On The "Retirement" Of FNB's Mike Miller: When A Community Isn't One

Since going on break, several readers have inquired as to my whereabouts . . . and have wondered, given all that's been going on, if I am "okay".

Please be assured that I'm perfectly fine . . . just concentrating on work and upcoming projects . . . not to mention preparing to testify in the cyberstalking case on Monday, May 3 (Special Session, 10 AM, Courtroom 1A, Randolph County Courthouse).

If you haven't heard, "someone needs to take Mary Johnson down" and Greensboro's Jeff Martin (aka Fecund Stench) is just "the guy" to do it.

I actually met with prosecutors in the Randolph County DA's office last week. It was very strange/surreal walking into the lair of law enforcement officials who have treated me so horribly in the past.

Of course, last week I did NOT meet with (or cross the path of) any of the "big guns" (Yates/Gregson/Dozier) who have done me dirty and/or pretended I/my situation does not exist since 2003.

It's all so absurdly ironic. I can literally call in a misdemeanor complaint against a Greensboro blogger-turned-cyberstalker to a deputy over the phone . . . and it's in Court in a matter of months.

But two VIP/Teflon-coated "non-profit" hospital executives in Asheboro can commit multiple felonies (the kind with with no statute of limitations), and brazenly defraud a physician/the government(s) that brought her home . . . yet for all of SEVEN YEARS, a magistrate won't take the complaint, neither the Randolph County Sheriff's nor Asheboro Police Departments will investigate, and the DA has not returned correspondence or my calls.

Friends have advised me that even as I once again surrender to the legal system for (based on previous experience) God knows what kind of outcome, I cannot lower my guard or forget who I'm dealing with. And they worry that I might be getting set-up in some fashion. After all, it IS the pandering-to-Asheboro's-big-wallets & methodical/determined neglect of the Randolph County DA's office that constitutes the REASON I'm in the blogosphere at all . . . for people-who-fancy-themselves-smelly to abuse/annoy/threaten/harass/terrify/embarrass AND libel.

In short, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that "Mr. Stench" isn't the only player in this little local legal drama that would like to take me down.

But right now, all I can do is stick to the facts and the statute and go with the flow.

And/so I'm still on a blogging break (and will be for at least another week or so). And I'm enjoying it very much, thank you very much.

Sure, things like the Courier's story on (Randolph Hospital CEO) Bob Morrison and Brooke Schmidly encouraging Asheboro's general populace to drink more water . . . after working so hard to sell alcohol on every corner . . . BEG for biting critical commentary.

And the Greensboro News & Record harping on increased water rates after treating Mike Baron/his story-of-woe like a disease, is yet another shining example of the journalistic hypocrisy practiced in Randolph & Guilford Counties.

Maybe, just maybe Mike Baron wasn't "criminally insane" after all;)

Oh, and then there's the Courier's "new & improved", more "interactive" website . . . billed by the new publisher as having "a lot more local content and really shows what’s going on in Asheboro and Randolph County".

It's a nice theory anyway. But (as all of "the wrong people" in Asheboro know) actual journalistic practice here is a different thing entirely. You cannot say anything bad about the "right people" or their pet plans/projects (especially now that they're trying to bring the town they killed back to life). And excepting the glitzy bells & whistles on the Courier's website (which were light-years coming compared to every other newspaper in the area), I've yet to see any evidence that the new publisher is really any diffferent than the old one.

Of course, even as Housecalls sleeps, I have been busy reading and commenting elsewhere. It seems that, in the wake of the passage of Obamacare, the medical blogosphere is finally waking up.

I've elected to briefly dive back into the ether a little earlier than I'd planned because I really cannot resist commenting on the departure of Mike Miller from First National Bank.

The Courier's story last week pretty much says it all (Note to Readers: You must register at the Courier Tribune in order to read/access a story more than 7 days old - and as of this writing, despite registering yesterday, my "application" has yet to be approved). I may be an ignorant (no MBA/no law degree), back-woods "wrong person" from Randolph County, but reading between those lines does not require an interpreter or corporate consultant.

I was very glad to hear that Miller didn't get a phat parachute.

Of course, there's background. A good portion of my youth was spent in a house literally a hop, skip & jump from the Miller family home. While Mike was much older than I, my brother and his brother were the same age and best friends. And I was very fond of Mike's Mother, who I remember as a classic piece-of-work in all of the good ways.

When I first came back home to Asheboro, my home-mortgage was with First National (no, it was not one of the non-performing "zero percent interest" loans that I've heard the bank has lately doled out to some doctors if they'll just relocate to Randolph County). When the crap hit the fan at RMA, I begged Mike Miller and his compatriots on the hospital's Board-of-Directors & Corporate Membership (you know, the fine-upstanding/fair-mined people who NEVER gave me the opportunity to defend myself BEFORE I was fired) for help.

But these community "leaders" were far too busy being way too important to speak to a lowly no-longer-employed/"disgruntled" Pediatrician . . . not-to-mention diving under the hospital's fancy Boardroom table trying to avoid culpability (and more importantly, liability) for what their CEO, Bob Morrison, and his left-hand-man, Steven Eblin, had done to a public-servant-brought-home-with-taxpayer-dollars right under their up-turned noses.

I was so disgusted that I moved my mortgage to another local bank during what I now call "the lawsuit period" . . . resolving never to do business with First National again. You see, for all of Miller's indignant huffing & puffing about confidentiality and privacy, the relationship between his bank and Randolph Hospital was just way too close for my comfort.

