On Dec. 28, 2010, the U.S. Postal Service announced that the late Barbara Jordan is the 2011 Black Heritage stamp honoree, the 34th in the series. Jordan was a Texas lawyer who was the first African-American woman elected to serve in the Texas Legislature and the first African-American woman congresswoman from the Lone Star State. She joins a list of Black Heritage honorees that includes one other lawyer, as well as musicians, artists, athletes and scholars. Each year, the U.S. postmaster general determines a Black Heritage honoree after taking suggestions from the public, according to Roy Betts, a spokesman for the postal service. Betts says in 2000 lawyer Patricia Roberts Harris was honored with a Black Heritage stamp. In 1965, Harris became the first African-American woman appointed as a U.S. ambassador, representing the United States in Luxembourg during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. “We’ve also had plenty of other lawyers, including Supreme Court justices, who have gotten their own stamps,” Betts notes, but they were not Black Heritage honorees. Jordan’s stamp will go on sale in September and represents one of many recent memorials to the Texas lawyer. On the University of Texas at Austin campus, where she taught public policy, a statue of Jordan, her hands planted firmly on her hips, was unveiled in April 2009.
Bill and Run
Plenty of people vegetated during the holidays, bonding with their DVD players and refrigerators — but not Larry Macon . Before he rang in the New Year, the 66-year-old Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld litigation partner ran nine marathons in 10 days, including a race on Dec. 31, 2010. That race took his 2010 number of marathons completed to 106 and broke the previous Guinness World Records achievement (his own) for the most marathons run in one year. Macon shared that honor with Yolanda Holder, a nonlawyer from California, who walked 106 races in 2010. Macon began running marathons in 1996, and for the past decade he has crisscrossed the nation to compete. In 2008, Macon first earned his place in Guinness by running 105 marathons that year. The San Antonio lawyer has a lifetime marathon count of 706. The marathoning business is no small commitment for Macon. “Basically, I’m gone every weekend,” he says. He double-books flights, so if airline complications preclude a run in one town, he resets his route and makes it to another race. He remembers planning for a Florida marathon one time, only to discover the flight was delayed due to weather, so he switched his destination to go to a race in Colorado. The sudden change meant running in a colder climate than he had packed for, so he had to wear borrowed pink tights. “No pictures available of that race,” Macon says. He says he multitasks during marathons to keep his litigation schedule on track. He once billed a client for a conversation he held while running a marathon in Boston. “Thank goodness for the mute button,” Macon says. Overall, Macon says runners are nicer than lawyers and the hobby reduces stress. “When you are sweating and figuring out how you are going to take one more step, it’s hard to get stressed out about litigation,” he says.
