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Hall of Fame inductees, front from left, Mal King, George Mast and Sharon Thompson, and back row, Charles Davis, Bill Joslin and Cressie Thigpen.

The General Practice Hall of Fame of the North Carolina Bar Association will enshrined six North Carolina lawyers on Thursday evening, June 21, at the outset of the 2007 NCBA Annual Meeting in Asheville.

The ceremony was held at the Grove Park Inn Resort & Spa, host site for the NCBA Annual Meeting.

Attorneys comprising the 2007 induction class are Charles M. Davis of Louisburg, William Joslin and Cressie H. Thigpen Jr. of Raleigh, Malvern F. “Mal” King and Sharon A. Thompson of Durham and George B. Mast of Smithfield.

The Hall of Fame, sponsored by the NCBA’s GP, Small Firm and Solo Section, was established in 1989. Membership is granted in recognition of a lifetime of exemplary service and high ethical and professional standards and for serving as a role model for all lawyers in North Carolina.

To be eligible, lawyers must have practiced law for at least 25 years, a significant portion of that time having been devoted to the general practice of law, and be members in good standing of the N.C. State Bar.

Inductees have exhibited throughout their practice the highest standards of ethics and professional competency, and have rendered a high level of service to the legal profession and their communities.

This year’s induction class brings membership in the Hall of Fame to 106 attorneys.

Charles Davis
Charles Davis has practiced law in Louisburg since 1961. After his graduation from the Wake Forest School of Law, he began working for Charles P. Green Sr. who was a prominent local attorney. After Mr. Green’s untimely death in 1962 he worked with the firm of Lumpkin & Lumpkin where he became a partner.

In 1969, Charles Davis left the Lumpkin law firm and founded the law firm of Davis & Sturges with Conrad B. Sturges Jr. In 1974, Aubrey S. Tomlinson joined the law firm to become the firm of Davis, Sturges, & Tomlinson. In 1994 his son, John W. Davis, joined the firm and became a partner before becoming a District Court judge. In 1995, C. Boyd Sturges III joined the firm and is now a partner.

Charles Davis has had a general practice since he became a lawyer. He has tried to emulate several of his law school professors such as Robert E. Lee and Dean Carroll Weathers. He has always tried to follow Dean Weathers’ admonition to practice in the “grand style” with service to his client and profession as his guiding principle. He has prosecuted and defended scores of murder cases and other serious felonies. He has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in large personal injury cases. He has conducted countless real estate closings.

He has prepared deeds, wills, and powers of attorneys from the richest citizens of the area to thee poorest. He has administered many estates and special proceedings. He has handled adoptions, divorces, and custody disputes. He has represented “bootleggers” and lawbreakers as well as representing many the businessmen in the area. It is not unusual to have the president of Louisburg College sitting next to a man charged with being publicly intoxicated (and possibly still in that condition) as both of them wait to talk to Charles Davis.

A particularly telling story about Davis’ dedication to his client occurred fairly early in his career. He was representing a client who was purchasing a “rest home” from a prominent person in the community. The transaction occurred in Mr. Davis’ office and the client took possession of the rest home and the business.

That night Davis received an urgent call from the client around 2 a.m. The client told Mr. Davis that the former owner of the property had come to the rest home and was emptying out the freezer of all of the food and other staples. This property was part of the transaction and if the client did not have that food in the morning he would have nothing to feed his residents. This could have led to dire consequences for the business.

Davis flew out the door and drove to the rest home. He convinced the former owner to stop taking the food and to resolve the matter in the morning. When the morning came, Davis was at the courthouse steps when it opened and filed a lawsuit and got a judge to enjoin the former owner from taking any property from the rest home. This resolved the issue.

The client went on to become very rich and prominent and, needless to say, continues to be a client of Mr. Davis who is always ready to go the extra mile for a client and is willing to go that extra mile whenever it is needed.

Davis is regarded as one of the preeminent trial lawyers in the area and has tried many high profile cases both civil and criminal. He is listed as an “AV” attorney in Martindale-Hubbell as well as a preeminent attorney in that publication.

Davis represented the Franklin County School Board in one form or the other for over 30 years and handled everything from school desegregation to purchasing land for school buildings. He was the Franklin County Attorney from 1963-68. He was the Franklin County Solicitor from 1966-68.

Davis was the president of the North Carolina State Bar in 1994-1995 and served as a bar councilor from 1986-96. He served as the chair of the N.C. Council of School Board Attorneys in 1986. He was named an advocate of the American Board of Trial Attorneys in 1996. He served as a delegate to the ABA House of Delegates from 1996-2000.

