Ask Jonathan Breeden Anything: His Path, Passions, and Love for Johnston County

Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden. And today, we’re going to do another special edition of The Best of Johnston County podcast that we call, Ask Jonathan Breeden Anything.

Normally on this podcast, I, Jonathan Breeden as the host, interview interesting community members from in and around Johnston County, about what they do. Why they love Johnston County? And how they serve the citizens of Johnston County, whether it be elected officials, people running for office, small business owners, or other community leaders.

And every few episodes, we do one of these special edition episodes that we call, Ask Jonathan Breeden Anything. And that’s what we’re going to do today. And I’m being told that this particular version of Ask Jonathan Breeden Anything, I am going to be asked some of the very same questions that I ask the guests who come in here and meet with us every week so kindly.

So, that will be an adventure to see, how I answer the questions that I like to [00:01:00] ask. So, this will be a lot of fun. But before we get to that, I would like to encourage everybody to like, subscribe, or follow The Best of Johnston County podcast, wherever you’re seeing this podcast. Whether it be on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, or any of the other Best of Johnston County social media pages.

Because that is how we continue to increase our reach, and it’ll make sure that you’re aware of all future episodes of The Best of Johnston County podcast. The Best Johnston County podcast comes out every Monday. So anyway, Raena Burch is here to ask me these questions, and we’ll see how it goes.

Raena Burch: Are you ready to be put on the spot like you put everybody else on the spot?

Jonathan Breeden: I always tell them, ’cause people are nervous when they come into the meet with me, and I’m like, you’re going to know the answers to the questions because I’m asking you about your life. And we were thinking off air and I was going, what is she going to ask me? And then you said to me, the answer to the question is going to ask you about your life. You’re giving me a pep talk like I give the guests pep talks.

Raena Burch: Yes. So, we’ll start out with the first thing that you pretty much ask everybody who comes on the podcast, where are you from? How did you get to Johnson County? What was that journey?

Jonathan Breeden: When I was born, my [00:02:00] parents lived in Dunn, North Carolina. My dad, I guess they make jeans, I think the factory is still there in Irwin. But shortly thereafter that my parents moved back to my mom’s home of Chadwick, North Carolina, Columbus County, and I lived there until I was 5. My dad went back to school to become an accountant at what is now UNC Pembroke.

And once he graduated from there, he got a job and we moved to Laurinburg, North Carolina, which is right on the North Carolina, South Carolina line. About 45 minutes South of Fayetteville, or 30 minutes west of Lumberton, or 30 minutes east of Rockingham.

North Carolina looks like a little bit like a gun right where it cuts towards the beach. It’s where I grew up in a very small county, a population of about anywhere from 25 to 30,000 people there in Scotland County. And I lived there until I graduated high school. And I was a pretty good student, and I was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities, I was in Scouts, I made it all the way to Life Scout.

[00:03:00] And I was involved with the Key Club in high school and doing other community service-type things. Volunteered some with the Red Cross, just tried to be in the community. My father was in the Autonomous Club, and they ran the local baseball parks, and the Little Leagues Baseball. So I played in that, those are my first jobs, raking the field, putting out the bases, running the scoreboard.

Those types of things are the jobs I had in middle school and high school, and enjoyed working with the Autonomous Club and the youth. Got to see a couple of players come through that program that ended up making it to the Major Leagues, including Brent Butler, he made it to the Major Leagues with the Rockies. There was also a young man named, Jonathan Adams, who played in the Major Leagues for Toronto Raptors. He came through the program at the time, not the Toronto Raptors, the Toronto Blue Jays, the baseball team. Anyway, he played at Carolina, did make it to the Major Leagues for a couple of years.

So yeah, it was a fun time growing up. This is the 80s in a very small town, North Carolina. My father was an accountant, my mother [00:04:00] was a nurse. She worked in the emergency room in Lumberton, nothing too crazy. Just growing up living, having a good time. But my dad and my mom went to NC State, and they met at NC State. And so, I grew up a huge NC State fan, I’m still a huge NC State fan. And all I wanted to do from the time I knew what a college was would go to NC State. And so, I was able to do that as I graduated high school, and I was at NC State for 3 years.

