From the President

• Publication year: 2019
• Pages: 0006
• Citation: Vol. 24 No. 6 Pg. 0006

From the PresidentVol. 24 No. 6 Pg. 6Georgia Bar JournalJune, 2019

HON. KENNETH B. HODGES III

PRESIDENTState Bar of Georgia president@gabar.org

The Benefits of Kindness and Compassion

The State Bar of Georgia and its members had no better friend and no greater example of competence, preparedness and civility than former Chief Justice P. Harris Hines, whom we lost, tragically, last fall only a short time after his retirement from the Supreme Court of Georgia. Personally, I never saw Justice Hines without a smile on his face, and he always greeted people warmly and with genuine affection and respect.

At a recent meeting of the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, I had the opportunity to hear Chief Justice Harold D. Melton pay homage to his predecessor. “Chief Justice Hines was warm and flattering to everyone he met,” he said. “Generally, everyone leaving his presence did so with a smile on their faces. It was sometimes surprising when talking with the Chief afterward, to find that he genuinely believed what he had said to those people that left them smiling. This told me that the Chief instinctively homed in on the good that existed in the people he came across. He believed that we all are struggling with something and that we all have something to offer each other. That was the spirit of his engagement with others, regardless of their walk of life. He saw the value in others and wasn’t afraid of expressing his appreciation of that value.”

In memory of his friend and colleague, Chief Justice Melton challenged us all to “just be kind” and to show each other “love.” Later in the evening, another lawyer came up to me and told me how much he had enjoyed working with my late father, Buddy Hodges, who he said, like Chief Justice Hines, was always kind and friendly to all.

It was not the first time I had heard that about my father. A few years ago, I went to the Balch & Bingham bird supper and, as fate would have it, I just happened to sit by Robert Clyatt, the founder of Kids’ Chance of Georgia Inc., which is the beneficiary of the bird supper proceeds. The mission of Kids’ Chance is to provide educational scholarships to the children of Georgia workers who have been seriously or fatally injured.

I asked Clyatt, a workers’ compensation attorney from Valdosta, about the program. He looked at me incredulously and asked, “You don’t know?” I said no, and he proceeded to tell me that in the 1980s he was representing a family whose father had been severely injured in a work-related accident, and Clyatt was bringing a claim. My dad was defending. They were at my dad’s office for depositions and having a discussion about how the family was not going to have a Christmas that year. Dad pulled out his wallet and gave Clyatt some money and told him to match it, and the kids could have a Christmas. He did, and from that encounter Clyatt developed the idea of Kids’ Chance. That was my father—if he saw the opportunity to help someone, he usually would. By way of further example, I also am aware of a lawyer who was going through tough times, and Dad let him stay in his office rent-free until he got on his feet.

The...