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Podcast | Jim Blackburn Seminars

GRIT can mean pebbles on the beach. It can also mean courage, passion, perserverance and even humilty. It is doing in an honorable way whatever it takes.

GRIT is an essential characteristic of starting over in life when someone has hit a rough patch. With it, almost anything is possible. Without, not so much.

This is a podcast about facing adversity, including mental health issues and starting over after a total career breakup. I talk candidly about it all and have interviews with many professional folks and friends who tell some of their own stories and searches for GRIT.

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Episodes (Apple Podcasts)

Upcoming Episode Overview

Date Episode Description
Monday, June 23, 2025 Wrightsville Beach - The First Days of Summer

Friday, June 20 was the first day of summer, and I was in Wilmington for another CLE program. About 15 minutes before starting time, in walked someone I knew well but never expected to see again.  Dick Horgan had received a small miracle some days before as the medication he was on for an incurable illness had begun to work. He  smiled at me and gave me a bottle of ready to go mimosa.  Then there was Dick McNeil who at the age of 77 now has 13 capital murder cases that are pending. And so it went for the rest of the day as we talked about happiness, representing the unpopular client, the challenges facing young people today and the causes of depression.

The next day at lunch on the Oceanic's pier overlooking the ocean, a former Chief Judge of the N.C. Court of Appeals and a good friend, Gerald Arnold, came from Holden Beach just to have lunch.  We laughed and talked about our mutual friend, U. S. Senator Robert Morgan and friends no longer here.

The first days of summer - close to the beach, visiting with friends, talking about serious matters and laughing at old stories. Not bad for the start of a summer weekend.

 Monday, June 30,2025

Everyone Needs  a Miracle

The Life and Times of Tara Lynn Stone

 

 

 

It is the call no parent ever wants to get. It was late on Sunday night. the day after Christmas, 1993, when four teenagers, riding in a new GT Mustang, going too fast, no one wearing a seat belt,left the road, traveling 566 feet, flipping several times, with the final two flips being 96 and 27 feet.  The car landed upside down in a field. Everyone in the car was thrown out. The young passenger in the front seat was killed. Tara Stone, just turned 17, was in the left back seat suffered severe head and brain damage.

Her dad, Ray Stone, worked for the North Carolina Department of Transportation. Her mother, Carolyn worked as a paralegal in a Dunn law firm. That is how I came to know her, hear the story of her daughter and eventually meet Tara in a nursing home where she was living in Dunn.

This is her story, what happened to her, the life she lived and the contributions she made. It is a story of faith, unconditional love and forgiveness.

Friday

July 4, 2025

 

"Being a proud new U.S. citizen on the Fourth of July"

July 4, 1826 & 1976

The Washington Post published an opinion piece on Friday, July 4 by Emil Stern, a native of Australia, now a screenwriter in Los Angeles, and who became a U. S. citizen days before July 4 of last year.  His story is so relevant to our country today that I give you the entire story as Emil writes it.

Imagine, if you can, two presidents of this country, once friends, then arch rivals, and in the end goof friends once again, dying on the 50th anniversary of July 4.  That happened to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two founding  fathers, with the last words of Adams being "Thomas Jefferson still lives".

Then, 50 years ago. President Ford seeks to unite the country as he welcomes the Tall Ships into New York harbor.

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