Yesterday, Justice Pat could have stayed home doing supreme things.
Instead, she chose to drive from Fayetteville to inspire the fifth-graders at Cook Elementary.
Meeting with the students at the offices of law firm Kilpatrick Stockton on West Fourth Street, Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson of the N.C. Supreme Court took, for the most part, an informal approach.
She knows that her full name and title are a mouthful, she told the students, so they were welcome to shorten it.
"Justice Pat will be just fine," she said.
When the question-and-answer period came, she adopted a slightly more formal approach to give them a taste of the courtroom. She asked them to stand and say, "May it please the court, my name is…." before asking their questions.
Kilpatrick Stockton, which sponsored the lunch, established a partnership with Cook about five years ago. Members of the firm regularly go over to Cook to tutor and to cheer on students at basketball games, and, once a month or so, they invite students over for lunch to hear a speaker, usually someone connected to the world of law.
"They treat us very well," teacher Donna Siegle said.
For her, the lunches also provide a chance for the students to polish such skills as table manners and being attentive listeners. The students said that they enjoy the lunches. Jordan Pruitt said she liked sitting with adults and hearing stories about how they felt and what happened to them when they were growing up.
The speakers are inspiring, the students said.
Jaliyah Frazier said she has learned that "anything you put your mind to, you can do it."
"I learned that, if you can get through college, you can get anywhere," Torrus Jackson Jr. said.
Torrus had been thinking of becoming first a professional sports star and then a doctor. After hearing Timmons-Goodson, he added lawyer to his list of potential careers. For Dasia Gentry, becoming a lawyer was already at the top of her list.
Before filling in the students on the four positive traits -- goals, believing in themselves, courage, diligence -- that she sees in every successful person, Timmons-Goodson told the students a little bit about herself.
She became the first black woman to sit on the state Supreme Court, something, she said, that her parents would have found hard to believe when she was born in 1954. Because her father spent his career in the Army, she said, her mother was often the only parent at home. So she has a sense of what students growing up in a single-parent home feel like.
"I'm here to tell you that I am no different from you," she said.
When it was time for the last question, she picked Romero Brown, who, after introducing himself, said he had not a question but a statement.
"Thank you for coming and using your time when you could be at home doing supreme things," Romero said.
kunderwood@wsjournal.com | 727-7389
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