Richard Sparkman Receives Bankruptcy Section Lifetime Achievement Award
Richard Sparkman of Richard D. Sparkman & Associates, Attorneys at Law, in Angier recently received the NCBA Bankruptcy Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was presented in November during the section’s annual meeting at the Grandover Resort & Conference Center in Greensboro by Andy Tarr, who chaired the Awards Committee.
Sparkman is a past chair of the section. After graduating from Mars Hill College and Wake Forest University School of Law, he proceeded directly into the bankruptcy field after completing law school and passing the bar in 1975.
“I was very fortunate that right out of law school I was hired by Rufus W. Reynolds, bankruptcy judge for the Middle District of North Carolina,” Sparkman said. “He was very innovative and way ahead of his time in many ways. He felt that bankruptcy judges ought to have law clerks when there were no law clerks anywhere in the country, and there wasn’t a provision in the Civil Service Manual for bankruptcy courts to have much less compensate law clerks.”
But there was a provision for clerks of court, so Sparkman was hired under that title and assumed his duties as Judge Reynolds’ “chief clerk.”
“Very soon thereafter the new Bankruptcy Code was passed and judges had law clerks, but I predated that,” Sparkman said. “Then I became his official law clerk, so my claim to fame has always been that I was the first law clerk to a bankruptcy judge in the entire country, to the best of my knowledge.”
After serving as a law clerk from 1975-77, Sparkman’s run of perfect timing continued when serving as a Chapter 13 trustee became a full-time job.
“There were three Chapter 13 trustees in the Middle District back then. They were all full-time lawyers, and being a Chapter 13 trustee was one facet of their practice. Judge Reynolds thought the volume of Chapter 13’s merited having full-time Chapter 13 trustees, so he offered me a full-time Chapter 13 trusteeship in Winston-Salem. I served in that capacity from 1977 through July of 1979.”
As to how he ended up in Angier, that’s a different story, although Sparkman believes Judge Reynolds helped pave the way toward a smooth transition into the Eastern District. It also ended his run of perfect timing.
“A law school classmate of mine, Jim Stephens, had been worrying me to death for four years to come practice with him down here in the Fuquay-Varina and Angier area,” Sparkman recalls. “I didn’t pay much attention to that until the new Bankruptcy Code of 1978 was passed, and the conventional wisdom was that because of the bankruptcy exemptions being liberalized, no one would be filing Chapter 13 much anymore. I was beginning to worry whether or not I had a future in Chapter 13.
“Judge Reynolds had also placed a salary cap on Chapter 13 full-time trustees, and of course I was married with a young child, so for those reasons I stupidly left the full-time trusteeship in Winston-Salem. Did I mention that, shortly after I left, Judge Wolfe became the chief judge and promptly removed the salary cap?
“Oh, and by the way, I had established wonderful contacts with every bankruptcy lawyer and law firm in the Middle District, and knew everyone on a first-name basis. I then threw all of that away and came over here to the Eastern District where no one knew me from a hole in the ground to practice in the small towns of Angier and Fuquay-Varina.”
No one knew him, that is, except for Judge Thomas Moore, who served as Chief Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of N.C. for three decades.
“I don’t know this, but my guess is that as soon as I stepped into the Eastern District Judge Reynolds picked up the phone and called Judge Moore, who immediately offered me a Chapter 7 trustee position for which I am eternally grateful. For many years – I would say the first 20 years of my practice – I was a ‘Jekyll and Hyde.’ I had my small-town practice, where you name it, I practiced it, but on the other side was my reputation from the Middle District that followed me to the Eastern District. I very quickly started building a bankruptcy law reputation over here.”
Sparkman has also developed a reputation as a unique and highly entertaining CLE speaker. He has been known to break into song in the midst of a presentation, interchanging bankruptcy-themed lyrics into popular songs, such as “I am a Man on Constant Credit” from “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” from the movie “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” The rendition was performed with full beards and accompanied by Judge A. Thomas Small on harmonica, Gordon Woodruff on bass, and Gene Tarr on banjo.
“That is how they made sure that I was going to be there,” Sparkman said of the award presentation. “I was not planning on being there live; I was just going to take the class online. But they cajoled me into performing. The ulterior motive behind getting me there to entertain was to spring this award upon me.
“I can’t remember what I mumbled after I got the award, but I should have apologized to the audience for having to put up with my entertaining when the whole thing was a ploy to get me there for the award. I should have also thanked the previous honorees for no longer being eligible for the award thus creating space for me to be considered.”
No apologies are necessary, for the honor is richly deserved. Sparkman has been an active member of the section throughout his career, and remains a steadfast ambassador for the North Carolina Bar Association.
“I just love the bar association,” Sparkman said. “Even before CLE was mandatory, I went to a lot of general practice and bankruptcy CLEs and still have all the blue notebooks in my law library to prove it. I thought it was common sense to better yourself and attend these wonderful educational opportunities that were offered by the bar association. North Carolina is so fortunate to have the state bar and the bar association that we have, and you don’t appreciate it until you hear stories from lawyers in other states.
“If I can digress a little bit, I would just toot the horn for the wonderful bankruptcy bar we have here in the state of North Carolina. Lawyers who don’t normally practice bankruptcy will stumble into a bankruptcy case for whatever reason, and will tell me they were blown away after witnessing the collegiality that we enjoy. We are certainly jealous advocates for our clients, but there is cooperation between all of the lawyers. So much of that is reinforced by the bar association, and the Bankruptcy Section. You get 300 lawyers together once a year with that commonality of interest and noble intent, and meet at these marvelous locations all over the state. That’s the glue that holds us all together!”
Sparkman, as Tarr noted in presenting the award, became board certified as a bankruptcy law specialist by the N.C. State Bar in the charter class of 1987, and was nationally certified as a business bankruptcy law specialist in 1994 by the American Board of Certification. Sparkman has been honored by N. C. Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers of America, and is in the Legal Elite Hall of Fame. He has served as a trustee under every Chapter of the Bankruptcy Code (7, 11, 12, and 13), and has been a certified Superior Court mediator for over a decade.
“Given the many accolades I’ve already described,” Tarr continued, “it will not surprise you that our recipient works zealously and efficiently for his clients and bankruptcy estate constituents. Yet, he maintains a kind and humble demeanor with opposing counsel that is a model for each of us. He is a mentor to younger lawyers, treating them fairly and as equals, despite his experience and often superior knowledge.”
Previous recipients of the NCBA Bankruptcy Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award are:
2011 Trawick H. Stubbs
2012 Richard M. Hutson II
2013 John A. Northen
2014 William E. Brewer Jr.
2015 Christine L. Myatt
2016 Albert F. Durham
2017 David R. Badger
2018 Wrennie Pitt
2019 Kenny Greene
2020 Ben Hawfield
2021 Terri Gardner
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.