A good friend-also-raised-in-Asheboro-who-came-back-as-an-adult-professional-only-to-be-treated-very-badly and I had lunch in Greensboro last Saturday (at McAllister's Deli off New Garden because I love the iced-tea), and it's for sure that Mike Miller's ears were burning.

Despite his own bad experience in our "hometown", my friend (whose heart in these matters is not nearly as scarred-down or "Grinchy" as mine) actually felt sorry for some of the Board members and major shareholders of FNB/Community One/Whatever-The-Hell-It-Calls-Itself Now. But I wasn't what you would call sympathetic.

I don't feel the least bit sorry for any of FNB's Board members. Because, at one time or another, a good many of them sat on the Randolph Hospital and/or Randolph Medical Associates boards as well . . . as masters of Asheboro's domain.

And EVERY SINGLE ONE of those "honorables" sat around around deaf/dumb/blind (Mike Miller included) while I was crucified for standing up to threats and doing the right thing by a patient of their precious hospital - where their prominent family names adorned the bricks and doors.

Then, adding insult to injury, these prominent folk decided to SLAPP-sue me (using/wasting MORE tax-payer dollars) . . . humiliating me in front of my mortified parents, in the place I called "home".

At the time, I was told that several of these Board members thought that the "libel" lawsuit was hysterically funny . . . Randolph Hospital was going to teach Dr. Mary Johnson a lesson . . . the up-side being that this lesson would discourage other doctors from talking back.

You see, we more "ordinary" folk simply could not question these people . . . or the despicable/amoral/unethical/illegal actions of the "non-profit" executives they were supposed to oversee.

Board members were not responsible for the actions of these administrators - even when they were/are. They just held "honorary" positions.

It was CLASSIC (what my Mom calls) "mill-town mentality". After busting your ass your entire adult life to become a really-good Pediatrician . . . after coming home to give something back to the "community" where you were raised . . . after taking all the critical-care call and covering everybody's butt and sticking your neck out and defying threats and going above and beyond . . . you were STILL a NOBODY and a NOTHING compared to the Mike Millers of this world . . .

. . . not worthy of a second thought.

Your life and your hopes and your dreams could be destroyed . . . you and your family could be embarrassed and humiliated . . . you could stay in & live out of crappy hotels on the road (where these people would not be caught dead) . . . you could barely scrape by (your life enslaved to the lawyers and exiled FOR YEARS) because of their apathy and/or pure vindictive, career-killing MALICE . . . but as long as the well-named VIP's and their first families of Asheboro were happy and thriving and still able to do the ritzy retreats on the public's dime, and pay the expensive consultants to do their critical thinking for them, all was well.

And/so, there has always been a dark side to "Mayberry". From those-with-nothing who crossed our far-southern borders in to order staff the mills, to the young medical/educational/business professionals who bought into the myth and came to Asheboro - entrusting their futures to people who turned out to be common liars and cheats, some of us in Mike Miller's "community" were just there for others to use, abuse and throw away. We were cogs in somebody else's wheel to a fast buck . . .

. . . "a dime a dozen".

There's little doubt in this particular nobody's mind that it's exactly this kind of philosophy which played heavily into the business practices that brought FNB stock to near-penny status and Mike Miller to an early retirement.

Yet STILL, the powers-that-be in Asheboro cannot figure out why the town found itself on lists like this.

(I'm almost glad that, because of what Randolph Hospital did to me, I had NOTHING to invest.)

Meanwhile, those of us who were thrown under the Beemers and Benz's (while the local newspaper slept) are not supposed to be angry or bitter . . . we're supposed to just "get over it" and "move on".

So, as I told my good buddy sipping the iced-tea with me at McAlister's, SCREW THEM ALL. These people DID NOT CARE about me and mine even when they were CHARGED TO DO SO. They FORGOT about the basics of right and wrong . . . of accountability and responsibility and fair-play. And the "small-town values" that we were once taught in our churches and schools . . . the noble notions that our "leaders" love to talk about (yet the last two years have proven so few of them apparently practice) meant NOTHING to them.

Motivated by pure greed, and instead of standing up in the community for what was right and just, these community leaders followed the crowd and the trends (no matter how poorly thought-through or reckless). Forgive me if I don't tear my clothes and wring my hands for any of them now.

In a very real sense, what Mike Miller & his high & mighty kind allowed to be done to me twelve years ago (while never having the GUTS to face me or hear my side of the ugly story they just had to cover up), has now been done to hoards of people - shareholders and customers alike.

I'm finding no particular joy in the fact that I'm not so alone anymore in the "you got screwed in Asheboro" department. But there is some small satisfaction in being able to say, "I told you-all so".

Mike Miller, previously untouchable, has fallen . . . as I read it (in the Courier of all places) for poor performance on the job. It just goes to show that money talks louder than anything else - even in small towns. And/so, I think it's way-past-the-time for Bob Morrison and Steven Eblin to go under the same kind of microscope . . . for lying to the community they were supposed to serve about WHAT they did to a good/homegrown doctor-who-cared-more-than-this-"community"-ever-deserved, and WHY they did it.

IN SHORT, CLEAN THIS HOUSE.

And/so I trust folks/readers will understand when I say that it would serve this crowd of "right people" right if every single one of them lost their underwear on Mikey's watch and have to file Chapter 13.

What goes around.

It's called reaping what you sow.

Back on break.