By David Klepper, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jan. 25--Harry Pavilack wears two watches. One on each wrist. He says he needs them both.
'Well, you know, I don't know.
I'm looking around, trying to figure out what time it is. How am I going to know what time it is?' he says as he glances from wrist to wrist, flashing the Pavilack smile, his way of responding to a question without really answering it.
He's the Strand's most recognized attorney, whose billboards and commercials -- 'Call Pavilack!' act as both calling card and pennant. He parlayed a football scholarship to Clemson University into the legal equivalent of a household brand.
Call Pavilack, and call him showman, real estate maven, godfather to felines of every stripe. Defender of injured workers and prospective divorcees. Even call him an ambulance chaser -- he'll just flash that furtive smile.
If he is, he's also a lot more. In addition to the law firm, now there's Pavilack Industries, Pavilack Mortgage, Pavilack Finance Corporation, Pavilack Insurance Agency, Pavilack Rental and Realty and Pavilack Worldwide Companies. There's even Pavilack.com.
The people who know him have a million stories about Pavilack. About how he made a small fortune selling study guides in law school. Or how he bought his million-dollar home in Myrtle Beach at a tax sale.
There's the story about how he once bought 150 purple ties because they were on sale. Or how he drank pickle juice to improve his tennis game.
Pavilack has a need, say those who know him, to excel at whatever he tries. He liked football, so he played at Clemson. He liked the law, so he built one of the Strand's most recognized firms. He likes cats, so he formed Sav-R-Cats International. He liked tennis, and now he's consistently ranked in the state's top 10 for his age bracket.
'Harry has a tremendously high energy level,' said his wife, Mary Jane Pavilack.
'When he does something, he does it 100 percent. He's very excited about everything.' Pavilack, 63, mixes an easy cheerfulness with the calculating eye of a man who owns more land -- much of it bought out of foreclosure -- than most developers.
'It's amazing how well he's done,' said Jim Irvin, a Myrtle Beach attorney who met Pavilack in law school at the University of South Carolina.
'He came here as a sole practitioner, a Yankee who didn't know anybody, and now he's made himself a fortune. I've never seen him in a courtroom.
That's not his bailiwick. His bailiwick is being an entrepren eur.' Pavilack was born in West Virginia and grew up in Pitt sburgh. His father owned an auto parts store.
He learned how to make a buck peddling newspapers before he could read the headlines.
That entrepreneurial streak grew, and soon Pavilack was going door to door to ask for donations to buy equipment to play baseball and football.
'I'm always thinking about deals,' Pavilack said. 'About different ways to make money.' He went to Clemson on a foot ball scholarship, and in 1959 became a footnote in the school's football annals when he intercepted a pass in a game against Furman University and ran 26 yards to score a touch down. In the spring and summer, he played baseball.
As professional teams courted other players, Pavilack started to think beyond college sports. He dismissed medical school because, 'I just don't like blood.
'I was a hungry kid, looking to do something,' he said. 'I didn't know anything about the law, but it seemed like a way to get ahead.' Jim Irvin met Pavilack in law school at USC and said Pavilack was known as friendly, popular and a little strange.
Pavilack sold copies of old tests and transcripts of professor's lectures, called 'Skinnies,' for $3. They were perfectly legal, and all the students bought them, even honors students, even though Pavilack himself made mostly Bs. The skinnies were perfectly legal, and, Irvin said, usually correct. 'Nobody else could get away with that; but everybody loved Harry, so it made sense,' he said.
After graduating, Pavilack attended a one-year course in tax law in Miami before opening his office in Myrtle Beach. He had visited before, and he saw the beach's growth coming.
As a start-up attorney, and a Yankee, Pavilack wasn't an overnight success. But he was hungry, and he kept at it until the clients came. He set himself apart as a low-cost attorney specializing in the everyday tedium of the law: wills; drunk driving arrests; divorces; and injuries.
In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on attorney advertisements, and Pavilack pounced. He saw the advantage of advertising for his type of firm, targeted at average citizens who only need an attorney in times of legal crisis.
A veritable P.T. Barnum of the law, Pavilack clearly enjoyed the commercials almost as much as he enjoyed the clients they brought him.
Many featured the hapless victims of fake car accidents.
One was a commercial-within-a-commercial, in which Pavilack pretended to be hit by a car while filming a commercial about responding to a car accident.
The ads furthered Pavilack's reputation as an ambulance chaser.
'A lot of people question his ethics because of all the ads,' said local attorney Fred Harris, who got his first law job at Pavilack's office in the '70s.
'Harry knows people say those things, and I think it bothers him. But he is honestly a very ethical lawyer,' Harris said.
One commercial landed Pavilack in trouble with the S.C. Bar Association. The bar reprimanded him in 1997 for a commercial featuring a charac ter dressed in police uniform who called Pavilack for help in deciding who was at fault. Bar officials said the ad suggested Pavilack could influence the police.
'I thought it was funny,' Pavilack said. 'But somebody took it very seriously.' As the Strand's population grew, so did Pavilack's client list. Northern transplants knew nothing about Horry County's attorneys, but they saw his smiling face on billboards.
