"SHELBYVILLE ATTORNEY ROOTED IN FARM LIFE"
Published in the Indianapolis Star (StarSouth), Oct. 8, 2002 ©
Though he has been up since around daybreak, as usual, Gregg Graham shows no signs of slowing down late in the afternoon as he pores over a law book in his office just west of Shelbyville's downtown square.
Another law book lies open on his wide desk, his medium-blue shirt is still holding its starch and his quiet darker-blue tie is still knotted firmly to his neck. The afternoon sun filters through the shuttered window behind Graham in lemony slices, and portraits of former presidents - Jefferson, FDR, Washington and Lincoln - look over his shoulders as he studies the printed pages in front of him.
The living portrait of a lawyer at work in his office at the end of the hall of the 160-year-old, two-and-a-half-story building on Washington Street is as definite as a judge's ruling. Except that it is only half of the picture of the 56-year-old man with facial features as clean and sharp as a scythe and sandy hair swept neatly across the crown of his head.
His forehead, brazed a deep brown by frequent hours outdoors, is the only visible clue to the other half of the incomplete portrait of the Shelby County native.
"People have found it unusual that I'm an attorney who wanted to farm," he says, a smile starting to grow on his face like new corn.
While his office accurately portrays the profession Graham plies during the midsection of his weekdays, deep inside its occupant breathes a life-long love for the farm life. "I never did leave the farm, really," he explains.
"Even while I went to law school, my wife and I lived on the same farm where we live now."
Graham, it turns out, is a third-generation farmer who also practices the law in Shelbyville. He has been juggling the two vocations for most of the 30-some years since he graduated from first Butler University, then Indiana University Law School in Indianapolis.
"One of my goals when I graduated from Butler and got about halfway through law school was to have an occupation that would allow me to farm part of the time, stay involved in it somehow," says Graham, who still wears his silver and blue-stoned Butler ring on his right hand.
"How I made them work together is, when you're in this business and the arrangement I have here, it allows me to take time in the spring and in the fall or whenever I need it to do the things at home I want to do."
Graham is an associate in the law office of Adams & Cramer, one of the oldest in Shelbyville. He does most of his legal work in real estate, estate planning, elder-law planning and probate.
"I do practically no litigation," he notes, quietly tapping a black pen on the yellow legal pad to one side of his desk, "so I don't have civil cases. I don't have family law or litigation, so having to be in court all the time is not on my schedule.
"I always put the client first and the work first, but how I get that done is up to me, whether it's 6 o'clock in the morning or 6 o'clock at night."
Somehow, he also found time to serve on the Shelby County Council for 10 years, walking away from that last year, tired, he says, of "the politics." He also served on the board of directors of Major Hospital in Shelbyville for several years.
Through it all, Graham has continued to practice law and to farm. He sees the two activities as more complementary than people recognize at first glance. "For me, they overlap a lot of ways," he says, laying down his pen and folding his fingers together in front of him, "because I have a lot of farm clients.
"You have to communicate with the people you work with, and you have to understand their problems. It really bonds a client to his counsel."
The rare combination also meshes firmly with Graham's beliefs on how to build a family. He and his wife of 36 years, Marilyn, have two children, Annissa, now 32 and married to semi driver and farmer Gregory Shepherd, and Kelby, now 26 and an engineer. Annissa, Kelby, Shepherd and Kelby's wife, Amanda, are all still involved in the farming on the original Graham farm or nearby in northern Shelby County.
"We wanted to raise our kids on the farm and have never regretted that a minute," he says. "Besides the moral values, it instills in young people a sense of responsibility and maturity that I think in a lot of cases are lacking in an urban environment."
That said, Graham closes the law book, rises from his office chair and tamps some Cherry Blend tobacco into his pipe for the short drive home.
Fifteen minutes later, he emerges from his farm home six miles north of Shelbyville. The shirt and tie have given way to a blue "Kokomo Grain" T-shirt and a tan farm cap.
Surrounded by a lush landscape of pine and cedar trees, and the whirring sound of soybeans being deposited in one of the three grain bins behind him, the lawyer-farmer tries to put into words the allure of the farm life that has been with him all of his life.
"Only about 1.8 percent of the population farms now," he notes. "There are certain things about the farm that the other 98 percent of the population have no concept of.
"I know what freshly cut hay smells like, and freshly plowed ground in the spring. When you plow ground in the spring, it's a beginning of a new period and everything is supposed to grow, so freshly plowed dirt has a good smell to a farmer."
Graham relates how he has reduced his involvement with the farming in the past few years, turning more and more of it over to his children and their spouses. He still works on the books, however, usually in the dim hours between daybreak and time to go to the law office, and other chores.
He also points to a few family "projects" housed in a farm building behind the house - a Dodge Ram Charger that someday will be a show truck, a Peterbilt semi-tractor that is being rebuilt, a gold '74 Plymouth Duster that has been restored. Graham classifies those as his only hobbies and predicts that, if and when he cuts back on his law practice, those will occupy his time.
"You can't live on the farm and not do something," he says, another smile growing as tall as the corn on the 600-acre Graham family farm. "I don't know when it will come - it could be two years from now or 10 years from now - but I suppose I could get to the point where, instead of working eight or nine hours a day, I could work five or six.
"That would give me three or four hours at home to hobby or to play. But I want to keep practicing law for a long time. I really enjoy it; I enjoy helping people."
"My wife's always said, 'You just like to argue,'" Graham adds, with a full-grown laugh. "It's not arguing, but I don't mind disagreements and resolving them. I enjoy that."
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