I graduated in 3 years, college is expensive, and you could go in the summers, and get the same number of credits for less than half price. Because a lot of the college costs, it’s not the tuition as people know the listing, it’s to live. Because the summer schools, these two 5 week sessions, and the dorms were on sale because they were empty, and they wanted people to be there.

This was before summer school was the bigger thing now. Now, 50% of the students may be in summer school, that was not the way it was in the 90s. So, I went in the summers so I could stay in Raleigh, and I’d go to a small town, and so that I [00:05:00] could try to get done and save some money. Because at least my goal was to go to law school, which eventually I do.

Raena Burch: Yes, you eventually did that. We know that.

Jonathan Breeden: We know that, so I graduated from NC State in 1996 with a Political Science Degree. My class was 1997, I finished at the end of the summer, and I’d gotten an internship while I was at NC State at the legislature. So, I worked at the North Carolina General Assembly through the Legislative Internship Program. And that was really a fascinating thing, I was at the legislature every day. I was assigned to work with Representative Robin Hayes, who at that time was in his second term from Concord, North Carolina, and he was a Republican.

And this was a time when the legislature for the first time since reconstruction flipped from Democrat to Republican, and the North Carolina Republicans got the North Carolina House. They picked up 26 seats, and they went from [00:06:00] 42 of the 120 seats to 68 of the 126 seats in the ’94 election with sort of the Gingrich Revolution, the Gingrich contract for America.

This was the Clinton midterm where they ended up getting, I believe they got the United States Senate, and they got the United States House. Newt Gingrich becomes United States Speaker, the North Carolina Republicans had this thing called, The Contract for North Carolina. They were headed up by a representative from Asheboro named Harold Brubaker.

And his top assistant that helped spearhead this was a man named Leo Daltrey from Smithfield, who was in the State House at that time. He had moved over from the State Senate to the State House. And the third in command with that group was another Johnstonian by the name of Billy Creech. And Billy Creech now, I think lives in Oriental, but he lived in Clayton and represented Clayton, and Leo Daltrey lived in Smithfield and represented Smithfield in the North [00:07:00] Carolina House in the 90s. And so, those three men were largely responsible for a lot of the things that happened in the mid to late 90s in North Carolina.

Raena Burch: Big inspirations for you?

Jonathan Breeden: Right, in my friendship that I made with them made me think, you can tell a lot about a people by who they elect. You really can, and those were two of the finest, most ethical, nicest people you could ever meet. And I’m from a small town, these legislators were like movie stars to me. And really, none of them acted that way. They truly was, and still is a citizen legislature. And they were there doing the best they could, part-time for the state. And I don’t think they really realized that they were going to go from being in the deep minority to in the majority.

It’s real easy to be against what the other side’s doing, it’s much harder to lead. But that’s one of the reasons I ultimately ended up in Johnston County was my friendship with Leo Daltrey and Billy Creech that I made when I was at the [00:08:00] legislature in ’95 and ’96. Robin Hayes goes on to run for Governor in 1996, wins the Republican nomination, loses to Jim Hunt. Jim Hunt was elected for the fourth time. Jim Hunt was Governor twice in 2 separate 8-year terms from ’76 to ’84 and from ’92 to 2000. And then, Robin Hayes goes on to be elected to Congress in ’98, and he serves in Congress for about 10 years.

And then he becomes the state Republican party chairman. And then he gets caught up in this mess with the Insurance Commissioner, Mike Causey, and maybe not funneling money the correct way. And he ends up getting convicted of lying to the FBI.

Raena Burch: Don’t do that.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. And he still lives in Concord, he’s still a good man. I hate that he got caught up into that but it is what it is. But he served the state in his nation for a long time and did a good job. It was unfortunate how it ended for him. But part of his family is Cannon Mills, and they’ve been a very Philanthropy, that family has done so much for [00:09:00] North Carolina.

So, I hope people will remember that, and not how it ended with the conviction for not telling the truth to the FBI in an investigation. But yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Raena Burch: So, you started out in Scotland County.

Jonathan Breeden: I did.

Raena Burch: Wake County for undergrad and then for your grad school, for law school.

