

[think about it] until you do an interview with somebody like you that comes and

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. says, "Think about it, and answer a question about it." But you don't go through

thinking about that on a daily basis, or I don't. And when I am called upon to do

it, I realize how important what we are doing is.

RS: How does it make you feel, like this last weekend, when you were able

to work something out and you think it's were going to change someone for the

better?

WD: It makes me feel good, as you would hope that it might. It makes

working Thursday, Friday, Saturday worthwhile -- even though if you had your

druthers, Thanksgiving weekend is a nice time to sit back and eat well and drink

well and relax and just kind of hang out as opposed to coming down here and

spending your life in a library or a conference room, putting the exhibits together,

and strategizing about what you are going to do, when, and what witnesses you

are going to call, and so forth. But when it's done, either by agreement, or if you

go to court and you get the results that you want, it is a very gratifying thing.

RS: As your career moved on in Charlotte, how did you see your role as an

attorney and advocate change, both within the firm, within the community? You

said you were mentor to some of the people here in the firm?

WD: Yeah, lets start with the firm. First off, as I became a trial lawyer - I

became "the trial lawyer" in this firm - and I began adding to that trial lawyer base

by hiring. We got into this recruiting thing, and I became the lead recruiter. We'd

go to Chapel Hill, and we'd go to Virginia, and we'd go to Wake, and we would

hire kids out of law school. And I began teaching these kids how to do what I do,

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. and that has grown for twenty years now. I just hired a lawyer - is today

Tuesday? Yeah, Monday. We have interviewed a young woman that was referred

to us by Professor Sally Sharpe at your school. We interviewed her and she is

interested in domestic law and I need another domestic lawyer, so I added a

lawyer last night. We have been doing that process now for twenty-plus years.

My role in the firm, with my success as a trial lawyer, has enabled me to be

influential in bringing other, hopefully bright, young trial lawyers to this place and

helping them become lawyers so that hopefully they'll repeat the process. And, in

fact, that's happening. Some of my twenty-year efforts, my partners obviously

now, and they're influential in helping us bring in other people. So, in the firm, I

have a nice position. I think I have certainly the ear and hopefully the admiration

of I hope lots of people that are my partners and associates and staff people, and

paralegals, and so forth. Outside, I am well-known; I am not sure how else to a

say that. People ask me when they call wanting to a hire me, "Are you a good

lawyer?" and "Do you win all your cases?" and things like that. And I tell them

quickly that I don't win all my cases; I don't know any lawyers that win all their

cases. Only ones that do are the ones that don't try any cases. They are

undefeated, untied, and unscored upon - I am not one of those. And then I don't

answer the questions about me. I tell them, "You go and ask other people about

me. I am uncomfortable telling you about me." It is like the lawyer or the person

that tells you he is honest. I want to tell you I am honest. I always wonder when

they tell me that, "Why did you tell me that? Why couldn't I draw that conclusion

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. as opposed to you feeding me that?" So I think it's fair to say that I am well-

known; and I am well-known not just here but all across the state and somewhat

regionally, because I have had some high-profile cases that have brought me some

national exposure which leaves a regional taste. I am not a national lawyer; I am

not F. Lee Bailey, I am not Johnny Cochran; far below that from the standpoint of

notoriety, but I am Bill Diehl and that means something certainly here and in this

state and in this region as a trial lawyer. And it has just come from doing it, and

working hard, and being willing to try law suits - that is the other thing. I mean, I

don't mind trying a case. I enjoy trying law suits; I actually like the process, the

event, the battle, and then waiting for the results. Ain't nothing like waiting for a

jury, absolutely nothing like waiting for a jury to come back in and give you the

results of your efforts.

RS: What kind of feeling is that?

WD: I can't verbalize it particularly well. It is an excitement, it is a tension.

It's on the edge, butterflies - like athletic endeavors you have sometimes before

you start. You know then ain't nothing you can do about anything - it is all over.

You have done all you can do and you wait for somebody else to give you a vote

on whether or not they like what you did and how you did it. I still get a real

charge out of that. I am more inclined to try to resolve disputes, having done it

for a long time. I'm probably a little easier to deal with on that subject than I

might have been fifteen, twenty years ago. But in certain areas, I am more willing

to - if the client says "Hey, I don't want to settle." I mean, I may think they ought

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. to settle and may think there is a real advantage to settlement, but if they are hell

bent to try a law suit and they don't want to settle (I am in one of those situations

right now), I have given them my best judgment about what they ought to do and

if they don't want to do it... I've got, as I said, that situation hanging over me

right now - a real big case that I am handling. I think my fellow, a guy I am

representing, ought to settle the case, but he told me in no uncertain terms last

night, he said, "I'd rather pay you the money that I might lose than to pay it to

those lawyers, pay for the other side." So you know, let's tee it up. Lets get out

there, knock that ball around, see where it goes.

RS: You mentioned that you had done a number of high-profile cases.

Let's just touch on a few of those. You said you did some work for Richard

Dortch of the PTL? You described that as your best legal work. I was just

wondering why that is.

WD: Well, we took a horrible situation, factually. The PTL scandal, the

indictment of Jim Bakker and Dortch, and we were able through nothing but effort

to manipulate the case into a position whereby we could get Dortch out of the

case, and ultimately with a minimum of time that he would have to serve. He

ended up serving sixteen months in a minimum security federal prison, during

which he had major surgery on his stomach, at the government's expense, that

repaired a lot of physical things that were wrong with him. He actually used the

time to get himself back into good mental and physical health; it was almost like a

sentence to get well. He didn't know all of that at the beginning, but we worked

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. and worked and worked. I give a lot of the credit to my then-partner Mark

Calloway, who is now the United States attorney here, and my partner John

Arrowood. These men, and a paralegal, and other staff people here, we just

worked hours upon hours upon hours interviewing people, developing evidence,

and picking at the government's case. But, ultimately [we] came to the conclusion

that we could not win a case in which we had to sit next to Jim Bakker. He was

going; he was like an anchor. And if you were near him and you jumped into the

water, either the anchor was going to hit us and take us down, or the chain was

going to grab us as it unraveled. We were going down if the jury had an

opportunity to try both of them.

So, we did a deal on the eve of the trial, and Mr. Dortch pled to a limited

number of the counts, received a minimum sentence, didn't have to report. Of

course [he] was available for testimony in the Bakker trial and ultimately got a very

reduced sentence providing him limited time; and I think, even though it wasn't a

"not guilty," I think from the standpoint of taking something that was terrible and

potentially had all of the adverse exposure that you saw Jim Bakker get, we were

able to deflect Dortch, give him an image that he preferred, kept his dignity, got

in/got out with a minimal amount of problems for him - and - ultimately got him

his money that had been put aside during this time period when he and Bakker

were running the PTL. He had taken a lot of money and put it in a deferred

pension plan that was out-of-state, and we got him that money.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. We also walked him through all of the civil cases, with no liability from all

the PTL partners. So as I look at that and I realize the depth of his problems, and

then the result that we were able to participate in getting him, I think it was a

remarkable result. I am very proud of it, and again I share that pride with the guys

that helped me do it.