He served as a member and as vice chair of the N.C. Judicial Standards Commission from 1996-2002 and served on the N.C. State Bar’s Disciplinary Hearing Commission from 2002-07.

Davis also served on the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism.

He has been a long-term member and of the Louisburg College Board of Trustees and served as its chair for several years. He has held every position a layman can hold at the Louisburg United Methodist Church including continually teaching a Sunday School class since the early 1960s.

He is a long-term member of the Louisburg Lion Club and has been its president. He was one of the founders of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce and served as one of its early presidents.

Davis is regarded as one of the lawyers that other lawyers go to for advice and counsel. He is very discrete and compassionate and tries to treat every lawyer with dignity and fairness. He has quietly helped many lawyers when they have been in dire straits. He is a loyal and generous law partner who is truly a “foul weather friend.”

Davis is married to his high school sweetheart, the former Martha Freeman. He has three children: Charles M. Davis Jr., Margaret Davis Ellis and Judge John W. Davis. He has five grandchildren: Charlie, Erin, Madison, Holden, and Davis.

Of all his many honors and many powerful friends and associates he most treasures being a good husband, father, and grandfather.

William Joslin
The life and career of William Joslin has been marked by service to the community, dedication to our democratic processes, and a deep reverence for the natural world. The years of his practice in Raleigh, from 1948 to 2006, touched on virtually every aspect of the law, and he handled each case in this wide array with his special brand of calm, even-handed diligence.

Joslin was born in Raleigh in 1920 into a family whose Wake County roots go back to the 1700s. His childhood was influenced by the death of his father when he was six, and by the subsequent resilience, perspicacity, and determination of his widowed mother, who raised and educated her four children during the Great Depression. These two circumstances were character-forming: they taught Joslin at an early age what it was to suffer great loss, and what it took to endure and overcome it.

Joslin attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was president of the Carolina Political Union and a protégé of University President Frank Porter Graham. In 1941, Joslin began law school at Columbia University in New York, which was interrupted by World War II. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the United States Navy, and served in the Pacific theater on the destroyer U.S.S. Massey.

In 1946 he married Mary Coker of Hartsville, S.C. The couple returned to New York, where Joslin resumed legal studies at Columbia. In his final year, he became law review editor, and upon graduation in 1947, was chosen as law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black.

Upon completion of his clerkship, Joslin returned to Raleigh and opened a solo practice. The practice that he built over the next six decades is notable for its rich variety. He developed an expertise in real property law, and Wake Forest University asked him to join its law school faculty as a real property professor when it relocated to Winston-Salem in the 1950s. Bill declined, not wanting to uproot his growing family (which would eventually comprise three daughters and three sons, and fifteen grandchildren). Gov. Terry Sanford appointed him chair of the State Board of Elections.

Joslin defended capital cases, served as plaintiff’s attorney in numerous personal injury suits, and was all-purpose counselor and friend to some of North Carolina’s movers and shakers in the business and political milieu of the 1960s through the 1990s. On Monday of any given week, Joslin might be in New York at the behest of a corporate client. Then on Tuesday, he would be back in his office, preparing a tax return or a will for an individual who might pay him the next day with whatever he or she had – by bringing an apple pie to the office or a bushel of corn to the house. Simple kind-heartedness, not grandiosity, was the hallmark of his practice. A salient characteristic — the ability to put people of all walks of life at ease – has marked his many achievements.

Joslin’s litany of public service includes assistant city attorney of Raleigh, chair of the Wake County Board of Elections, founding president of the NCSU Friends of the College concert series, service on the boards of N.C. Public Television and St. Augustine’s College, the Columbia Law School Board of Visitors, chair of the Wake County Democratic Party and president of the Wake County Bar Association.

Perhaps his most dedicated public work, however, has come in the area of land conservation. He has served on the boards of the Southern Environmental Law Center and of Kalmia Gardens in Hartsville, S.C., was board chair of the North Carolina Nature Conservancy and of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, and has been active in the Triangle Land Conservancy.

In addition, he led the project to establish (and served as chair for) the North Carolina Natural Heritage Trust Board, which uses proceeds from vanity license plates to buy unique natural areas for public conservation. One of those unique natural areas, which Bill and his wife Mary have personally conserved over the last 55 years, is their own 4 ½-acre garden in Raleigh which will one day be a part of the Raulston Arboretum of N.C. State University, a perpetual green sanctuary in the heart of the city.