Jonathan Breeden: I went to Campbell, which was in Buies Creek. So now, Campbell’s Law School since 2008 is in downtown Raleigh, a block on Hillsborough Street, one block away from the State Capitol. But until 2008, Campbell’s Law School was on its main campus in Buies Creek and Harnett County, between Dunn and Lillington on 421.

Raena Burch: Jerry passed it many times.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah, that’s right. And so, I had the story, I ended up taking that experience in legislation. I ran for the State House in ’96 as a 21-year-old college senior, going to be a graduate. I was in a very gerrymandered district, I did not really have any chance to win.

In an 86% Democratic district, I was running as a Republican, I had no chance. But I had [00:10:00] a really good time, I went around and talked to the issues, talked to a lot of people, had a lot of fun, met a ton of people, learned a lot. But I didn’t win the race, which I wasn’t going to win the race, but I did enjoy it.

And then, I go off to law school in the fall of ’97, and I go to Campbell. So, I moved to Buies Creek, I live in the dorm on campus. It was a big shock coming from Raleigh to Buies Creek.

Raena Burch: Did it feel a little like home?

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah, it did. But the main thing was, I needed that because law school was so much work.

Raena Burch: No distractions.

Jonathan Breeden: You needed no distractions because it was a ton of work. I studied in undergrad, made pretty good grades, but I was studying like 10, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in law school for about 3 years. I wasn’t the fastest reader in the world, you know what I mean? It was all this reading and the stuff you had to learn, it was a lot.

And so, I’m glad I was there, I did spend the last year and a half of law school, I lived in Angier, and some apartments on Broad Street, and have an office on Broad Street in Angier. So, it’s come full circle there. And I graduated in May of [00:11:00] 2000, and when I graduated, I moved to Clayton. And once again, I had studied areas where I wanted to do. I knew before I ever went to law school that I wanted to own my own practice. That’s one of the reasons I went to Campbell because it had a start-your-own law firm program.

Then, it was an unaccredited course. Now they teach it as an accredited course. And I took that course, all 3 years, and learned about business planning, and marketing, and office placement, and stuff like that. And the main thing I learned was, I was watching people that had graduated that were friends of mine, come back and say, I have taken the same education you have, and I have been successful.

And I’m thinking if that person can be successful, then Jonathan Breeden probably can be successful. They’re not any smarter than me, not any more special than I am. And so, that’s what I did, and a lot of people often will ask me, why did you go to law school? That’s always a question that people want to know.

And I really got the idea that I thought I wanted to be an engineer because that’s what my uncle was. I looked up to my uncle, he worked at IBM. But it didn’t take [00:12:00] long, and Algebra 2, and some of the more advanced math. Maybe that was not my natural inclination when I was making A pluses in History and English.

Maybe I need to go this route, but it really was when I read The Federalist Papers. So they make you take that, and they still require a high school civics class in North Carolina. Back when I was in high school, it was in 9th grade. I think now it’s moved to 10th.

But it was civics and economics. And in the civics class, you read the Federalist Papers, you read the United States Constitution, you read the Declaration of Independence. And I had one of these great teachers and Spencer Willard, a phenomenal teacher. He passed away about a year or two ago.

And we really dug into those papers and what the government that they were trying to form and the government they were trying to go away from. And I found the whole thing fascinating because I have this real sense as an 8th sense of justice. And those founding fathers, that’s what they were looking for. The concept that all men are created equal, that they’re endowed by inalienable rights given to them by the [00:13:00] creator.

Like everybody is special in their own way, and that these colonists felt like they were not receiving proper justice and a fair shake from the king as colonists. And deciding that they were going to break away and put their own lives on the line, which everybody signed the Declaration of Independence except for one person was murdered by the British, or murdered by somebody, mainly the British.

A lot of them were anyway, and they knew what they were signing up for and they did it anyway. But yeah, it was a fascinating thing. And so, that’s what really sparked my interest in law was a high school civics class. So, anybody listening, if you have children out there and they still require it.

Raena Burch: I took it in high school.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah, it’s great. But that’s what really got me thinking, I had this sense of justice, I’m fascinated by how this government got created, how this government works. And then I go to the legislature, and I see how the laws are made, and made me wanna go to law school even more. So, that’s how I ended up in law.

