News - Friday, April 4, 2014

The Chattanooga Bar Association will begin publishing two new columns in the Hamilton County Herald starting this month. Each piece will appear monthly, and cover a different aspect of the Bar.

A new column by Bar President Tim Mickel, attorney at Evans Harrison Hackett, will profile some of the Association’s notable past members and historical milestones of judges and lawyers. His column will be titled “Mirable dictu,” a Latin phrase Virgil used when telling a story about a hero that means “wonderful to relate.”

Those present at the 116th Annual Meeting of the Chattanooga Bar Association were privileged to witness the unveiling of an impressive portrait of Judge Charles Fleming Keith. This portrait was given by Attorney Paul Dietrich of Cleveland, Tenn., for display outside the courtroom of Circuit Judge W. Neil Thomas, III, at the Hamilton County Courthouse.

At 71 years of age, Calvin Yearby isn’t the youngest first-time homeowner in Chattanooga, but he might be the happiest.

A former truck driver who’s lived in Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Michigan, Yearby has traveled many miles in his seven decades, but he’d never turned down the road that led to homeownership until this year.

Jason Parmley, from Chattanooga, Tenn., adjusts the sight on a .50-caliber machine gun mount during a live fire exercise aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. “On our planet, more than 70 percent of which is covered by water, being there means having the ability to act from the sea. Your Navy protects and defends America on the world’s oceans. Navy ships, submarines, aircraft and, most importantly, tens of thousands of America’s finest young men and women are deployed around the world doing just that. They are there now. They will be there when we are sleeping tonight. They will be there every Saturday, Sunday, and holiday this year. They are there around the clock, far from our shores, defending America at all times,” said Media Operations Department Leading Petty Officer David McKee.

Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger joined dozens of well-wishers who crowded into the Historic Hamilton County Courthouse’s second floor rotunda to wish a fond farewell to Louis Wright, Friday, March 28.

Wright, Hamilton County’s finance administrator for the last 16 years, is retiring after 38 of service. Under his watch, the county secured and maintained a AAA bond rating, which Wright considers among his proudest achievements in his almost four decades of service with Hamilton County.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals recently released an opinion regarding the issue of interference with an access easement, which should provide some comfort to lenders that deal with rural properties in Tennessee. The case, Riegel v. Wilkerson, 2014 Tenn. App. LEXIS 62 (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 11, 2014), involved a landowner (Wilkerson) who had erected a gate, blocking a road utilized by an adjoining landowner (Riegel) to access his property. An easement, which provides for ingress/egress to the property now owned by Riegel, had been executed by previous landowners in the chain of title; however, the deed to Wilkerson did not contain a reference to the easement. She took the position that because her deed failed to include a reference to the easement, the easement was not enforceable against her. The trial court did not rule in her favor, however, and enjoined her from further interference with use of the easement, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling.

Rotary Club of Hamilton Place recently gave $1,800 to Children’s Hospital at Erlanger’s Safe and Sound Program. The money will be used to purchase 200 helmets for exceptional students in Hamilton County.

Many of these students are unable to protect themselves (specifically their heads) in an event of a disaster.

The image of grandma sitting in a creaky, old rocking chair knitting a quilt is as American as a Norman Rockwell painting. But like Rockwell’s classic Americana, the old has given way to the new. Today, heavy metal rockers, a male pathologist, and a broadway star are among the diverse group of people who have taken up the needle.

Crye-Leike, Realtors has hired Julie Marin as the new relocation director for its Chattanooga, Huntsville and Knoxville regions.

Martin was a top producing Realtor for 13 years. She also previously worked in Crye-Leike’s Relocation Department.

Following two full days of intense startup development, three teams of local entrepreneurs have emerged as the winners of 48 Hour Launch: The Learning Edition, an annual business launching competition hosted by The Company Lab (CO.LAB). This year, the program challenged participants to start companies or organizations that advance education and workforce development.

Mayor Jim Coppinger last week commended the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners for their unanimous vote, as the commissioners agreed to begin the architect selection for four of the six school projects recommended by the Hamilton County School Board.

Not long ago, I made an emergency trip to Grand Junction, Colo., where my younger sister lives, to comfort her and her family during a surgery she was having. It was a planned surgery, but things didn’t go as planned, and times were rough for a bit. But she’s through the difficult time now and is recuperating just fine.

