When we caught his department chair contradicting her previous sworn testimony the jurors\u2019 eyes narrowed again, but this time their anger was directed at the defendants. I remember receiving the news in the brief moments when I was able to log onto my email. Shana helped, of course. And cruelty destroys lives.Christ, while in torment on the cross, said of the very soldiers who were killing him and gambling for his garments, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Now we look at a few of a man’s tweets and declare, “Cancel him, for he does not deserve to work.” But he chose not to fight. With the help of my valued friend (and then-colleague) Travis Barham, we sued. But UNCW couldn\u2019t truly touch him. That allegedly rendered them “work-related” speech. They extend to us all. There it was. It must be, or we are lost. Indeed, if I had to come up with a single sentence to sum up all too much of our current political and cultural combat, it would be this\u2014we are a nation of bruised reeds, busy breaking each other.It came out during cross-examination. And his support for these basic civil liberties was nonpartisan. It did not end our case. Iâm sure he didnât know he wasnât going to have the opportunity to grow old and sit on the porch with his grandkids, but maybe on a deeper level, he was pre-wired to pack 80-some years of excitement into 34.Q-Ball is still wearing his compass, and it is going with him into the wild unknown today. It was 2010, and I was on a short active-duty deployment to South Korea. But there’s a line in there that affirms the reality of Christ’s overwhelming grace. So in March 2014, we empaneled a jury and made our argument.
He became a Christian, and\u2014eventually\u2014a conservative as well.But he chose not to fight. Person A was taken away from us too soon and it hard to understand why and how such a thing could happen. He was proof that as long as you have your life and limbs (and sometimes even if you donât), you can still achieve what you want in life. Mike’s insensitive, intemperate edge. You can read them. She disappeared hours at a time for days before Q-Ball caught on and followed her.ÂRegardless of what made him the way he was, it was the joy of my life to act as his occasional sidekick.He had this little compass he wore around his neck wherever he went; he occasionally whipped it out and made it look like he was âgathering our coordinates.â At that point, though, I doubt he had any idea how to use it. He negotiated a buyout. I was heartbroken. The school fought back, hard. Then, when they truly make us mad, we say, “It’s time to hold the monster accountable.”I know this worship song has been watched and shared everywhere. It was 2010, and I was on a short active-duty deployment to South Korea. Incredibly, the trial judge bought the argument and tossed Mike\u2019s case. )Today it is an honor and a blessing to pay tribute to a man who wasnât just my best friend â he was a husband, a father, and possibly the craziest person any of us has ever met.But of all the adventures he undertook, I think his greatest journey was becoming a father. Throughout the long course of the litigation, Mike had been the very definition of the “happy warrior.” He seemed to relish the challenge. No one with a record like Mike\u2019s had ever been denied promotion. Other tweets made people angry, but that was the chief offender.
Iâm convinced that even if he had gotten sick ten years earlier, he still would have found a way to travel the world, ride a big wave, and charm the most beautiful woman in Hawaii into loving him.Many of you have woken up at 6 a.m. to Q-Ball knocking at your door, his van still running in the driveway, saying, âGet up! Sometimes he was acerbic. There it is\u2014a man\u2019s life largely defined by the worst possible characterization of his worst tweets. And just as the background culture was growing more intolerant, he tweeted this:Mike was energized. I would have remembered day two of the trial, when he thought he would lose his career and his good name in one fell swoop. It made the extraordinary legal argument that Mike\u2019s writings weren\u2019t constitutionally protected because he referenced them in his application for promotion. When I prepped Mike, I thought my task would be to hold him back, to make sure that he wasn’t too aggressive and too eager to explain himself.
â decided she was going to go off and live in a tree house in the woods.