Raena Burch: Gosh. So, you tried the government side of things and then that really gave you that little extra push that you needed to really make [00:14:00] that determination to go to law school.

Jonathan Breeden: I was gonna go, and then I had not been at the legislature long, and they were talking about laws, and they were getting into the wording of changing laws. Because most laws are not brand new laws, they are changing laws that are already there. And so, they’re trying to amend them, what this would mean, and what this would mean, and single words can change entire statutes. And I just found that absolutely fascinating, and I was very fortunate to be able to get in, and go to the committee meetings, and participate, and talk to the legislators, and give them my opinion.

And some of them would listen and ask me questions back. It really was a great time, it was definitely one of the highlights was to be at the legislature and work with everybody there. And a lot of the people that were there now are still around, Roy Cooper was there, he was in the State Senate, got to know him, very nice man. Bev Perdue was in the State Senate at the time. She goes on to be Governor, became friends with her, it was a really fascinating time. A lot of really nice people trying to do the right thing. And it wasn’t this highly politicized, polarizing things now. They all had their own opinions as to where the state needed to go. And [00:15:00] they didn’t always agree, but it wasn’t like it is now.

Raena Burch: I think, back then as they realized, we have a lot more in common than we have differences.

Jonathan Breeden: Correct. And they had to get along there because the Democrats still had the State Senate, and the Republicans had the House, and the Governor didn’t have Veto Power. So the Governor was there, but he really couldn’t say a whole lot. And so, it was neat, I got to be in the meetings where they would meet and decide what they were going to do, and it really was fascinating.

Raena Burch: Compromise and teamwork.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. It really was fascinating, everybody was respectful and nice to each other, and that’s not what it is today. There was a legislative basketball team back then. And I don’t think they have that today, and I don’t think it’s quite the same. That’s unfortunate, that it’s gone that way in the last 30 years.

Raena Burch: So again, Scotland, Wake, Harnett, and then you ended up in Johnston County when you started your practice. Why did you pick Clayton? Cause you said you researched where you wanted to go?

Jonathan Breeden: I was studying places to go, and being this huge Wolfpack fan, I felt like I wanted to be around Raleigh so I could continue to support the Wolfpack. And this brand new team that I’d [00:16:00] fallen in love with called, Carolina Hurricanes, who had just showed up. But I knew I didn’t want to be in Raleigh.

I looked at how many lawyers per capita and all that. And Raleigh had too many lawyers per capita, but the areas around Raleigh didn’t have enough. And I had a professor, it taught me the Start Your Own Law Firm class. He’s like, you can live in the counties around Raleigh, and go to all the Wolfpack games you want to go to without having to try to build a business in Raleigh where there’s too many lawyers.

And so, I looked at all of the counties around Raleigh including Harnett, where I was living, Lee County, Johnston County, Franklin. I also started looking at some of the politics of the counties. Who was the County Commissioners, what they were doing? I looked at tax rates, I looked at growth trends, you didn’t really have the internet, the internet was new back then. I subscribed to some newspapers, started reading the Clayton News-Star. Paper doesn’t exist anymore, I don’t believe, but in other newspapers, I was familiar with Lee County and Sanford because they were in our conference in [00:17:00] sports.

But ultimately, I had decided that just going back to my friendship with Leo Daltrey and Billy Creech, and just thinking that Johnston County was starting to explode, and was going to continue to explode, and did not have enough lawyers was an underserved area, and it was not very far from Raleigh. And so, I ended up moving to Johnston County even before I passed the bar.

Raena Burch: Oh, wow.

Jonathan Breeden: Because I knew I needed to get focused to study for the bar exam that summer. So, I moved to Clayton in May and I took the bar exam in July of 2020. I moved into Amelia Village, I was one of the first people to ever live in Amelia Village, it was brand new, right there in Clayton. Now Amelia Village is a huge apartment complex now, beautiful place.

But literally, when I moved in there were like 3 buildings and a pool. And I drove to Campbell every day, down to Buies Creek to study for the bar, and watch the videos, do the bar prep classes and all that stuff. Cause I need to treat it like a job. I had to get up, I needed to schedule, and I was able to pass the bar and start my practice right here at 4042 on October 1st, 2000.

