Richard J. Alley

Centerpiece story for The Memphis Daily News

April 22, 2013

FedEx employees volunteer for Wolf River cleanup

On a beautiful spring morning last week more than 100 local FedEx employees came together along the banks of the Wolf River to do a beautiful thing.

It was the 40th anniversary of FedEx, whose employees volunteered with the Wolf River Conservancy to pull up invasive privet, plant wildflowers and trees, paint sewer vents and build nesting boxes for indigenous birds.

Stewart Austin, board president of the Wolf River Conservancy, called the river an asset, and “the backbone of our community.”

It begins in Benton County, Miss., and then wends its way through Fayette County and among neighborhoods of East Shelby County to the Mississippi River. The Conservancy is in dogged pursuit of a paved greenway, a 22-mile park that will make the river more accessible to cyclists and pedestrians.

Paul Young, administrator of the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Sustainability who was on hand for the cleanup, spoke about a “quality of life incentive” needed to attract and keep larger companies in the area.

“Building up these assets is going to help Memphis and Shelby County, and the region, in the long term,” Young said.

If the Wolf River is an environmental backbone, then FedEx is an economic backbone of the community. Begun on April 17, 1973, with just 186 packages and 25 cities, the carrier now handles 9 million packages per day and employs 30,000 in the Memphis area … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

April 18, 2013

Attorney Anne Mead is not in Kansas anymore. Recently named partner with the firm of Butler Sevier Hinsley & Reid PLLC, a family law practice, she said, “We have some pretty incredible people working for us, I’m really, really lucky.”

The Kansas native attended Washburn University there and moved to Memphis to attend the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphries School of Law after she and husband, Jay, considered living in other places such as Georgia, South Carolina and Kansas. Her family had moved to Memphis during her time in college, though, and it just felt right to be near them again.

Though she’s ended up in the legal profession, her undergraduate degree is in English literature. She says she thought at the time that she wanted to work in the media but, “realized pretty quickly that I probably wouldn’t be satisfied either simply writing an article for a newspaper or being on a television broadcast or something like that.”

She began thinking realistically about her career options, about how to continue writing yet pay the bills, when a friend suggested she explore the moot court and mock trial team. “I absolutely loved it, loved every single part of it,” she said. “To this day I love litigation and I love trial. When I’m litigating something, it’s the only time that I ever forget I am something other than a lawyer.”

She took the LSAT, what she calls a “horribly scary experience,” and then took two years to make sure the decision was the right one. During that time, Mead traveled across the country managing different chapters of her sorority to help them improve, and worked for a law firm as a legal assistant … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

April 12, 2013

Kim McCollum is at home in the company of Confederate generals, musicians, politicians, murderers and civil rights leaders.

As executive director of the 161-year-old Elmwood Cemetery, McCollum is in charge of the 80 acres that serves as the final resting place to many of the city’s famous, infamous and notorious, as well as thousands of yellow fever victims known and unknown.

Despite such a portentous workplace, McCollum believes she is “working at the most beautiful place in Memphis.”

Indeed, the cemetery is home to almost 1,500 mature trees that bloom throughout the year and, she says, “I’m surrounded by angels in the cemetery, and the statues. How could you not want to come to work here? This place is breathtaking.”

Raised in Southaven, where she still lives with her two children, McCollum attended Southaven High School and then the University of Memphis for a degree in English. Not quite sure how her degree would translate into a career, she hoped to work in the nonprofit sector as a grant writer or in marketing.

“I felt like I just wanted to do some good on some level, or try to,” she said.

Not only does she now run the sort of organization she’d hoped to work for, but her job has her in charge of one of the oldest nonprofits in Tennessee.

While a college student, she went to work for the Memphis Botanic Garden and as an intern for the Pink Palace. Just before graduation it was suggested by a friend that she apply for the position of receptionist at the cemetery and she went to work for the former director, Frances Catmur … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

April 11, 2013

It was no joke when, on April 1, Kathleen Gomes was appointed by the Shelby County Commission to take the seat being vacated by retiring Probate Court Judge Robert Benham.