As recognition for his service, Joslin received the Oak Leaf Award from the National Nature Conservancy in 1989, the Joseph Branch Professionalism Award from the Wake County Bar Association in 1992, and the Liberty Bell Award from the Young Lawyers Division of the N.C. Bar Association in 2005.

Malvern F. “Mal” King Jr.
Malvern F. “Mal” King Jr. is a founding partner of Pulley, Watson, King & Lischer, P.A., where he specializes in the area of corporate law and commercial real estate transactions.

A native of Weldon, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received a B.A. degree in History. He then attended the UNC School of Law and graduated with a J.D. degree in 1968.

King was admitted to the N.C. State Bar in 1968, and is admitted to practice before the N.C. Supreme Court and the Trial and Appellate Courts of North Carolina. He is also admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle and Western Districts of North Carolina. A retired captain (JAGC) USNR, King served in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corp. from 1975-93, and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Military Appeals.

Since entering the practice of law in Durham in 1972, King has practiced in the areas of residential real estate, commercial real estate, corporate formation and dissolution, estate planning and estate administration, tax planning, commercial litigation, personal injury litigation, workers’ compensation, domestic, criminal (including indigent and capital cases), condemnation, zoning and representation before administrative and government bodies. He has represented clients in both state and federal trial courts, and has handled civil, criminal and administrative appeals.  

King’s involvement in North Carolina Bar Association leadership is extensive. He was the Young Lawyers Division chair from 1978-79. He served as the treasurer of the Law Practice Management Section from 1986-89. He was a council member of the GP, Small Firm & Solo Section from 1993-96, served as vice chair for two terms, and led the section as chair in 1998-99. He was elected to the Board of Governors for a three-year term, 2002-05. During this time, he also was a dedicated board liaison both to the Legal Assistants Division and the GP, Small Firm & Solo Section. In addition, he served on the 2005-06 Convention Planning Advisory Committee.

During his many years of involvement with the GP, Small Firm & Solo Section, King has been instrumental in the creation of invaluable resources for fellow practitioners and the public. He was a co-editor of the Small Law Office Resource Manual (1991). He played a key role in assembling the Habitat For Humanity Form Book (1999), serving as an editor of the publication. The section received an award from the ABA General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division for the Form Book.

King also spearheaded both the formation and the work of the Rich Harris Committee, which was formed after the tragic death of section member Rich Harris. The goal of the committee was to study the problems created by the loss of a solo practitioner with a focus on planning for the unexpected closing of a law practice. In 2003 the committee published a handbook entitled Turning Out the Lights: Planning For Closing Your Law Practice. In 2004 the Rich Harris Committee received the Solo and Small Firm Project Award for the handbook.

King’s service to the community extends far beyond his law practice. He is currently serving on the Legal Aid Development Committee of the Triangle. As a charter member of the Southwest Durham Rotary Club, King is a living example of Rotary’s motto, Service Above Self. Over the years he has served in every major position of club responsibility. He ensures that the monies raised by the club’s major fundraiser each year are put to work in the Durham community by supporting local organizations like the YMCA and the Durham Rescue Mission.

As a result of his work and dedication, the Southwest Durham Rotary Club has been able to adopt a sister club in Nicaragua, and support projects such as building a water treatment plant for their community.

King has also been a part of the Durham YMCA for over 24 years as a member and a volunteer. His strong leadership skills and passion for the YMCA led him to be the board’s president in 1990. He serves the congregation at First Presbyterian Church in exemplary fashion, serving as church treasurer for 17 years, and has been on various committees and served in other official positions. 

King’s dedication to the NCBA spans more than three decades. In that time, he has brought ideas to fruition and inspired people. He has been willing to lead as well as follow, sometimes simultaneously. He has rendered unfailing service to lawyers, their staff members, and the public. Throughout his entire professional and personal life, he has exhibited the qualities and traits of an outstanding individual, community leader and role model for other members of the Bar. He has unselfishly given of his time to his profession and community service.

Mal King continuously exhibits the highest quality of legal representation without ever sacrificing professional and ethical standards.

George B. Mast
George B. Mast was born Oct. 6, 1936, in the Watauga County town of Sugar Grove. He was reared on the family farm along with his three brothers, Pat, Bill, and Mac. He graduated from Cove Creek High School and attended Wake Forest College, first in the town of Wake Forest and subsequently in Winston-Salem, where he received his B.S. in 1958 and his J.D. in 1960.

