As I sat pondering this week's political shenanigans down in Little Rock with a Special Session on the heels of the 91st General Assembly, one of the now many "No Win, No Fee" attorney TV messages blared out of the home entertainment contraption.
And that slick 30-second advertisement with graphics, a good looking gal to grab all the men's attention and a repeated, and pulsating telephone number to call -- reminded me of a sad little slip of paper I have meant for weeks to include in this column.
Danny Chris Ivy, known to everyone as "Dan," has passed away.
He did so on Feb. 17, almost four months ago.
I have missed running into Dan at the Fayetteville post office, where he maintained a law business, and later a church mailing address. He would wander in up the side steps to a small side door, directly in the back area of the post office where the boxes were displayed.
Dressed in his all black outfit, a black shirt, pants and topped off with a very misshapen but signature felt cowboy hat, Ivy would fish out a long key chain on which the post office box key was attached.
"Hello, Pilgrim," he would often say. Sometimes he called me "Pad-ner," but always he spoke.
I got to where I called him "counselor" and he sort of liked that moniker.
Never did he ask about politics, but usually how was "life treating you?"
And now he is gone.
A native of the flat lands of Newport, Dan grew up poor.
Somewhere in all the legal and political waves he made, he was never really forthcoming about his high school matriculation.
But he did enroll and graduate from the University of Arkansas Law School.
Some snickered and said, "Last in the class." But that didn't bother Dan. He bragged in the class he would one day be known all over Arkansas.
And in several ways he proved that true.
His meager obituary did not allude to his legal career or later his self-appointed position as a 'Healing Profit of the Church of the Great World-Wide Revival."
He was better known in the late 1980s as being on the back page of the area telephone books as "The Rebel Lawyer." He also was one of the first to do those awful "No Win, No Fee," TV commercials.
Dan's video appearance in a bright red Jeep and his signature doomsday-black Cowboy hat, served its purpose, one local attorney who pleaded for anonymity told me.
Dan, the lawyer said, got more calls about cases than the normal attorney. Mostly, these were bad calls on useless litigation.
But every once in a while, Dan truly got a call about a case that was not only winnable -- but one that any lawyer would love to have. Dan was smart enough to not try that case himself, but would find competent counsel for that family and see that justice was carried out."
His strong presence on television, and a little gentle prodding, led him to politics.
The strongest showing he made was perhaps in the 1990 race for Third District Congress against sitting Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt.
Ivy, as a Democrat, polled 54,332 votes, about 24 percent, to JPH's 129,876.
And with fame, came some falling down every once in a while.
He went through a rough personal spot, being publicly tried for domestic battery against his first wife. There were more legal scrapes in his personal life, but Dan later found a spiritual rebirth and moved on, he once told me.
His last political race, Dan entered the Congressional race in 1996 as a write-in. He got just 77 votes.
The funniest Dan Ivy story was on a Washington County Circuit Court hearing where Ivy had requested a judge allow testimony from a psychic as admissible.
All I can remember is that the sitting judge, upset with all this rigmarole, asked Ivy "Why didn't you ask your psychic on how I would rule on this, Mr. Ivy?"
Ivy had no immediate reply.
"She would have told you I am denying your request," said the judge.
Dan Ivy died at just age 64.
Gone, but not forgotten.
MAYLON RICE IS A FORMER JOURNALIST WHO WORKED FOR SEVERAL NORTHWEST ARKANSAS PUBLICATIONS. HE CAN BE REACHED VIA EMAIL AT [email protected]. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.
Editorial on 05/10/2017