Funny story: one night Mark and I were down here at 2:00 in the morning

working, and we had been at it for a long time, maybe like 24 hours we had been

up. And we had finished whatever we were doing - big problem with this Dortch

case. But at 2:00, we decide that we were going out to get a bite to eat, and go

home, get a little rest, and come back. We ended up in a Waffle House that we

found open on Independence Boulevard near the old coliseum. We went in and

ordered some eggs or whatever it is we were eating, and sit down talking. And

we saw this fellow walk in - we didn't pay attention. And he walked out a

moment or two later. About the time he walked out, we heard this blood curdling

scream, and we jumped up and there was the waitress just in mortal fear,

screaming uncontrollably, "He had a gun, he had a gun." So in the midst of the

Dortch case, the Waffle House where we were sitting has been robbed by a guy

with a gun. So we said, "Are you all right?" And she said, "Call the police, call

the police." So Mark and I started running toward the door, and we got to the

door, and we looked at each other. We had been thinking practical thoughts all

day, all night. And we looked at each other and we said - we just shook our

heads and said, "He has a gun and we don't. We are not going to chase him

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. down." So we stopped at the door, peered out, called the police, and waited. We

ended up - they didn't have any money. All we had was like $20s. We couldn't

pay our bill because they didn't have any change; the guy had robbed them of all

their change. But, the woman wrote us out a check [bill] and put their mailing

address on it so that we could mail them the cost of our Waffle House dinner. I

don't know what made me think of that, but I think about the Dortch case and all

the serious stuff that happened and then there is that little vignette that was

absolute craziness - as we were in a restaurant that was getting robbed at 2:00 in

the morning, trying to help somebody that is in deep "do-do" with the federal

government. So that is why that meant a lot to me, that case. And we still see

Reverend Dortch; he comes up and calls. He has written a couple of books and

mentions us favorably in his books. There may be something I do tomorrow that I

am equally proud of, but that to me is something I am real high on.

RS: As an attorney, how do you feel representing a controversial or

potentially unpopular person?

WD: I would rather do that than represent somebody the other way. Mr.

Dortch was just a human being like the rest of us, and he got caught up in a mess.

But I don't mind representing controversial people; and the more popular you get,

the more opportunity you have to take on the high-profile case. We have just

brought a law suit here a couple of weeks ago against the Nashville network, and

the president of the Nashville network, and Phyllis George - and so that is a high-

profile kind of case. I am looking forward to it because I am representing

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. somebody who is not particularly high profile - but a nice man — and he has got a

legitimate gripe, and so we are helping him with it.

RS: Okay. I see that you represent John Boy and Billy or had done some

work for them.

WD: Right.

RS: Does that have any connection to your disc jockey and radio station

days?

WD: None. It gives us something to talk about when we are not talking

about what problems they were having, but I got to know those fellows. John

Boy had a little run-in with the police one night when, not very wisely, he was in

the parking lot of a night club here, and some folks he was with decided that they

needed a little mind-alteration before they went into the club, and began partaking

of that famous weed. Unknown to them, the parking lot was peopled by

undercover cops; they intervened . . .

Tape 3, Side A

WD: . . . Raeford, and Billy and Randy and so forth with various legal

problems that they have had from time to time. So I enjoy that relationship. But

when they need me, it is, generally speaking, it is not something that they want to

be reading about. There are a lot of people that I represent in this town that we

won't discuss their names because what they are having me do, they don't want

anybody to know that they are having me to do it. But I just get to do it, which is

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. exciting, because I get to meet some interesting folks that have got legal problems

that need to be solved. So, we try to solve them.

RS: Do they ever let "Willie K D" go on the radio?

WD: I have been on the radio with John Boy and Billy, and it was really

funny. I thought I was cute and wonderful. But they have a kind of a spotlight

show between like 9:30 and 10:00, and they have "famous" people on during that

hour - whether it is stockcar drivers or something. But they had me on one time,

and that was before the network. I don't think I am famous enough now to make

the network. I'll have to be involved in some high-profile case before they would

have me now that they are broadcasting all over the southeast. But they are good

guys and I am real pleased with their success. They have really, really taken

something from nothing and made it into a big deal.

RS: If I get this name wrong, excuse me but-

WD: All right.

RS: I read that you took on a case that was somewhat, not necessarily

unpopular, but surprising in the Charlotte area - representing the Bhagwan Shree

Rajneesh.

WD: You did very well. The Bhagwan was an Indian from the country

India, who somehow ended up in the United States in the mid'SOs and had a

ranch out in Oregon that he established as somewhat of a commune. They had a

philosophy of peace and love and the Bhagwan - having Rolls Royces and

hundreds of women. They all wore red and dressed beautifully. But the Bhagwan

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. would meditate, and he was surrounded by guards and surrounded by protective

people. A lot of people with a lot of money were in this cult, for lack of a better

way to describe it, and [it] turned out that a lot of his followers were violating the

immigration laws in the United States, marrying. An Indian would come here and

would marry a US citizen so that they could have citizenship to stay here, and

then their marriage would be over the next week, and they would go on. So INS

was hot on his trail, unknown to me of course, because he was out in Oregon.

Apparently the pressures got to the point where his advisors thought it might be

cool to leave the United States under the cover of darkness. So they rented two

Lear-type jets on the west coast and, unknown to the Bhagwan and his group,

there was an ongoing grand jury investigation at that time focused on him and

some of his disciples, and they were watching him. So they knew when he left to

go to the airport, and they knew when he got in the plane, and they monitored the

flight of the two planes all the way across the United States. And the planes were

not properly equipped to fly over water. So they needed to land on the east coast

and they put down in Charlotte about 3:00 one morning, both of them, to be met

by a large contingent of people with guns and badges from the federal

government. And they arrested everybody on the plane. There were a lot of

followers and the Bhagwan and his doctor and so forth. And there was a

Charlotte contact, a person here who I had helped in a domestic case and gotten

her a lot of money. She was married to a very wealthy man who had a lot of

stores across the country, and she had gotten a big number in her domestic case.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. And when they landed, she was at the airport and got arrested. The word got

back to Oregon at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning that Bhagwan had been arrested.

So my phone rang at 4:00 in the morning and I am talking to a fellow from Oregon

who described himself as the general counsel for this group and lived on the

ranch; and he needed a lawyer and he wanted a lawyer to go immediately to

make sure that the Bhagwan was all right. He had my name because the woman,

who had been arrested from Charlotte that I had helped in a domestic case, had a

son that was on the ranch. She herself had been out there also a lot, but her son

was living on the ranch at that time. And so they got my name that way.

So that began one of the craziest two or three weeks I have ever spent

because we had a national story in Charlotte - the Bhagwan had been caught,

theoretically, trying to flee an indictment that he didn't know [about], that hadn't

been issued but in fact was being handed down. And all his disciples - and they

had all been put in the poky. So we got involved to defend them, and did [defend

them], and had an incredible time. We got everybody out of jail here - either the

charges dismissed or dropped, whatever - except the Bhagwan, because he was

indicted with felonies. There were no opportunities to be released, I mean to

have the charges ended here; he had to go back to Oregon. And they shipped

him back to Oregon. In fact, on the way back to Oregon he got stuck in

Oklahoma City for a couple of nights and I flew to Oklahoma City to get him out of

there, and make sure that he got on back to Oregon.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. When he got back to Oregon, he ultimately did a deal, this was so crazy, he

did a deal so that he could be deported from the country. So they spent all this

money to stop him in Charlotte, and this big prosecution all geared up and

countless hours and so forth, and then they ship him back to Oregon, and then

they do a deal that lets him charter a 727 to India, which is what he ended up

doing. So that was quite a "do" for there was one one-week period in which I

slept fourteen hours the week - the whole week. It was unbelievable. We had a

monumental effort underway here and in our little law firm to get this guy

protected here. We did, I mean - he did - "Nightline" from the jail, and he did the

CBS Late Night Show from the jail. We had press everywhere here. This was in

1985. It was a great experience, and I made a good fee. They had plenty of

money. People asked me, "He had Rolls Royces?" I mean, he had over a hundred

Rolls Royces. Everybody wanted to know, "Did I get a Rolls Royce?" And the

answer is "No, I did not."

RS: Okay. I've discussed with some other people about potential trial

tactics. And I read a footnote in the Eastern Airlines Fourth Circuit opinion that

discussed some of the trials tactics that went on in that case. I just was

wondering how you felt about different types of styles in the courtroom.

WD: I don't know what footnote you read, but that was a case in which

we were trying to get punitive damages from Eastern, and we got called on the

carpet for inflammatory jury arguments. That may have been the footnote that

you were referring to. I think that opinion was wrong. I think that had those

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. people been in the courtroom and heard the argument and seen what had

transpired in that tragedy, they would have said, as did some of the other judges -

- I mean this was an interesting case that we lost en banc. The opinions went to

about as far as extremes as you could go about deciding about that particular

issue, which wasn't necessarily the turning point issue in any event. But I thought

that was an unfair shot about our arguments. This was a horrible crash and it was

clearly the result of two guys sitting in a cockpit not paying attention to what they

were doing and misreading five altimeters - all of which were there to let them

know how high they were flying. I mean, nobody flew this plane into the ground

except them. And they didn't just hit a little bit short, they landed three miles

short on the runway here in Charlotte. Killed a lot of people, and burned severely

this man that we were representing by the name of Richard Arnold. In fact, he

was the most severely burned passenger who lived. So when we started talking

about burning in jet fuel, we weren't just making that up - that happened. And as

happy as I am with the Dortch outcome, the ultimate result of that case was a

settlement. I mean, after and before the retrial, and for a lot of money. I mean,

Mr. Arnold is set for the rest of his life, and we made a big fee that we earned.

But the feeling of that case went from just raw excitement of that very significant

jury verdict to the "ivory towers of argument" in the United States Court of

Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; and the attacks, and the opinions, the questioning

from people who are obviously favorable to you, and people that weren't favorable

to you. The tactics of the other side - the people representing Eastern on appeal

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. hired Sam Ervin's father, Senator Sam, to read their brief. So then they gave

notice to the Fourth Circuit that he was on their side of the case, so Judge Ervin

recused himself. And obviously, I don't know what Judge Ervin would have done

with this case; but I tried a number of cases in front of Judge Ervin when he was

a trial judge here, and consider him someone I know personally, someone, when I

go to the Fourth Circuit, I make it a point to go to his office to say "How are you

doing?" We are not best buddies, but we know each other and have known each

other for twenty years. And I think he would have been very sensitive to our

argument in the case; and had he stayed on that panel, the end result might have

been affirmed as opposed to what turned out. So, I came away from all of that

unhappy with the process, frustrated with the people involved in the appellate

side, from the judging standpoint. Interestingly enough, if you go to my office, I

have a picture on the wall, a cartoon done by the lawyer that handled the trial

defense for Eastern, Howard Barwick; and he did a caricature of all the people in

the courtroom - the judge, the lawyers, the witnesses and it is a great caricature.

And on mine, he has me done as a little fat guy with long hair holding this big keg

of dynamite because my argument included an analogy that that airplane, full of

jet fuel, was nothing more than a keg of dynamite, and these people lit the fuse.

And during my jury argument, I literally used that analogy, and I ran the fuse. I

pretended to a jingle out gunpowder from this imaginary cask I was holding, and I

took it all the way over to where the lawyers were that were defending Eastern.

And I asked the jury to imagine that this cask of gunpowder was this airplane and

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. I asked them to imagine this trail of imaginary gun powder was the distance from

Charlotte, I mean from Charleston to Charlotte. And when I got to the end of

pouring out the imaginary gun powder, which led back to the big explosion which

would come from the cannon, the big container of gun powder, I took a match out

and I lit the match and touched it to the floor and then I stood back and I said

"Let's just watch this go for thirty minutes, because that is how long it takes to fly

from Charleston," and every juror in the place is looking at the floor, and all the

lawyers and everybody in the courtroom is watching the imaginary gun powder

light as you have seen on TV many times as it trails across the floor. And then I

periodically gave little snaps of cockpit conversation as the jurors approached

Carowinds, I mean as the plane approached Carowinds and they are talking about

Arabs and this problem and that problem. And then one of them says "Now all

we've got to do is find a runway." Of course, the people in the plane had seen

the runway. There were broken clouds that day. So it was just like if you flew in

here today, this somewhat cloudy weather, there might be a place where you

couldn't see but then there is a place where you can see. You have experienced

that. And people on the plane, they were watching these guys fly this damn plane

into the ground, not paying attention. So I thought we had the right to argue and

of course the punitive damages award went to a the jury; we didn't get it. But we

got a good regular damage award. So anyhow, you get me started on Eastern and

I can talk all night because I think it is such a, I thought that was a terrible result

and unfair. But, I learned a little something and you can't read any other opinions

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. about my oral arguments being too prejudicial. I didn't think you could make too

prejudicial an argument. I thought that was what the whole purpose of it was to

prejudice the jury in your favor. Anyhow . . .

RS: Do you have any other interesting stories of different closing

arguments or tactics that you have used in the court room?

WD: Oh, gosh.

RS: I read somewhere that you rolled on the floor.