Afterward, Mast served in the U.S. Army as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, finishing his tour of duty in October of 1962 at the rank of captain.

He entered the practice of law with Robert A. Spence Sr., in Smithfield in 1962. In 1971 he formed George B. Mast, P.A. He has practiced with a number of lawyers in Johnston County. Currently, he practices in the firm of Mast, Schulz, Mast, Johnson, and Wells, P.A, with offices in Smithfield and the Cleveland community of Johnston County.

Mast’s practice initially involved real estate, title work, insurance defense and general litigation. His practice was truly general. It has involved him in all types of litigation in every court, from Magistrate’s Court to the N.C. Supreme Court and Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

His clients have ranged from publicly traded corporations to indigents with significant legal problems. They are well represented by a zealous, articulate, hard working and capable lawyer. At the same time, Mast’s professional conduct exemplifies the concept of civil collegiality. Win or lose, he is gracious, accommodating, and cordial.

Currently, Mast’s practice areas include domestic law, business planning, litigation, plaintiff’s personal injury, wills, estate planning, probate and real estate.

Mast has a history of local and statewide community service. In Johnston County he is past president of the Smithfield Chamber of Commerce and has been a member of the Economic Development Committee for the Greater Smithfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

He was named Citizen of the Year in 1967 and Distinguished Citizen by the Smithfield Area Chamber of Commerce in 2004 for his consistent service to the community. He has served four 4-year terms on the Board of Trustees of the Baptist Retirement Homes. Through his firm, he has created scholarships at all six of the Johnston County High Schools in memory of various education leaders in each high school attendance district.

Mast also served on the Board of Trustees for Wake Forest University from 1988 to 1991.

His contributions to the general practice of law have formally revolved around his activities in the North Carolina Bar Association. This includes serving as co-chair of the N.C. Commission for the Delivery of Legal Services, as chair of the NCBA Litigation Section in 1984-85, as a member of the NCBA Board of Governors from 1985-88 and as president of the NCBA in 1990-91.

Mast has been blessed with a family consisting of his wife Gayle; daughters Anna Leigh Booth, Rebecca King Riley, and Christa Gayle Hardie; stepdaughter Leah Wren Kauppi; and his son Charles, his law partner of 21 years, and eight grandchildren. He enjoys practicing law, his family, the beach, the mountains and golfing in a regular foursome with his brothers.

He was presented for induction by Allen R. Tew.

Cressie Thigpen Jr.
Cressie Thigpen Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Pa. As a child, he moved to North Carolina where he attended elementary school in Raeford and junior high and high school in Fayetteville. He earned his bachelor of science degree from North Carolina Central University in 1968 and his juris doctor degree from Rutgers University in 1973.

After graduating from NCCU, Thigpen began his lifelong dedication to public service by joining the Peace Corps. While in the Peace Corps he worked with farmers in rural areas of Mysore State, India. After returning from the Peace Corps, he attended Rutgers University School of Law.

Upon graduation, he returned to North Carolina and worked as a staff attorney with the Durham County Legal Aid Society. He was in solo practice for a short period of time and in 1976 formed the law firm of Thigpen, Blue, Stephens and Fellers where he practices today. He has given back to his alma mater by serving as an adjunct professor at NCCU School of Law and shared his skills as a trial lawyer by attending and teaching at the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.

In 1999, Thigpen became the first African-American elected to the position of president in the 66-year history of the N.C. State Bar. Among his other numerous accomplishments, he has served as a member of the State Bar, the Board of Law Examiners of the State of North Carolina, the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association, the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, the American Bar Association’s Africa Council and the Eastern District Magistrate Judge Selection Committee.

He was co-chair of the Citizen Advisory Committee for the Wake County School System Budget and has served on the Advisory Board of Wachovia Bank and the Board of Directors of Garner Road YMCA, Wake County Board of Elections, Wake County Education Foundation, United Way of Wake County, Centennial Authority, Rex Healthcare Foundation and the Downtown Raleigh Development Corporation.

Thigpen is presently chair of the Board of Trustees of NCCU and has served on the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers, the North Carolina Bar Association, the Susie Sharp Inn of Court and the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers.

His fellow practitioners have recognized Thigpen as an outstanding member of the legal community. He is the recipient of the Lawyer of the Year award given by the N.C. Association of Black Lawyers, the Service Award given by the Charles W. Williamson Bar Association, the Leaders of Tomorrow Award given by the Minority Health and Law Professionals, and the Award of Excellence given by the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, Inc. He was also the News and Observer Tar Heel of the Week.