The City of Chattanooga Department of Economic and Community Development has funding available to assist private landlords in renovating their rental units. The program awards grants to property owners who substantially renovate their rental units and agree to keep them affordable for a five year period.

My husband and I had the opportunity to go out to eat for his lunch the other days sans children. This is a rarity, and we always enjoy the 45 minutes we are limited to thoroughly. We had eaten our delicious lunch, paid the tab, and were walking out the door. As I am a mother to three children, I inadvertently always notice children; however, in the short distance we walked to get to the door, there were five children – or should I say toddlers – with their heads shoved inside of an iPhone or iPad. That truly disturbed me. You see, we are those parents that do not use an iPhone, tablet, television, or any technology for babysitting purposes. I still constantly encourage my children to play outside or use their imagination. For them to get to play on a tablet or phone is like the best treat ever. This treat usually comes from their grandmother at that. I’m the only one out of our closest friends and family who hasn’t succumbed to this.

Our night sky is a vast and beautiful place to explore. Now that warmer weather is here, grab a lawn chair and a pair or binoculars or a telescope, find a dark spot with no city lights, and be amazed!

1. If you were heading into the country to watch the Leonids, the Perseids and the Orionids, what would you be looking for? Nebulae; comets; meteors; constellations?

To list the changes writer and director Darren Aronofsky makes to the source material in “Noah” would take more room than this column is afforded. Suffice to say he makes many alterations, some of which are shocking at first but ultimately make sense within the framework of the film. In the end, a movie isn’t about how faithful it is to the book on which it’s based, but about how well the filmmaker tells his or her version of the story. In that respect, Aronofsky succeeds.

For a decade, state Sen. Stacey Campfield has been unafraid of making headlines. 

First as a state representative, and then in the Senate, he’s spoken his mind and put forth legislation that meets his stated goals of shrinking government. 

If you’re one of the “millennials” — the generation that began in the early 1980s — you are still in the early stages of your career. Retirement must seem like a long way off — yet, it’s never too soon to start planning for it. At the same time, though, you may also have shorter-term goals. Can you make progress toward your near-term and long-term objectives at the same time?

On the day after a certain university’s basketball team hung in there and won a game, a sports-oriented radio station repeatedly aired an excerpt of an interview with the winning head coach. Here’s a snippet: “We got cold. Couldn’t make any shots. … But I thought our defense was a constant. It was the constant denominator.” The constant what?

The NCAA College Basketball tournament takes over law firms and other businesses across the country as everyone scrambles to fill out their “brackets” and predict the final four and ultimate basketball champion. This year has seen many bracket soothsayers crying in their spilled milk, as underdogs continue to unseat favorites, wreaking havoc. However, the biggest upset in college sports did not occur on the court, but rather in the Courts, and did not feature the likes of Wisconsin University or noble hoopsters, but rather Northwestern University and football players.

t’s not that often that I receive feedback on my columns, and I get that; I know my million or so readers have busy lives. So when I received three emails last week referencing three different columns, it warmed the cockles of my heart. (I had to Google what a cockle of the heart actually is. In case you’re wondering, too, it refers to the heart’s chambers. Merriam Webster online actually defines it as the “core of one’s being,” which I like better).

Ah, the signs of spring – chirping birds, budding flowers, and rental scams.

Spring traditionally is a busy time for residential real estate. Sellers spruce up their homes and yards, while buyers take advantage of open houses and weigh their options of renting versus buying. Unfortunately, scammers know potential buyers and renters are on the scene more so than in recent months and seek to take advantage.

Upon returning from a recent mission trip to Honduras, it’s become painfully obvious to me that we like our “stuff” in the U.S.

The stuff we buy says a lot about who or what is important to us, from the cars we drive, to the foods we eat, to the clothes we wear. This includes the choices we make to spend the almighty dollar on stuff we thought we needed yesterday, only to be served with an unhealthy portion of buyer’s remorse tomorrow.

As I’ve been driving the back roads of Tennessee the last few days, I’ve noticed an interesting purple hue forming across the landscape of our state’s countryside. A purple flower that has taken over fields, yards, and spaces that once contained vegetation of some type in months past is forming this amazing early spring hue, and it’s not going unnoticed. It’s starting to cause a lot of talk around gathering places that often have been used for conversation other than purple flowers on weeds. But, sure enough, grown men have started questioning why Henbit is taking over just as it did back in 2006, when it appeared in mass numbers on acreage, covering it like a huge quilt on your grandmother’s featherbed.