Gomes will run next year when the position, an eight-year term, comes up again for vote, but the recent appointment was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream that began when she was a child growing up in Chattanooga.

“My mother was a social worker, so I was raised around the idea of trying to help people,” Gomes said. “But after seeing that she didn’t really have a lot of authority to help people other than what she was restricted to do, when I was in college, I decided that the only way to really help people was to be a lawyer.”

She studied political science at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and then ventured across the state to the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law.

After the first semester, however, she moved to Washington for the opportunity to work for a new congresswoman from Chattanooga for a year. She returned, finished the first year of law school, and then was asked by state treasurer Harlan Mathews to work for him in Nashville.

She finished her stop-and-go law student career in 1980 and went to work for the law firm representing the William B. Tanner Co. media empire … (read more)

Small Business Spotlight for The Memphis Daily News

April 8, 2013

In 2007, Sean Faust and business partner Brad Ellis came together with Memphis music icon Doug Easley to create a company offering full-service audio and video recording and mixing services.

Both Faust and Easley had recording studios that burned in 2005 and New School Media is the Phoenix that has risen from those ashes.

“We had all the ingredients,” Easley said of their new project.

And indeed they do. Easley has recorded music heavyweights from Sonic Youth and Wilco to Jack White, Loretta Lynn and Jeff Buckley.

Faust earned degrees in theater and documentary film production from Syracuse University, has more than 15 years of experience and grew up running sound with his father, saying that his Saturday mornings were full of cables and amplifiers as opposed to cartoons.

Ellis is a writer and director with 10 feature films under his belt, including “Act One,” which claimed Best Narrative Feature, Hometown Award in the 2005 Indie Memphis Film Festival.

The studio is a 3,300-square-foot complex swathed in grass cloth walls, swag lamps, retro seating and original Lamar Sorrento artwork. To take a tour of the facility is to walk through a museum of vintage styles and scenery, ending in a top of the line, 5.1 audio mixing suite, something more akin to mission control at NASA with dim lighting punctuated by bright LEDs and computer monitors … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

April, 5, 2013

John Bass earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Memphis.

Specifically, the degree is focused on 16th century music compared to modern jazz pedagogy and how musicians then might have been taught improvisation.

Where does one go with such a degree?

Bass has taken it across Midtown to Rhodes College where he is the director of the Mike Curb Institute for Music. The Curb Institute was established to preserve and promote the distinct music traditions of the South, as well as research its effect on history, economy and social systems.

What better place than Memphis, the genesis of so much in popular music? And what better place for a musician from Mobile, Ala.?

Bass’ father was a physician by trade and also an after-hours banjo player, so Bass grew up with music in his ears and, eventually, a guitar in his hands.

After a typical adolescence spent playing in garage bands around town, Bass took the not-so-typical turn of seriously studying jazz. His high school band director suggested the University of Southern Mississippi, where Bass majored in jazz guitar.

He and his wife, Johnnie, considered Memphis for their respective pursuits and programs. She is an audiologist now with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and he received his master’s in jazz guitar from Memphis before pursuing his doctorate.

While working on that advanced degree, Bass began teaching guitar as an adjunct professor at Rhodes College, which doesn’t offer a degree in music, per se, yet in the liberal arts tradition students can graduate with a Bachelor of Arts and a major, or emphasis, in music … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

April 4, 2013

It’s been a long time coming, but Michael Coury has made the move to Glankler Brown PLLC.

The attorney, whose practice is in bankruptcy and creditors’ rights law, business reorganizations, workouts, and business and commercial litigation, nearly made the switch when previous firm Waring Cox disbanded in 2001.

A client conflict kept that from happening, however, and he stayed with the firm that would become Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada PLLC. When an opportunity with Glankler Brown became available last month, he moved his office across Poplar Avenue in East Memphis.