One of the highlights of Thigpen’s career was his role as one of the lead trial attorneys in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385 (1986). Thigpen successfully represented African-American employees of the N.C. Agricultural Extension Service who alleged racial discrimination in employment and services on the part of the Agricultural Extension Service. The case is still cited today for the proposition that statistical disparities can be used to show a pattern and practice of discrimination.

Thigpen has two sons, Omar and Daren, and was married to Cynthia Cartwright Thigpen who is deceased. He is a member of Christian Faith Baptist Church in Raleigh.

Sharon Thompson
Sharon Thompson was born in New England, the daughter of Russell and Elma, the oldest of five children. She attended Ferndale High School in Ferndale, Mich. She went on to graduate cum laude from Michigan State University in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in home economics before attending the Antioch School of Law, a predecessor to the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law.

Thompson used this education to serve the Durham community as an attorney for more than 30 years with various small firms. She began practicing in 1976, at a small Raleigh firm, with Deborah Mailman Greenblatt. At that time, this was likely one of the only all female firms in Raleigh. Greenblatt, now deceased, championed the rights of those with disabilities for years. In 1979, Thompson joined forces with Carolyn McAllaster and they practiced together for more than 10 years.

In 1991, Sharon ventured off on her own and formed the Sharon Thompson Law Group. She has practiced on her own ever since.

A seasoned family lawyer and accomplished practitioner in all aspects of estate planning and probate administration, Thompson’s practice has also involved legislative advocacy, lobbying, and administrative and regulatory matters. A significant portion of her practice is devoted to providing advice and services to domestic partners and non-traditional families.

Thompson is widely recognized as the premier authority on legal issues affecting this community, and she has appeared in many groundbreaking cases including O’Brien v. Tilson, 523 F. Supp. 494 (ENDC 1981) (law requiring child born of married parents to have father’s surname an unconstitutional infringement of right to privacy and individual expression); Pulliam v. Smith, 124 N.C. App 144, 476 S.E.2d 446 (1996) (landmark case addressing gay father’s right to custody); and Godley v. Town of Chapel Hill, 99 CVS 844 (Orange County) (1999) (Town’s domestic partner benefits upheld against constitutional challenge by taxpayers).

Thompson is one of a very small number of attorneys offering this community unique services such as adoption assistance, non-traditional parenting and custody agreements, and estate planning for unmarried partners. She has also expanded her expertise of the legal issues surrounding parenthood by working with clients using assisted reproduction technology, such as surrogacy, to create families.

Her reputation in the legal community widely accepted as superior, Thompson been asked to serve as adjunct professor at both the University of North Carolina School of Law and the North Carolina Central University of Law and she has offered numerous publications and presentations to the legal community. Her work ethic, skills, and commitment to excellence have repeatedly been recognized by those in her community. In 2007, she received the ACLU’s Frank Porter Graham Award.

She also received the North Carolina Association of Women Attorney’s Women of Wisdom Award in 2006, the Triangle Business and Professional Guild’s Professional of the Year Award in 2000, the North Carolina AFL-CIO Legislative Award in 1992, Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award in 1990, and what is now known as the Gwyneth B. Davis Award from the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys in 1987.  

Never one to shy away from hard work, Sharon repeatedly takes on enormous projects outside of her law practice. She has spent her career serving the people of North Carolina in a multitude of ways. A former two-term legislator in the N.C. House of Representatives (1987-1990), she was known as an effective leader and problem solver. She was the highest ranked female and the 16^th Most Effective Representative during her second term.

In 1978, Thompson was one of four co-founders of the N.C. Association of Women Attorneys, a statewide organization with over 500 members today. She was also a co-founder and the first president of the N.C. Association of Gay and Lesbian Attorneys.

In addition to her legal work, Thompson stays involved in the Durham community, serving as a member of the Durham County Board of Elections (1995-1997), and as a commissioner for the Durham Human Relations Commission (1979-1982). She has also served on the board of directors of various community organizations and non-profits including Planned Parenthood, the Equality North Carolina PAC, and the Triangle Business & Professional Guild.

Her clients know her as a serious, committed, and knowledgeable advocate. Thompson is fearless in the representation of her clients regardless of the relative popularity of their plight. She is an outspoken advocate for women and families, both traditional and non-traditional, and she has offered her talents to countless organizations over the years. Her contributions to her community and this profession cannot be measured, except to say that without her, the Durham community and the bar, would not be the same.