WD: Yeah, that was a civil rights case here in which I was demonstrating

how the police mistreated a fellow. So I actually got down, and we did a few

tricks to show exactly what they said they had done. And that was humorous and

effective, it turned out. I remember, in that same case, all of the police witnesses

testified the same exact way. I mean, the same way, which makes it - it is not

real. "When I went out, the sun was shining out of the right quadrant and the da

da da. And he was standing there, that police officer." Then the next cop came

up, "When I came out, he was standing and the sun was shining on the . . ."

Every bit of the testimony was verbatim; it was awful. And you knew that they

had rehearsed it. I think I had a jury that I thought was up to speed on music and

there was a band that Sting was once the lead singer of called The Police, and

they had a song out that went something [singing], "They do, do, do, they da, da,

da. That's all I want to say to you." You remember that?

RS: Yeah.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: So, in my jury argument I said, "I hope some of you know the rock

group The Police?" and I got a few nods. And I said, "they've got a real famous

song that got played, and we didn't even know it, in this trial. I said, "Now you

remember when officer so-and-so came up here, and I asked him about this?

What did he say?" And I paused and I said, he said [singing], "They do, do, do,

they da, da, da. That's all I want to say to you." And I said, "Well, I thought that

was okay. That was the first word I had on the subject but then there was officer

so-and-so. He was standing way over here and couldn't possibly see the same

thing that officer, first officer did." And I said, "So I put him on the stand and I

asked him what he saw. What did he say?" And they all nodded, "They do, do,

do, they da, da, da. That's all I want to say to you." Then I said, "Then there was

officer so-and-so who wasn't even there, remember? But he had an opinion about

what had happened. "And so," I said, "I put him on the stand so that you all could

hear his testimony." And, I said, "And I asked him, what had happened out there?

And he said "What?" And they all go into "Do, do, do." And I said, "Yeah, they

do, do, do, they da, da, da. That's all I want to say to you." They got the point.

I tried a case a few years ago against Interstate Securities. They had a

broker that was selling out of his back pocket - and not Interstate, some

investments. But these people he was selling to were Interstate customers, and

they thought they were buying an Interstate deal. So, to hammer the point home

in jury argument that this guy - the defense of Interstate was that we should have

known that he wasn't an Interstate broker in this transaction. That this was his

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. own deal and we should have known better than to invest our money with him on

this particular investment because it was clearly not an Interstate deal. That was

the argument, even though our money went to Interstate. So before the jury

argument, I had taken a piece of Interstate letterhead, and they've got that

distinctive print on their magazines, I mean on their ads, whether a magazine or

TV or newspaper. And I took that down to a screen printer and I got him to print

me up some Interstate hats - some baseball caps with "Interstate" on the top. I

had three of them made. This guy, a lot of these transactions had occurred in the

Interstate office. So I asked the jury in the closing argument, I went up and sat in

the witness stand, and I said, "I want you to imagine for a moment that I am so-

and-so, the broker, and I am at my Interstate office, and I am selling today IBM

stock." And I reached down below and I put on my Interstate hat, with Interstate

hat right on and I said, "I am an Interstate broker. You can tell that because I am

wearing my Interstate hat. Right?" They all nodded. I took my hat off, I put it

down below. I said, "I am so-and-so today, and I have this investment for this

development in Georgia," which is the problem, and this limited partnership

investment which they sold. I took them to the time this transaction occurred in

the Interstate office, and I said, "So, today I am selling those." And I reached

down and put my Interstate hat on. And I said, "Who am I working for today?" Of

course, my Interstate hat was shining brightly; I was working for Interstate. And

I did that analogy again with the third transaction that cost my people some

money. And the jury gave us a million four [$1,400,000]: they liked that.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. Interstate could have settled that case for $250,000 when it began, [but] paid a

million four.

RS: Do you find a lot of people that beat you in the courtroom engage in

more creative tactics, like some of the stories you said, or do you find that you are

one of the few people that do that?

WD: I'm one of the few people that enjoys that to the point that I want to

go the extra mile to make some sort of visual impression - which jurors tend to

remember a whole lot more than my words or witnesses' words.

RS: How you feel that judges respond to that?

WD: Well.

RS: I know it is different for each judge.

WD: Yeah, and it is. But basically, if I am not doing something that's too

outrageous, I am allowed to do it. They like it, too. Good judges like to see

creativity, like to see a lawyer get into his case and fight for his client. They don't

mind that.

RS: Moving on to some questions about the judiciary and the judges. How

do you view their role in the adversary system? Moving trials along?

WD: They have got that job. They have got the "balls and strikes" job.

The only thing I don't like about judges is judges that, you know, suddenly

become higher forms of life when they get anointed or appointed to be a judge.

They forget who they are, and where they came from, and the fact that they are

people. And there are a lot of them that get that - "blackrobe-itis," we call it.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. They get so overwhelmed with their power and their stature and all of that that

they begin treating people differently. Litigants, lawyers, significant levels of

intolerance, because they are the "judge type thing." So, I don't care for that, and

I can't imagine anybody who would care for that, but they do it. And a lot of

them campaign hard that they are not going to do it; but when they become a

judge, they do do it.

The judges I like the best are the ones that don't do that and continue to be

lawyers with a robe, and recognize that they have a different function now that

they are no longer an advocate. They call it this decision or that decision and they

need to do it impartially and they need to do it fairly and they need to take time to

think about it. It is very frustrating when you write a five to ten-page brief for a

case and you hand it up when you are supposed to and the judge comes to court,

he hadn't read it. He is short. He has got too much to do and rather than take

the time to read and make an intelligent decision, he just snaps his fingers and

comes up with an off-the-cuff result that I think is indicative that he ought to be

doing something else - ought not to be judge. He ought to let people have their

argument, he ought to read the materials that are submitted, and he ought to

make a conscientious decision.

RS: In one of our presentations, one of our students gave an interview by

Judge Lewis Meyer; and he said that Judge Meyer said that he felt the role of the

court system and the judiciary should be one of resolution and not adversary.

How do you feel about it that?

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: I think he is dead wrong. I think we have a real good system that

permits parties with a dispute to resolve that dispute in an adversarial way, if they

choose to do so, that involve twenty paces, turn and fire. Everybody can get an

advocate, theoretically, and present their case, and have an independent group -

either twelve, six, or eight, the federal system, or a single judge in certain

instances - resolve the conflict.

I don't think there is anything against settlement and I am all for it, settling

cases, but there are cases that can't be settled. They just need to be tried and I

think to put the government in the role of being the "super parent" - going to

make everybody okay and we are going to resolve everything - is wrong. And I

think we ought to encourage settlement, ought to have things that facilitate

settlement, [and] we ought not to punish people who don't settle. They ought to

be able to try their lawsuit and go forward.

So I think to put the government in the primary role of settling disputes is

ridiculous. Not going to happen I hope, but I certainly respect former Justice

Meyer, now Judge Meyer; I understand has been appointed as a judge. I respect

his opinion, I just disagree with it.

