This month Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody celebrates 70 years of practicing law in the grand manner. In honor of this milestone, we reflect on the firm’s history with a special poem named “The Bridge Builder.” Attorney Ben Vaughan recalls Mr. Dougherty sharing this poem with the firm and believes it is the thesis of Graves Dougherty.
The Bridge Builder
An old man going a lone highway
Came in the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm vast, both deep and wide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The swollen stream was as naught to him;
But he stopped when safe on the farther side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength in labor here;
Your journey will end with the closing day,
You never again will pass this way.
You’ve crossed the chasm deep and wide
Why build you this bridge at eventide?”
The laborer lifted his old gray head,
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm which has been naught to me
To that young man may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim.
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”
~Miss Will Allen Dromgoole
Thank you for 70 years of friendship and service. Here’s to many more!