My Brother Rick

I just found out my brother Eric Mills Holmes died, so I want to tell you a little bit about my brother Rick. 

Here's my family at Thanksgiving in 1952. I'm the little guy on the left with my mother. My brother Rick is the guy on the right in the flannel shirt.


Rick always had a larger than life presence. You can see it in his eyes even here. It didn't matter how he was dressed or who he was around, he took center stage.

Rick had a run in with his guidance counselor at Concord High School. She told him he wasn't smart enough to go to college, so he needed to get a good mill job.
When Rick entered Duke University, he had two letters of recommendation one signed by John F. Kennedy and the other by Richard M. Nixon. Rick played on the Duke Freshman Basketball team. He made the Dean's List. So that when Spring came around, he was asked to give his old high school guidance counselor a tour of the school. Oh yea, Rick was a Page for Congress during High School in 1958.

Our dad, the Rev John Julian Homes, died when Rick was in college, so he snuck me on campus for about a month. I lived, ate and argued philosophy at Duke when I was 13. (I had started studying Confucius when I was 12, so I had ideas.) Thank You Rick for such an opportunity!

Rick graduated from Duke and worked a year in Manhattan for Cannon Mills, handling the J.C. Penny accounts. Of course, Rick brought me up there. My first view of New York City was Harlem during the race riots. It was mind boggling. Loved the city. Did the Zoo, the Statue, the UN, the Empire, and even took in some Broadway plays. Rick lived on Central Park facing a famous old church. It was beautiful!

Rick had a keen mind for law, so he went to UNC and got his first law degree, then got his second one from Columbia. He taught contract law in schools all over the country, then moving overseas to  the University of Galway and the University of Dublin. Rick would be writing sometimes 5 books a year, culminating with the encyclopedia Holmes Appleman on Insurance Law and Practice.

So when China was just beginning to open up, the John D. Rockefeller Foundation sent Rick to China to represent the US in the field of law. He visited political prisoners in jail. While he was there, the face off at Tiananmen Square happened and they jetted him out of the country. He was just that kind of guy, my brother Rick.

When I graduated high school, Rick set me up to go to Outward Bound School in Maine. That was a heaven on earth survival school. The guy who taught mountain climbing was the 2nd man on Everest. Euel Gibbons did the plant study for the islands. The wooden sailing boats were a Dutch design. We actually got drawn out to sea in 30 foot waves and had the Coast Guard pull us into a safe harbor. It was Awesome! Thank You Rick!

There's a million stories. I remember the time of the last big Race March in Atlanta. Rick was out leading the front carrying a sign that read: We're All God's Children.

But Rick did everything big. He was a big drinker and it got the best of him. But through that, my cousin, Mick Yount and I had the privilege of introducing my brother to Jesus. And eventually, he made his way into AA, which worked.

From here, Rick rebuilt a new life, with his faith and a wonderful family, but that's a story for another time.

So my brother died yesterday, resting in the arms of Jesus. Finally at peace, finally whole, finally at home.

Oh, one thing I think is a bit humorous and it set him on the path of law: Rick failed the physical exam for becoming a CIA operative after Duke.

I'm gonna miss that big lug of a guy! My brother Rick.

Rick and Grayson Holmes