RS: Professor Bennett said you had an interesting story about Pou Bailey.

WD: Great story about Pou, great story about Pou. I tried a criminal case

in Lenoir, Caldwell County, North Carolina, about seventy-five miles north of here.

And I've got a real criminal, he is a mafia-type criminal - my first mafia type. He

is charged with a series of crimes involving transporting stolen equipment. They

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. will steal a big piece of road equipment, change it around, and move it, and sell it

to somebody for nothing but make a lot of money. And they are doing it all over

the country. They caught this guy in Canada. He fought extradition back to

North Carolina. In fact, we went up there and did that. We lost, and he had to

come back for the trial, and he is in jail. His name was Ashley Lakatis. Ashley is

charged with this multiple count indictment focused on this one large piece of road

equipment that they have accused him, the government, the state people have

accused him of stealing. You may remember [from] your criminal law class, you

need to allege in an indictment the proper owner of a piece of property that has

been stolen; and there is a great distinction between a corporate owner and an

individual owner. In this particular case, the government charged that the piece of

equipment was owned by a person, and they had the person there. We found out

that the equipment was owned by a corporation and had the title. So we knew

that they had screwed up the indictment. We sat back, picked a jury, got into

jeopardy, [and the] case began. They started putting on their evidence and there

came a time during the presentation of the State's case that they wanted to put

into evidence, as it were, this big piece of equipment. And so they held their hand

up to Judge Bailey and said, "Could we have a bench conference?" "Sure."

Bailey, you may or may not know, was a rather gruff but very smart judge. He

had been on the bench a hundred years. He is a big man, carried a pistol while he

was in court, [and] often would put the pistol on the bench. The way you dealt

with Bailey was - be prepared, and be respectful, and laugh at his jokes when you

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. were in chambers. So, we went up to the bench and he, the DA, whispered to

the judge, "Judge, we have got this big bulldozer out here on the side and what

we'd like to do is have the defendant, obviously we can't drive the bulldozer in,

we would just like to have the defendant stipulate that that bulldozer out there is

the same bulldozer and is owned by the same people that I mentioned in the

indictment." And the judge looked at me for an answer, and I looked at him and I

said, "Your honor, this is a criminal case." And I think it was a Tuesday, just like

today, and I said, "We are not going to stipulate that today is Tuesday, with all

due respect." And I smiled. And the judge put his head down and lifted his head

back up and looked at the district attorney and said to him (the guy's name was

Caldwell), "Mr. Caldwell, I think Mr. Diehl just said, 'Go fuck yourself.'" And we

all smiled and went back to our respective places. But it was one of the most -

it's the greatest zinger I have ever been a part of because that is exactly what I

had said. The judge had to say it for me. Of course, they rested their case and

we made a motion that introduced and showed him the title, and they threw the

case out. Ashley walked out of jail and never to be heard from since. I don't

have the slightest idea what ever happened to that guy. Because the feds came

around about three days later, they were now trying to get him for something

because they thought the state was going to convict him and [therefore] hadn't

done anything. But Ashley got away, got away clean, so I don't know what

happened to him. But that is a true story, a true story.

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Professor Bennett also said to ask you about [North Carolina

Procedural] Rule 8(a)(2). He said he gave you a call or something when he had

just started practicing after leaving the bench down here?

WD: 8(a)(2)is the, if my memory is right, is the rule that says you can't put

your damages in your complaint in a negligence case. I don't independently

remember Walter's call about that rule to me post his judging. I do know that we

violated that rule, or a lawyer in my office violated that rule - and he was working

for me, so I took the hit. We went all the way to the court of appeals to save the

case because we [had] amended the moment we found out that we had sued this

lawyer for all of these damages. He quickly moved to throw us out and we

quickly amended the complaint to change the amount. But I know it caused us a

lot of pain and suffering, and the court of appeals let us off the hook. But the

district court, I mean the superior court, tossed us for having violated the rule. So

it may have been I was talking to him about that.

RS: He said he had done the same thing and called you up and said [that]

you said, "We are both committing malpractice on malpractice claims."

WD: Right, right. We miss Walter. Walter was first a good lawyer and

was a really good judge who was very sensitive to people and wasn't guilty of the

crime of "black robe-itis" that I told you about a moment ago. But he has gone on

to greater heights in the teaching profession, both at Virginia and at Chapel Hill.

So what he has done I am very envious of - he has expanded. I got to spend

seven years at Chapel Hill and Virginia (Charlottesville), which I think are two of

100

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. the nicest places in the world to be, and he has made now a career of spending

time at both of those places. I am envious.

RS: Okay. I would like to move on a little bit to the area of family law . . .

WD: Sure.

RS: . . . and your feelings on it. What do you feel are the trends in the

family law practice today as far as disputes and working them out in the court

system?

WD: I think there is a real trend toward use of ADR to solve family law

problems; and it's a field that is peculiarly suited to that happening. Family law

cases are so much different than other cases because there is so much

emotionalism involved. And there are hurt feelings, and adverse consequences on

children, and a lifetime of problems that can be generated by the heat and the

intensity of family law dispute that generally don't apply in other areas.

So the trend and the notion of resolving those things without having to

beat each other up in a courtroom has become increasingly fashionable, and it has

been put into practice with custody mediation, mandatory pre-trial conferences, a

mandatory choice now in Mecklenburg County of some form of alternative dispute

resolution before you get to trial in an equitable distribution case. So I think the

clear trend is to try to make people resolve their own differences, utilizing the

skills of lawyers.

RS: How do you feel about that?

101

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: I am for that. I think that that's good for society, it's good for the

people. Every case doesn't have to be a war in a family law setting, and a lot of

them are. But I think that's a positive development, so I support it. I don't

interfere with the process. I mean, I may have a strong opinion about a case that

a woman or man should have this, that, that; but if they get into [a] mediated

environment and are able to compromise to give up this to get that, give up that to

get this - and it doesn't involve me - I think that is probably good. So I am pro

that method of resolution. I think we always have to have, though, the advocate,

the advocacy system/adversary system for both sides to be able to have their

mouthpiece and go at each other, if in fact they can't work it out and so. And

there are cases like that, too; they've just got to be tried.

RS: How do you feel about no-fault divorce and the fact that the waiting

period, say, is shortened over time to get a divorce?

WD: I am for that. Marriage is such a crazy situation, and there are so

many people that are unhappy in their relationships that there needs to be a way

without pouring acid all over each other to get out of the problem and move on.

