Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/434549
DECEMBER 17-23, 2014 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM People in our community retire every day. I think especially about our warriors who leave military service for a quieter civilian life. Some of them carry visible scars from their service to the rest of us, and some of those scars are unseen. Some retire with pomp and ceremony and others go quietly into their next lives. We are grateful for each and give thanks to each. Others retire from a business that supported their own families as well as others. Some retire from a profession in which they provided critical services to people in our community. Some retire from support positions which are the grease that keeps their organizations running. We are grateful to each and give thanks to each of them as well. As I write this, I have just returned from a retirement reception for Cumberland County Chief District Court Judge Elizabeth Keever, who chose not to seek re- election this year and will therefore depart her position at the end of December. More than 120 individuals and organizations sponsored the event, meaning that several hundred people came together and organized a lovely occasion to reminisce and to praise Judge Keever and to celebrate and lament her retirement. Attendees included other judges, law enforcement officials, more lawyers than should be gathered in one place at one time, politicians drawn to what is happening like moths to a flame, and teary-eyed clerks who have worked side by side with Judge Keever in local courtrooms for decades. To put this occasion in perspective, would that many people throw a party for you? Would several hundred, including local heavyweights attend and speak? I cannot begin to imagine. There are many reasons for all this, of course, all emanating from Beth Keever and her unparalleled almost four decades of service to the people of Cumberland County and of North Carolina. Full disclosure. Beth Keever and I met and became friends in the mid-1970s, when she was a newly minted lawyer and the first woman to serve as a Cumberland County assistant district attorney and I was freshly returned to Fayetteville to work in our family broadcasting business. Over the years, we have watched our community evolve, friends succeed and friends fail, families mature and experienced much sadness, tragedy, and human frailty but also great joys. My hometown by birth and hers by choice is not the same place we operated in when we first crossed paths. Just the facts, ma'am. Beth Keever grew up in the small North Carolina town of Yadkinville. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an institution she has served as an alumna ever since, and the UNC School of Law in Chapel Hill. She prosecuted in Cumberland County courts for almost seven years, resigning when Governor Jim Hunt wisely appointed her Cumberland County's first woman District Court Judge. North Carolina's Chief Justice of our Supreme Court appointed her Chief District Court Judge in 1992, and she has been re-elected to the bench seven times, usually unopposed, and has served under five Chief Justices. Judge Keever has been active in judicial organizations at the local, state and national levels including training programs for new judges. She serves on the boards of local organizations focused on families and children and is active in her local church. Not surprisingly, she has received numerous awards including Judge of the Year, Woman of the Year, and one for exceptional judicial service from the American Bar Association. This is what she has really done. Beth Keever has devoted her entire career first to the people of Cumberland County and beyond to our entire state. As a prosecutor, she sought not just convictions but justice in the cases she handled. As a judge in our bustling and crowded district courts, her steady hand and calm demeanor assured not only justice but judicial decorum. As Chief District Court judge, she assigned judges to the courts for which they were not only qualified but best suited. And always there were families and children, many of whom found themselves in sad — even traumatic — situations not of their own making. Divorce, abuse of all sorts, abandonment, substance issues, family conflict and a host of other human scourges scar children, some of whom do know there are other ways to live. Through her quiet but untiring work in our courts, and with organizations like the Child Advocacy Center and the Dispute Resolution Center, Beth Keever continues to do what she can to protect children living in difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances, and with any luck, to make their lives whole. In retirement, Judge Keever will continue to work in North Carolina's judicial system, a blessing for all of us. As she moves into the next phase of her professional and personal life, our community says "thank you a million fold and Godspeed." And this old friend adds, "Job well done." Spectacularly so. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Serving Fayetteville Over 50 Years! 484-0261 1304 Morganton Rd. Mon-Sat: 6am-10pm Sun: 7am-2:30 pm Banquet rooms available up to 100 guests Book Your Banquet & Holiday Parties Early! Family & Business Groups Welcome! Contest&RequestLine: 910-764-1073 www.christian107.com KeepingtheMainThing...theMainThing. visitusonline FocusontheFamily 20Countdown Magazine Adventures in Odyssey MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcom- ingweekly.com.. 910.484.6200. May the Wind Always Be at Her Back BY MARGARET DICKSON Judge Beth Keever