“The idea of coming to Glankler is not a new one,” Coury said. “If things worked out right 12 years ago, I would have come here.”

Coury was raised in Memphis and attended Rhodes College, where he graduated in 1977 with a degree in political science – and a fervent interest in the law.

“While I was at Rhodes I took a constitutional law class and I think that was one of the things that got me interested,” he said. “They had some practicing lawyers that were part-time faculty that would come and lecture, and it was just something I always had an interest in.”

Laughing, he added that a sibling rivalry also may have contributed to his three decades-long career … (read more)

Standout Profile for The Memphis Daily News

March 29, 2013

Willy Bearden is a local filmmaker best known for works such as his 2010 feature “One Came Home” and the Memphis Memoirs series on WKNO-TV.

He produced the video exhibitions for the Cotton Museum and has produced the New Year’s Eve telecast from Beale Street as well as the Blues Music Awards for the Blues Foundation.

The bearded and bespectacled Bearden is a renaissance man with a down-home flair whose talents extend far beyond any single medium.

“I’m a filmmaker, a writer and a storyteller, and I think all of these things are connected, at least as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I couldn’t be a filmmaker if I weren’t a writer, and I couldn’t be a filmmaker if I didn’t know photography.”

And it’s his photography that will be in the spotlight during an opening reception Friday, March 29, at 6 p.m. at the Leadership Memphis Gallery 363 (365 S. Main St.) during the South Main Art Trolley Tour.

For the show, Bearden culled 10 years of photographs for the 20 or so to be edited, printed and framed.

“There’s a lot of work that goes into it,” Bearden said. “I’ve had a good time going through and choosing things, it’s been interesting to kind of walk back through the thousands of things I’ve shot.”

Ken Hall has partnered with Michel Allen in Allen Projects, a gallery and consulting firm, to curate shows for Leadership Memphis. The Bearden photography installation marks one year for such shows.

Hall has known Bearden for several years and was familiar with his video and production work, but when he saw the still photography for the first time, he wanted to showcase it to the public.

“I was just mesmerized by his great work in still photography,” Hall said. “So immediately – I think the next day – I called him for an exhibition at Gallery 363.”

Bearden, a Rolling Fork, Miss., native, spends a lot of time in the Delta and his photography represents this … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

March 28, 2013

Before exploring the hushed recesses of a law library and the endless indexes of a legal textbook, Chris Frulla of Rainey, Kizer, Reviere & Bell PLC wanted to explore some of the country.

His wanderlust took him from Memphis, where he’d attended White Station High School, to South Carolina and College of Charleston. He graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in anthropology and minor in geology and environmental geostudies.

Following college, Frulla worked for a cultural resource management company doing private archeology surveys for two years.

“Eventually I decided that it was something that I enjoyed but not something that I wanted to base my career around, and I started trying to make some decisions about the rest of my life,” he said.

His father is William Frulla, a University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law alumnus and longtime Memphis attorney … (read more)

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

March 21, 2013

Burch, Porter & Johnson PLLC and probate attorney Beth Bradley have been honored for giving back to the community.

The firm and the lawyer were recently recognized at the seventh annual Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Initiative Gala in Nashville with the Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Law Firm Award for a partnership with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital that involves helping low-income families manage treatment of their children at the hospital.

The partnership involves attorneys working with those of a low income and newly recognized by the law as adults while mental limitations make a conservatorship necessary.

Heading up the program for Burch Porter is Bradley, a 26-year veteran with the firm. The native Memphian attended St. Agnes Academy before heading east for college at Vanderbilt University with visions of studying pre-med. Along with degrees in French and English came a change of heart, and she instead set her sights on law and stayed on at Vanderbilt for her Juris Doctorate.

“I’ve always been motivated to try to do something positive or that I think can help other people,” she said about her switch to the legal profession.

It’s a trait she gets from her family – her father was a physician, as are her brothers – as well as from the firm … (read more)