We have had a system in North Carolina until October 1 of this year which

emphasized fault in connection with marriages splitting up, not divorce, but just a

split-up creates this alimony issue which is so largely tied to fault. And that has

changed now; we are less tied to fault, although it is still a component of the

system. And that will be better for people looking at their lives and deciding,

"Okay we have been together this long; we are going to split. Let's come up with

102

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. a fair way to a resolve our differences now that we are not going to say - "well,

you slept with who, and you called me bad names, and so forth." We are just not

going to focus as much on that; we are going to try to deal with the economics of

the partnership.

And there are enough factors now that have been built into the statute so

that hopefully a right-thinking judge, exercising his discretion, is not going to give

a woman who has been married three years lifetime alimony. And simultaneously,

he is not going to give a man who has been married forty years, whose wife has

stayed home, he is not going to give him a free ride and say, "Oh yeah, in two

years she is rehabilitated." I am not sure what she has done. It doesn't matter

after forty years, you know. There ought to be some accountability for the fact

that you have been together that long, and the certain patterns that develop that

you can't change. You can't take a woman out of the work force thirty years and

then say, "Okay, go back in and make a million dollars." She is not going to make

a million dollars; her hair is going to turn blue and she is going to be selling

cosmetics at a department store. And that isn't what ought to happen if she has

been supported fully all her life.

So, I am hopeful this new statute will focus on realities of economics in

relationships and that we don't draw any great bright lines - because you can't.

But judges will exercise their discretion wisely in awarding reasonable support for

limited periods of time to certain people, and reasonable support for longer periods

103

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. of time for people who, in fact, deserve it because of the economic conditions that

have been created.

RS: Creating that bigger level of discretion, do you think that encourages or

discourages more lawsuits?

WD: No, I don't, because they have always had discretion in setting

amounts of support, so that's not really new. I am just hopeful that they will be

intellectually tuned into the statute to the point that they recognize it is not a

woman's or man's or woman's, because it is mostly women that are getting

alimony. It is not a woman's relief act in the sense that now everybody gets

lifetime support. The concept, when you couple equitable distribution and its

presumptive fifty-fifty split, and then if there is a different split, whatever that

turns out to be, you couple that ED with the support obligation there needs to be a

blending of the two so that, you know, the man is not left as a mule in the

backyard, walking up and down plowing the field and turning his money over to

somebody that he doesn't live with. That ought not to be the case either.

But at the same time, the woman ought to have some reasonable support

and, dependent upon her circumstances and the length of their marriage and how

they lived so forth, their ought to be a finite time for that support so that she is

back on her feet and nol dependent any longer on this man that was her husband.

That needs to be the way it gets implemented and starts working.

104

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: One other question on family law. You recently attended a seminar on

new child support laws. How do you feel about those laws; the changes that

they will be making?

WD: I am not a big proponent of these guidelines. I prefer looking at the

family individually, looking at the adults and the children, and the needs, and

arriving at support in that fashion. This automatic computerized decision about

support, while bringing uniformity, it seems to me also injects arbitrariness to the

process. And so I am not a guideline proponent. But that is what we've got and

are going to get and we're going to get more of it - so I operate within the

system. I am not a renegade about that, we just go right on. We ask for

deviation from guidelines certainly where we think it is appropriate. But, this is

just the wave of the future, so we might as well as accept it, get used to it. And

it does bring a certain sense of, as I said, uniformity everywhere to the notion of

child support, so that the kid in Asheville and the kid in Morehead City are getting

fundamentally the same amount of support where the incomes of the respective

parents are basically the same as opposed to some wild difference based on the

attitude of a judge in Asheville versus the attitude of a judge down east.

RS: Overall, how do you feel the family law court system and dockets

flow? I read an article that criticized lawyers, and then I read an editorial of yours

in response.

WD: Yeah, I think this last round of "starving the wife" article that this

reporter in Charlotte wrote is a bunch of crap. She has chosen to talk to people

105

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. who lost their cases and are now discussing those sour grapes. There is nothing

wrong with making positive changes in laws. The basis for the positive change in

these laws where it was tied to husbands starving the wife and delaying the trials

of cases, is...

Tape 3, Side B

WD: . . . For whatever reason, and they're still there, and new rules about

that are not going to make that any different. Generally, people get their cases

heard when they want them heard within the timetable of the particular area

where they live. I mean, North Carolina is very divergent in its judicial systems,

again from Morehead City to Asheville, and we are busier in Charlotte than they

are in Morehead City. So it might not be as quick as it could be there. I knew

because it was interesting — the article was largely focused on women that we

represented husbands of the group that got started, I think six of them, the

husbands were our clients, and we had prevailed in these cases. You know,

somebody wasn't entitled to alimony because they had committed adultery. So,

she has argued about getting starved out, but she wasn't entitled to support.

Another case, she didn't want any of the property - she wanted a big cash

settlement - so arguing about transferring the properties didn't make any sense,

but that was the complaint - "that I didn't have use of the property." She didn't

want the property; she couldn't have run the property if it had been given to her.

So it made no sense.

106

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. Now what was a legitimate gripe was that the legislature passed a statute a

few years ago which permitted an interim distribution, and the court of appeals

interpreted it to mean that it didn't involve cash. You could only turn over a piece

of property that was available; you couldn't make the guy go to the bank and get

$10,000 and give it to you. You had to turn over something that was tangible, as

opposed to just making him pay money. Well, that made no sense. I mean, that

didn't solve the problem that the legislature tried to solve when they created an

interim distribution. So, they improved that this time by overruling, by the

legislative act, that case and said, "You can award an amount of money." Well,

that just made sense. I mean, [it] didn't have much to do with anything other

than, in my view, a poor decision from the court of appeals.

And the alimony statute has been changed to de-emphasize fault. Well,

good. You know, but that doesn't have much to do with the women that didn't

get alimony that had been screwing around on their husbands, because the

alimony statute as amended will prevent them from getting support, again. It is

still a bar to support. So, I don't see a lot of what happened here as - I see some

of what happened as knee jerk, uneducated, people not really knowing what

happened reaction, and the long emotionalism - so they made some changes.

Some of the changes they made were good, some of the changes they didn't even

need to make because they don't do anything different. And the folks that

initiated it, whether or not I was on the other side of them, more power to them to

improve something. Their motives for doing so I don't support, because I know

107

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. the women, I know what they did, I know what they didn't do. I know their

lawyers. I know what happened in the case, and nobody else - for her to say the

case got continued ten times, a woman to say that. - well, that is fine. That

happens. I mean, her lawyer may have had ten conflicts, or nine conflicts, or five

conflicts, and I may have had five conflicts. She also changed lawyers four times

- so that the new lawyer needed to get brought up to speed. At one point, she

had three lawyers and three different law firms all trying to represent her, and so

that created delays. And she appealed, and that created a delay - but she doesn't

talk about that. So you have to pay, it makes good reading in the newspaper, and

they wouldn't print my full response. They edited my [letter] (I don't like that I

haven't written [before]), but that is the only letter I think I have ever written to

the editor in my life. They didn't print my whole thing; they called me up and told

me that they had to cut it, and this is what they were going to cut and da, da, da.

