THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996 TAG: 9610050203
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANGELITA PLEMMER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 37 lines
Willie E. Gary, the renowned personal injury attorney from Florida, will speak at Norfolk State University's fall convocation exercises at 4 p.m. Sunday in Joseph G. Echols Memorial Hall.
Gary has emerged as one of the toughest and most successful litigators in the country.
His most recent legal windfall, a $500 million jury award to owners of a Mississippi funeral home, was the country's third-largest jury verdict ever. He is the principal partner in his Stuart, Fla., law firm and boasts a high number of victories for personal injury clients.
``I try to inform students about the real world and the price you have to pay to get to where you want to be in life,'' Gary, 49, said in a telephone interview Thursday. ``It's been a combination of faith and hard work that really pulled me through.''
Born the sixth of 11 children to a sharecropping family, Gary spent his early life cutting sugar cane and picking beans 12 hours a day, migrating during the picking seasons through Georgia, the Carolinas and Florida.
Gary, who graduated from Shaw University and North Carolina Central University Law School, has made his life's mission supporting historically black colleges and universities.
In 1991, Gary made history by single-handedly saving his alma matter, Shaw University in Raleigh, with a $10 million donation, the largest gift ever made by an alumnus to a historically black university.
``I am a great supporter of black colleges all over the nation and every chance I get a chance to give, I will,'' Gary said. ``Now, my life's goal is to give $100 million to the United Negro College Fund. And I'm going to make it happen.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
[Willie E. Gary] by CNB