From South Boston to Cambridge: The Making of One Philadelphia Lawyer - A Memoir

"When I attended Jefferson Elementary School in Charlottesville in 1960, I was selected to recite the poem "The Path" by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the noted black poet. That poem captured the story of my life. I had no idea when I first learned it by memory and recited it many times before the class that it would later have such a direct and dramatic application to my life. I recited the words not knowing their true meaning back then, but I know what they mean now, and who would have imagined how appropriate they would be. It is indeed passing strange how a poem learned and recited from memory by innocence can come to be reflective of the life of the declarant many years later. I cleaved "a path of my own," day after day, from Saturday to Saturday. Solving problems, "thrusting the looming rocks aside" in the lives of my clients and lending a helping hand where I could."