I didn't get to call them names in my response and tell the other side of the story

about the people that were making these complaints. So, the full picture of what

happened with these folks didn't get told. And as I read the newspaper, it was a

great advertisement for me because husbands read it and thought "Oh boy!

There's a great lawyer." So I got a lot of business from husbands.

RS: Just a general question about the profession. We have discussed in

our class the billable hour, how a lot of older attorneys think that has been a

problem in the development of the law. How do you view the billable hour and

the fee system?

108

Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: Well, it is very confining, but it's the way it's done now. So it's like

everything else - you need to live with it and you need to do it right. You don't

need to do like this lawyer in Raleigh did that recently got convicted of defrauding

a number of folks. You don't need to pretend that there are ninety-six hours in

every day. And there are ways around the hour problem where you are doing

work that you are able to do very quickly because of all you have invested in a

system, as it were. It doesn't take me as long to do a separation agreement today

as it did twenty-six years ago. That's because I have spent twenty-six years

doing these damn things and I've got lots of forms that I can draw on. But the

way that you can handle that is to just simply charge a fee for that service, and

set the fee consistent with what you believe to be a fair fee is.

You can't charge somebody an unconscionable fee because we have a rule

about that; but you can charge more than just your hours would generate. So, if

a lawyer wants to charge a fee for doing something, he has the opportunity to do

that and say to the client, "This is my fee for doing this." Otherwise this hour

thing, I think - other than setting a fee for your service and then, of course,

contingent fees in certain situations, the way you are going to charge is that way,

because that is what people are willing to pay for what they are used to. You just

need to keep your time and bill it fairly.

We bill in tenths of an hour, which is about as close as you can get to six-

minute increments, and we tell people when we start. If we spend thirty seconds,

it is six minutes. We can't bill in thirty-second increments, or ten-second

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. increments. We believe this to be a fair method: divide sixty minutes into ten six-

minute segments, and tell them in advance, and then bill them that way.

Now, that has the potential for abuse, theoretically, if in six minutes you

can bill six clients for the same thing a tenth of an hour. Then you billed thirty-six

minutes of time for what you actually took six minutes to do. And I think that,

you know, I mean carried to its logical extreme, which is what happened to Mr.

Kirby, that's where you get into a world of trouble. Most of us are not that

sophisticated that we do things that fast. I mean, when I put down a tenth of an

hour, generally speaking, I've spent six or five or ten minutes, you know, to do it.

But there is an inherent problem when you have a system that is not geared to the

second - literally, every second that you have. That is just not practical, and I

don't think anybody expects that.

The trick is - it is not a trick. The proper method is to get all that on the

table, with your client, in writing. I hardly have any cases that aren't covered by

either a fee letter or a fee contract, and that is how it ought to be done. Then the

client knows, you know, and there isn't going to be any misunderstanding about it

- the client knows what he is getting into. Fortunately, there is lots of

competition these days. So, if a client doesn't like the way you want to do it,

they can go someplace else and get the same thing done. And I tell people that.

There are 2,000 lawyers in Charlotte. If you don't like what I am telling you, go

see one of them.

RS: How do you feel about advertising your profession?

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: I am against it. [noise] Pardon me [noise] That's going to be great for

somebody listening 30 years from now: Bill Diehl blowing his nose. But I think it

has performed a service. I think it has gotten the word out to people that legal

services can be had cheaper than they knew they could be had, and that's good.

I don't need to, maybe that's why it's easy for me to be not for it. But I think

these ads you see on television now are cheesy. The ones in the newspaper, and

if we open this phone book, this yellow pages to this phone book and we've got

these full page ads of the statue of justice, and the scales - there they are -

tipped. If it gets to that for me, I will be doing something else. I just think that

it's repulsive and don't care much for it. But, I respect it in the sense that I know

that it's "the thing," and I think it has provided some good.

RS: Okay, I would like to just do, kind of, not a wrap up, but just some

major themes that kind of run through the profession. What values do you think

are essential that makes a good attorney? I warn you, these questions will be kind

of broad.

WD: That's okay: personal integrity. That's a broad word, integrity, that

describes a lot of traits but fundamentally deals with honesty. I think you need to

be honest with yourself, you need to be honest with the people with whom you

are dealing, whether they are clients, or opposing counsel. That doesn't mean

you need to give away things; you don't have to give away. But integrity calls

for playing by the rules. I think the greatest misunderstanding about lawyers - I

hope it's a misunderstanding about lawyers - is that I think the public thinks that

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. sharp lawyers can cheat and get away with it, and that's part of being a lawyer.

They can do something shady and get away with it, and that's part of being a

lawyer - that is the qualities that lawyers have. And that just drives me crazy. I

can't stand it in other lawyers. And it's true. There are just hundreds of

examples that I see in my business weekly, daily, sometimes hourly, where

lawyers are doing things they ought not to be doing and acting in ways that they

ought not to be acting. It's what gives us a bad name as a group of humans.

So, I advocate personal integrity. That doesn't mean you have to be

perfect. But in your business practice, if you can maintain honesty with yourself

and honesty with your opponents and honesty with your clients, then I think that

gives you a long way toward playing the game right, playing by the rules. If

you've got a bad piece of paper [and] the other side wants it - you got it, you

give it to them. You have a bad piece of paper [and] the other side wants it but

they don't ask for it properly - don't give it to them. You don't tell them how to

nail you; but if they ask you properly, then you give them the paper even though

it hurts you. You don't tell clients what to say when you know what you are

telling them to say is not what happened. You don't prepare a witness that way.

And that is the kind of crap that I see going on in our business that I find to be

ridiculous, frustrating, and all those things.

RS: How about the role of the attorney? We have talked about this a little

bit already. But the role of service - do you think that is still today an important

goal of the profession - to give back to the community?

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. WD: I'm not sure how I feel about that - "give back to the community." I

mean, the notion that a lawyer is significantly different from other people is a

problem that I have. I think lawyers are people; we have a job. Does that job

require us to give back to the community? Why should it? What makes a

lawyer's job such that he is required to give back to the community? I'm not so

sure I agree with the premise upon which the question is asked. I think it's

appropriate that we do good things and good works for people. But I would apply

that to any profession. I mean, you know, you can be a garbage man and do

extra things for the community - "give back to the community" - because you

have a job as a garbage man. Lawyers obviously can do good things and help

people and give back to the community - but not so much because they are

lawyers. I mean, if you're giving back to things that provide for you, maybe you

give to your law school. It provided you the education to be a lawyer. Maybe

give back to your parents, because they provided you the opportunity to be here

to do something positive. I am not so sure that I adhere to the notion that it is an

overriding duty to give back something, as opposed to there should be an innate

commitment as a human being to want to do. And it doesn't mean so much that

you have that feeling because you have a law degree and you are a lawyer. So, I

look at it from a different perspective, as opposed to owing somebody something.