Pavilack's practice gave him an insider's view of the Strand's burgeoning real estate market.
He learned to buy at auction and resell to make a handsome profit. In the meantime, each parcel became the site for another billboard.
'He's a classic opportunist,' said Irvin, Pavilack's law school classmate. 'He is a wheeler-dealer in real estate.' Pavilack has bought and sold everything from bare lots to office buildings to apartments.
Back in the '70s, Harris recalled a time when Pavilack rented office space as low-cost residential units, a practice now banned by zoning rules. The only problem: no showers, so Pavilack had one installed on the exterior of the building.
He's made deals with scores of local developers and business owners. The state lists him as the agent for more than three-dozen companies.
He's also the only lawyer in town who advertises on the sides of moving trucks -- his own moving trucks.
Pavilack's next big deal may be China. He said he is fascinated with the country's economy, marked by high productivity, low prices and cheap labor. He has considered importing Chinese goods for sale in the U.S. if the price is right.
'The first thing they teach you in economics is: 'The people who can make [something] the cheapest should make all of them.' Pavilack lives in one of Myrtle Beach's largest homes, which overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway.
Like his house, his 17-foot-long dining room table also bought at an auction. It once served as the conference table at Waccamaw Pottery's executive office.
Pavilack admits he watches his money closely, but he's not adverse to luxury. His home has a massage room, seven chandeliers, a swimming pool and several bedrooms for his three dogs and eight cats. (Or is it nine? Ten? Even Pavilack isn't sure.) Five personal watercraft are parked at his dock on the Intracoastal Waterway. He also owns a home on Ocean Boule vard and a small apartment in New York, where he stays when visiting his daughters.
Another attraction in New York: the shopping. Pavilack, his wife said, is a chronic shop per.
'He'll go shopping, and he'll be so excited and delighted with what he gets,' Mary Jane Pavilack said. 'He can put any woman to shame when it comes to shopping.' Pavilack seldom loses his cool. Attorneys who have worked with him, family and friends say he almost never shows his temper.
'He can't stand to hurt peoples' feelings,' Harris said.
'He's a marshmallow.' But Mary Jane Pavilack said her husband's attitude toward others shouldn't be mistaken.
'Don't see his niceness as weakness,' she said. 'If he wants something, he'll get it.' Pavilack takes in occasional strays, and feeds any creature that comes looking.
He started Sav-R-Cats in 2002 after some strays in his neighborhood were killed and tested for rabies by local authorities. He said his intention was to save as many unwanted cats as possible.
It's turned into a crusade.
The group has paid for cats to be neutered, and has found homes for many unwanted felines. They paid hundreds to a veterinarian to amputate a cat's mangled leg, and hundreds more for the care of a cat found poisoned by oil. The group has also popularized the term 'feral cat' as an alternative to stray, which the group considers pejorative.
Now Sav-R-Cats is working to convince local leaders to allow feral cats to be neutered and then returned to their habitat.
'Their heart is definitely in the right place,' said Cindy Ott, executive director of the Grand Strand Humane Society. 'We have the same mission. We respect Sav-R-Cats for what they've done. They've shed a lot of light on the problem of feral cats in Myrtle Beach.
Most days start with tennis.
For Pavilack, the game does much the same thing as football and baseball did in his younger years. It allows him to compete, to exercise, and to win.
He has repeatedly ranked in the top 10 players in the state for men in his age bracket.
'He's incredibly tenacious,' said Dennis Hardin of Longs, now tied for the ranking with Pavilack. The two have traded off in the rankings for years.
Pavilack's success at tennis also reflects his life-long devotion to fitness. He has a massage table in his home, and works out with professional trainers. He took ginseng long before it became a popular supplement, and he doesn't drink or smoke.
'Sometimes he'll pretend he's having a glass of wine, or a screwdriver or something,' Mary Jane Pavilack said. 'But that's to make other people comfortable when they're drinking. He's really just carry ing it around.' A few years ago, Pavilack heard that all the best Australian tennis pros drank pickle juice during matches. So he bought the largest pickle jars sold and drained the juice.
He drank it during breaks in play to restore fluids lost in sweat. He's not sure whether it improved his performance, but he suspects it was responsible for kidney stones he had removed a few years ago.
'I don't know if it helped,' he said with his characteristic grin.
'But it freaked out a lot of opponents.'
HARRY PAVILACK
Age: 63
Hometown: Born in Wheeling, W.Va.; raised in Pittsburgh
Family: Married to Mary Jane Pavilack since 1981; two grown daughters, Carolyn Cibelli and Deborah Hidy, who live in New York City; three grandchildren
Occupation: Attorney, entrepreneur
Education: Bachelor's degree, Clemson University; law degree, University of South Carolina School of Law
Favorite activities: Tennis, traveling, playing with pets, shopping
Favorite book: Couldn't say; subscribes to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and The Sun News
Typical meal: Salad with boiled shrimp
Vehicles: A Hummer, a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley
Pets: Three dogs and at least eight cats
Sav-R-Cats will host a fund-raising Cat Ball on Feb. 7 at the Dunes Club in Myrtle Beach. Tickets are $65 per person, $120 per couple. For reservations, call 448-9471.
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