Raena Burch: Wow. It’s been almost 24 years.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. It’s coming up on 24 years, [00:18:00] it is.

Raena Burch: I know you have your wife and 2 beautiful children. So, where did Beth come in?

Jonathan Breeden: So, I was here practicing law and I met her, I was involved in the community. I told you about the community service in high school. I continued to do the community service when I got here. So, I got involved with the Crossroads Civitan Club, got involved with what was the Clayton Jaycees, and then the Clayton Jaycees fizzled out as the people that were running it had children, didn’t have time anymore. And then I go into Garner Jaycees, and the Garner Jaycees fizzled out as the people that were in charge of it ended up having children not having time for it anymore.

And so, then I went to the Raleigh Jaycees so that I could still be involved in the community. And that’s where I met my wife at a wine-tasting fundraiser for the Raleigh Jaycees, raising money for the Christmas cheer program. I don’t even drink wine, I went anyway to contribute to support the community. I met this teacher who had gone to Duke and I thought, Man, this lady is pretty sharp. I was like, I don’t know.

I got a phone number, I asked her out. She agreed to go out with me, and I guess the [00:19:00] rest is history. But we spent the entire first date arguing over education policy. Cause she was a school teacher and I knew, I thought I knew what we needed to do. And we argued over No Child Left Behind, it was George Bush’s program, federal education program. And we had differences of opinion on that, that was interesting.

Raena Burch: If I could have been a fly on the wall.

Jonathan Breeden: That’s for sure. But yeah, so anyway, that’s 2005, we get married in 2007. We have our son in 2009, our daughter in 2012.

Raena Burch: Yeah, obviously in the Johnston County school, they were, and then COVID.

Jonathan Breeden: COVID, yeah. So now, we do the homeschool thing and that’s been a lot of fun too.

Raena Burch: But I do want to touch on, ’cause you do support the community a lot. You have multiple teams that you sponsor. How you help with Backpack Buddies and some of the soccer teams and the football teams? So, tell us a little bit more about that.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. I really feel like you can be in the community, can be of the community, right? And I feel like you really should be involved in the community. Once again, it goes back to high school, right? The community service that I learned [00:20:00] from my parents, and that I did in high school from the Key Club to working with the Red Cross, from the Boy Scouts, working with the Autonomous Club, which is a nonprofit for kids. I just took that with me into adulthood and somebody had to sponsor the teams that I played on growing up.

And so, I always felt like if I could build a business that was successful enough, that it had profits that could be invested back into its community that it should be. And so, I have continued to do that the entire 24 years that I’ve been here. I’ve been very fortunate with the growth of the business over the last 4 years, to be able to do more in the community with some larger donations and also more teams as the businesses continue to grow. And that’s allowed us to invest more back in the community. Currently, there’s a whole list.

But some of the ones that come to the top of the list, we do give money to the Helping Hand mission in Raleigh. I’m a big supporter of what they’re doing, and their homeless shelter and stuff like [00:21:00] that. Backpack Buddies here in Cleveland, we’ve had them on this podcast before, where they’re sitting home backpacks full of food for kids on the weekends on Friday.

So, they’ll have food throughout the weekend until they can get back to school on Monday. As far as some of the other things, we sponsored the Partnership for Children. They do a huge fundraiser usually in the fall, the Partnership for Children is the current version of what was called, Smart Start, which was started when I was at the legislature in the mid-90s by Governor Hunt, which was really focused on early childhood education and development and children 0 through 5. So that they’re ready to learn when they get to school, whether that be early reading programs, nutrition programs, diapers, anything that they can do to support children between ages of 0 and 5.

And so, we continue to sponsor them. There’s My Kid’s Club in Selma, which is the Johnston County version of the Boys & Girls Clubs. It was called Boys & Girls Clubs a few years ago and then they switched, they went off and did their own thing, and they separated from the Wayne County Boys & [00:22:00] Girls Club. I’m now being told that they’re going to merge with the Wake County Boys & Girls Club and it’s going to go back. It’s not going to be called My Kid’s Club anymore. I think it’s gonna now be called, Boys & Girls Club of Johnston County.

