Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Friday, April 14, 2017
STEPHEN M. COLEMAN
STEPHEN M. COLEMAN: “BANQUO’S GHOST”
Friday, April 14, 2017
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
My brilliant younger brother is dead; whether by suicide, homicide, or accident, I do not know.
What I do know is that I loved him. I taught him, helped to raise him, and I greatly inspired him. I had also represented him on certain of his business matters, before my own disabling stroke in July 2010.
He had run afoul of the State of Missouri’s securities officials, in the Secretary of State’s Office in 2010, when I last represented him, in connection with his effort to accumulate venture capital. He was pursued by these same regulators, administratively, for his license as an investment adviser, because of what they imagined “might” happen; rather than upon physical evidence of what actually did happen.
I successfully represented him before the Administrative Hearing Commission of Missouri, and defeated these spurious charges, along with their efforts to fine him millions of dollars. That decision was dated in September 2010, at which time I was confined to a rehabilitation center in Independence, Missouri. The favorable decision on the merits was not appealed to any court. Instead, the State of Missouri had filed another action for injunctive relief in the Cole County of Missouri, Jefferson City, Circuit Court, while the administrative decision was pending. Here, again, no one who lost any money was called by the state. It relied upon its suppositions about what might happen under its laws before that elected, local judge.
Before that case in Cole County had moved into the merits beyond the preliminary stage, I had a stroke. My brother, therefore, had had to secure new counsel in Jefferson City, Missouri. I withdrew and lost contact with the course of legal affairs in Missouri, or in Illinois, his new home, where he sought succor.
I link the article from the Chicago Tribune as a tribute to my brother who tried. He tried to accumulate venture capital to develop himself, his family, his community. He had helped many people, including me.
I write this story now, as like Shakespeare’s “Banquo’s ghost,” his spirit, Stephen Messiah Coleman’s presence, has returned to haunt the living in April 2017 via his DNA that was mysteriously, allegedly –recently, retrieved from remains discovered in Lake Michigan, after his August 30, 2015 disappearance.
I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ on this Good Friday, 2017, that the truth may someday be known about my brother, his life, his labors, his capital legacy and his unrequited dreams of economic parity.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-05-23/business/chi-stephen-coleman-20140523_1_deuce-securities-laws-money-manager