Carolina Criminal Defense & DUI Lawyer UpdatesI’ve been thinking about Governor Jim Hunt since learning of his passing, and it pulled me back to a time in my life I had not revisited
in years.
It feels like a long time ago now. I was a student at NC State, somewhere around 1986 or 1987. I had recently changed majors, moving away from a science-heavy course load into something more liberal-arts centered.
As part of that shift, I was informed I needed an internship. The whole idea felt foreign to me. I was used to labs, lab reports, and exams that tested concrete knowledge. This was different, and at the time I remember thinking it was silly, maybe a bit touchy-feely. Squishy, if you will.
Checking off a box to graduate for basically doing nothing? No test? No paper? No lab? Yes, please.
I did not yet understand that unfamiliar things, especially the ones that seem incidental, can matter more in hindsight than they ever did in the moment.
The internship was with an organization whose name I still may not have exactly right, something like the North Carolina Center for Alternatives to Incarceration.
Even reading that name now, it sounds pretty progressive. It certainly wasn’t anything I thought mattered back then. I had no idea why I had been placed there or how that all worked.
My faculty advisor at State was Dr. Joel Rosch. I had taken a class or two with him and loved him. I never really understood how he became my advisor. It felt like another coincidence, though in retrospect it probably was not.
He was brilliant, unconventional, and quietly challenging. He had a way of pushing you into exploring options and experiences before you realized you needed them. I don’t think he asked where I wanted to intern. He told me where I was going.
The placement was at a law office off Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh. I worked after normal business hours.
I honestly cannot remember exactly what I was doing. I think it involved entering Department of Correction data into a computer with a green-screen monitor, but that may not be right.
The office was quiet. Doors were closed. Other than someone who let me in, probably a security guard, I do not ever remember interacting with other humans.
What I do remember is whose office it was.
Jim Hunt had hung his shingle there following his governorship, a quiet way of saying that even after serving as governor, he chose to practice law and help people.
My workspace was near his office, and from time to time I would glance inside.
Stuffed ducks adorned the wall. There may have been a trophy deer as well.
I knew who he was, of course. He had been the governor. But I was young, cynical, and dismissive of politics. It all felt distant and transactional to me.
I suspected he would never be there, especially after hours, and that I would never see him up close and in person.
Then one night, Governor Hunt came in.
He noticed me. He said hello. After a bit, he came out of his office and started talking to me.
That alone caught me off guard. What stayed with me was how natural it felt.
When he asked the usual Southern niceties about “who are your people and them,” he listened, really listened.
Frankly, he seemed more interested in my education and my direction than I was at the time. At least that’s how I remember it.
It Felt Random
It did not happen just once. On the nights I was there, Governor Hunt would occasionally stop by and say hey. Sometimes briefly. Sometimes longer.
Looking back, it still amazes me. A former governor taking time, repeatedly, to talk with a college student sitting at a borrowed desk after hours in a law office.
I did not understand what was being given to me, or that it had anything to do with the life that would follow.
I have always described myself as an accidental lawyer.
Now, at sixty, with more than thirty years under my belt practicing law, I see that any “accident” in becoming an attorney was mine.
Something else was guiding things along the way. Reckless on my part, perhaps. I was fortunate to be steered more than I realized.
Governor Hunt asked questions, more than “how’s your day going?” He asked what I was doing with in my life. He asked whether I had thought about law school.
I cannot say that he set me on the path to Campbell Law in Buies Creek, but I’m pretty sure he played a part in helping me imagine it.
Over the years, primarily through the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, I have crossed paths with a number of public figures.
Time has a way of sorting those encounters, and those conversations with Jim Hunt, however brief as they may have been, stayed with me.
He took the time to speak with someone who did not matter much in his life.
Some influences are obvious when they happen. Others take years to understand.
Faith, Providence, and Human Guardian Angels
Underneath all of that, there is a faith dimension I cannot ignore now, even if I could not articulate it then.
My own journey makes little sense to me without acknowledging a higher source at work, something larger than planning or chance.
I do not know what Joel Rosch believed from a faith perspective, or whether faith played any role in his life.
What I do know is that influence does not require shared theology to matter.
Sometimes it shows up as placement, timing, and proximity to the right people. Sometimes it looks like doors opening without explanation.
Looking back, I see a pattern that feels guided, even though I had no awareness at the time that I needed guidance at all.
At that stage of my life, I was partying hard, living in the SAE house, and carrying myself like someone riding the lip of a volcano on a unicycle while wearing a blindfold.
I could have gone either way.
That is not dramatic hindsight. It is an honest assessment.
There was no master plan. There was no maturity. There was plenty of energy, too much ego, and a momentum that was neither directed nor especially safe.
It would have taken very little for things to break differently.
As I think about Governor Hunt now, I also feel a sense of conviction.
I am the busy lawyer, up to my elbows in alligators, with very little time for law students trying to find their footing, let alone college students with no clear direction at all.
I occasionally receive requests for internships and feel myself recoil, at least internally, as my mind goes straight to schedules, obligations, and overload.
And then I remember a former governor who took time for a young man who did not yet understand what he was being given.
I do not believe Joel Rosch accidentally placed me there.
I believe he knew Governor Hunt. I believe he made a call.
What I know for certain is that two people chose to invest in one lost soul who could not yet see straight.
That realization lands differently now than it did then.
Governor Hunt will never know what those conversations meant to me. He will never know how they echoed forward. I will never be governor. I will never carry the weight of that office.
Yet I am sometimes unwilling to give what he gave so freely.
So it feels worth saying this plainly. If you are a college advisor and you have a drifting kid who shows a glimmer of promise, and you are wondering where to send them, give me a call.
I do not need them polished. I do not need them grateful. I just need the chance to do for someone else what was once done for me.
About the Author
Bill Powers is a North Carolina attorney with more than three decades of courtroom experience. He is a former president of the North Carolina Advocates for Justice and a recipient of the North Carolina State Bar John B. McMillan Distinguished Service Award. He has served as an advisory member of the Ethics Committee of the North Carolina State Bar and as a member of the North Carolina Governor’s Statewide Impaired Driving Task Force. His work as an educator, speaker, and legal commentator reflects a long career spent in North Carolina courtrooms and a focus on helping others understand how the law operates in real life.