Saturday, June 12, 2010

A Giant Has Left the Room

A much beloved coworker will be retiring soon. He was loved by all who he came into contact with. I had the luck of living not far from him and we had read many of the same books. For my peer this was a rarity as few people had read even a handful of the books he read. He talked me into reading historical fiction. In his honor I picked up my first book in the genre and have been enjoying Arundel. I used to read this genre but some lunatic leftistst oddly complained about two peers discussing James Mitchners the Covenant and we were told to leave the book at home.

I have never seen such a large gathering of high ranking people from many agencies paying tribute. It was my honor to be amongst such a distinguished group of peers. My peer walked me through some hairy cases. Most of the time it was false alarms. Even when I stated nothing is there at times they had to look to be sure. My peer would say Beaks let me take a short look it can't hurt. There were times I did find nasty stuff and he always wanted to know how I did it and he made sure to get my technique.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house and I sat with a legendary peer who will also be retiring within three years. She is loved by her peers but hated by attorneys as she is really tough. It is funny that we are good friends but tempermentally opposites. Attorneys with bad cases love for
me to hear their cases because I will listen to their points. My style is to look at the facts and state the case needs X or Y. I will also take the extra time when needed to deal with difficult cases. If a case can not be fixed I state exactly what the problem is unless there are confidentiality issues.

In many respects my peer who retired is very similar in temperment and ability. He had the good fortune to have great mentors and he credited those who were with him.

Our agency trully lost a giant whose shoes will never be filled. I was honored to learn from him.

No comments: