I remember being at Virginia Beach with my Dad. I was in college. We were walking up the beach when we ran into the Ryland boys, sons of a nice family we knew. The Rylands have a long history of being academics, scholarly ministers and lawyers. Pop asked one of the boys what he was doing, and he said that he was “prosecuting” in one of the Northern Virginia counties. Pop immediately retorted “Are you prosecuting or are you persecuting?” I didn’t really know what he meant by this comment, but I do now.
Dad was a well-known lawyer. No one loved the law more than he did. He’s been dead for 36 years. Yesterday, I was at a funeral. An elderly gentleman, a lawyer I didn’t know asked me if I was Marston Smith’s son and then proceeded with a narrative I’ve heard many times. “Your Dad was a really smart man and a brilliant lawyer…..” and then he told me a couple of stories and interactions he had had with him that fortified his opinion. 36 years after his death and these types of interactions with folks I don’t know happen with a good bit of frequency.