I don't think it's so much that you are a lawyer and owe somebody something -

you might as a human being have an obligation to help your fellow man who is

less fortunate than you. And I would prefer to approach that from that way.

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: So it would be fair to say then it wouldn't be an aspect of the

profession that you give back to the community, but more of - you can give back

to the community as a lawyer through the legal system, whereas a doctor can do

it some other way.

WD: Exactly, exactly.

RS: Okay. How do you feel about the perceived public perception of

lawyers?

WD: I think they are right on the money, and it's one reason I don't hang

out with lawyers very much. I think as a group we are horrible. There are great

lawyers that are great people. But, if you throw us all in a pot, I am afraid the pot

don't smell too good. I think it's a bad image, a bad smell, and it's brought about

by what we do and how we do it, how we deal with our clients and how we deal

with each other, and I don't think it's very good. And I don't think it's a good

state of affairs right now, generally, from the big picture.

I have great relationships with a number of people that are lawyers that I

deal with a lot. I have less than great relationships with a lot of people that are

lawyers that I deal with a lot; and I may be as much at fault as they are, but I

have a strong opinion about that. Somebody objectively looking at it might say,

"Well now, Billie, you need to be more understanding and tolerant and so forth."

But I don't choose to be because I don't think I am getting a fair shake from the

other side. I don't think I'm being dealt with with that "integrity thing" that I told

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. you about earlier. So, I don't think we've got a good image right now, I don't

think it's going to get a lot better in my lifetime, and I'll just leave it at that.

RS: Do you feel that in some extent [it's that way] because of a lack of

self-policing their own morals or ethical guidelines, or just an impersonal way of

dealing with people? A little bit of everything?

WD: Well, I've had some unpleasant experiences with the policing aspects

of lawyers, and I don't think that's well done. But it's human, so it is imperfect by

my definition. I think that the bar trying to control people's morals is an exercise

in futility. I don't think it's any of the bar's business about people's morals. I

think how they conduct themselves with their clients, insofar as their honesty is

concerned, is a business that lawyers should be interested in disciplining and

controlling people so that lawyers aren't stealing from their clients and aren't

having people commit perjury, and aren't cheating. I think when we get into the

business of moral judgments and the bar imposing what it sees as a moral

standard on a group of people, I think that's going way out-of-bounds. And I

don't care for it.

RS: What do you see as the major problems affecting the profession in the

next ten to twenty years?

WD: I guess that presupposes that there are major problems, that there are

problems. The business of being a lawyer is so personal to the particular human

being that is one, to extrapolate personal difficulties with a lawyer to a larger

group and then try to define that as a local, regional, state, or national problem - I

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. struggle with. It seems to me that so much of the problems with lawyers

ultimately goes back to the individual lawyer who has got a problem. He's got a

breakdown somewhere: he's drinking too much, he's letting that screw up his

work, he's not honest, he's stealing money, he's letting that infect his practice

and his clients, and it hurts him personally - and then hurts the profession to a

larger extent in a bigger picture.

It strikes me that we don't solve those kinds of problems, beyond having

good people be lawyers. A moment ago I told you that I didn't think lawyers

needed to be policing people's morality and I don't. So, I think a lot of the

problems come within the individual lawyer himself, who needs to make himself a

person of integrity - as I said, a person of honesty. I see that as the real issue

regarding how our profession is viewed and how our profession operates. You

know, talk about too much litigation, and charging prices (for lawyers) were

expensive, talking about things like that. I mean, those are all problems, but you

know they've always been problems since there have been lawyers.

Lawyers always have been perceived to be expensive, because we make

more money than most people. Statistically, lawyers make a good living. We

make more money than the guy that runs the garbage truck, and that's just a fact

of life. We work hard - the good ones - and we ought to be compensated for the

effort that we do so put in.

I wish I could - one: identify a great big picture, and say, a great big issue

and say, "Oh yeah. This is a real problem involving lawyers." We got too many

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. cases, we don't have enough judges, there is not enough money from the

government for prosecutors. I mean, those kind of cliche statements, it seems to

me, are always going to be there and are always going to be big problems.

But, if I focus on something that I think is really important, I come back to

the issue that I mentioned about, what I think is the most important thing for a

lawyer, and that is personal integrity, which is an equivalent of honesty. The

more I live, the more important that issue becomes. Which is not to say, and

again, I emphasize that I am a sinner, I have violated some things in that area that

I wish I haven't done over the years. I haven't stolen any money from anybody,

but I have done some things that I look back on [that] I think were wrong, made a

mistake here, and it focused on that issue.

I am striving to make myself comfortable with myself in that area and to

constantly remind others that want to talk about it that I think that's real

important, and that is how you ought to deal with other people. I think maybe if

individually as lawyers, we clean up our own selves - then collectively, we are

going to start smelling better when you throw us all in this pot.

RS: Finally, I would just like to know for my own personal knowledge, and I

guess for the tape itself, if you have any, it kind of goes on to what you were just

saying, advice for future attorneys for people graduating from law school today?

WD: I think effort is the key toward being a successful lawyer. Effort,

good attitude, sense of humor, pushing for the extra answer, not stopping with

the easy answer, double check it, going the extra mile in what you do whether it's

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. researching or writing, not being satisfied with a mediocre product. When you

finish something and you know it ain't your best work, then push it on until you

do get your best work. You are going to write a paper about this, you said. You

will finish your draft and you will mark it up, and you will read it, and you'll mark it

up. Hopefully, it won't be your first draft that you turn in, it will be your eighth

draft. It will be the one that you've polished and you've gone back - where you

used the same word four times in three lines, you will change it and come up with

a - you will get your thesaurus out and find another word to use so it reads

better. Just going the extra mile, so that when you can, every time you turn in

something or you do something - it is your very best product. And that is my

advise about performance, and effort, and attitude, and sense of humor and

couple that with the overriding important thing of being honest inside, honest with

yourself. If you are honest with yourself, you won't be cheating other people, you

won't be kidding yourself about who you are and what you are doing. You will

look at a situation and you will know what - as President Clinton said last night

talking about sending kids into Bosnia - you will know what the right thing to do

is. Because there's always the right thing to do. Always in these situations that

we confront as lawyers, there is a right thing to do. There may be two right

things to do and you need to pick one. But there is always a right thing to do.

And, quite often, there is a wrong thing to do. And if you choose the right thing,

you sleep better at night and again, you make our profession a whole lot better

than it seems to be in the eyes of the public today.

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. RS: Well, I enjoyed it sir. That covers everything.

WD: Yeah, I hope this is helpful to you.

RS: I hope it will be, and I think it will be. I enjoyed it and I appreciate you

spending the time, too.

WD: I am glad we could do it before your class is over.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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Interview number J-0065 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.