I think, I could be wrong, but they’re gonna merge back with Boys & Girls Club, and they do a tremendous amount of work there in Selma with kids with their after-school programs and their summer programs. They’ve got a brand new building that just opened in the last few weeks. So, we try to sponsor them and do what we can to help them. There’s the Harbor Shelter in Johnston County for domestic violence victims. Hopefully, we’ll have one of them on the podcast. We try to sponsor what they’re trying to do. So, they got places for people to go. They also offer classes for domestic violence victims, if they’re still in the relationship or they’re trying to get out of the relationship.

And so, we try to support them in the community as well. And then there, of course, there are all the teens in the high school. So, we try to help Cleveland High School, we do a lot with Cleveland High School. I’m a sponsor of the Future Farmers of America program on the scoreboard at the football stadium. I’m a scoreboard sponsor [00:23:00] for the athletic department. I sponsor the Twitter player of the game, or now the X player of the game for Cleveland High School football. I’m a sponsor of the band at Cleveland High School. I think they give out a trophy every year with my name on it, so somebody at the band competition in October.

So, I do probably more for Cleveland High School and I do for any, I also sponsor the plays they do, they have a drama program there. I’ve sponsored a couple of plays. I think they did Legally Blonde a couple of years ago. So, we do try to pour back into the community. I’m the top sponsor of the Cleveland Middle School Band.

Raena Burch: And it’s important to note, your kids don’t go to these schools.

Jonathan Breeden: No, they do not. They do not go to these schools.

Raena Burch: So yeah, this is just you supporting the community.

Jonathan Breeden: I’m a believer in music and the bands in particular because not everybody can be big and strong and play sports, but everybody can play an instrument if they want to, and be involved in the camaraderie of that. We sponsor the Triple S-Band, the Smithville Summer High School Band. We do that every year, we got [00:24:00] involved with them when they were going to New York a couple of years ago. And they were trying to raise money to take those kids to New York, we do that.

We sponsor the West Johnston High School Band, done that for many years. So, we do that as well. And then, of course, I was on the board of the Greater Cleveland Athletic Association from 2000 and 14 to 2024. So, basically 9 or 10 years on that board and work with that board before that.

And so, I’ve been sponsoring all types of teams and programs and GCAA from basketball, to soccer, to individual baseball teams, and softball teams to a softball sponsor over the whole program now. My kids were able to play at GCAA over the years. They do a great job there, it’s a tremendous organization.

We’ll probably have somebody on from that group to talk about all the stuff they’re doing on the podcast here in the future. But it’s a massive group, I think it serves over 3000 children every year. Completely volunteer-run.

Raena Burch: That’s amazing.

Jonathan Breeden: So yeah. Those are some, but that’s just some of the ways that my [00:25:00] teammates and I try to get back to the community around us that has given us so much. But that’s part of it, right? I think that’s part of being a good person, a good citizen because we’re all in this together, right? And it does take a village, I don’t agree with everything Hillary says, but it really is. So, that’s some of the stuff that we do in the community.

There’s other stuff that are not really sponsorships where people have a fire, or somebody dies, and we continue to try to just help people. I’m very blessed that I’ve been able to build the business I have. This is why I’ve had to have the health I’ve had and the great people that work for me. I don’t forget that, I don’t take that for granted. And I do think it’s important to get back, and I encourage all the people that work for me to get back.

And I’ve got employees that are now the head of The Service Committee for the Johnston County Bar Association. Those types of things, helping with diaper drives, and stuff like that. Because I want them to learn just as much as I did, and they’re also wanting to give back as well. We try to do a lot, we do as much as we probably do more. But we just try [00:26:00] to do what we can do.

Raena Burch: Yeah. And I do have one thing before we get to the very last question that we ask everybody. Before we get to that one, one thing I do wanna know, with all the different types of law, and I think I know the answer to this already, just based off of everything that you just said. But with all the different types of law that you can pick, why family law?

Jonathan Breeden: Family law found me, right? When I went to law school, I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney. One of the things I did in high school with the other stuff I did was, I had a neighbor who worked in the public defender’s office in Scotland County. And I would go up there, and trash, and just talk to the public defenders, and the attorneys about their cases and stuff.

Cause I want to go to law school or I thought I did. But I really had gone to law school thinking that I was going to do criminal defense. Once again, this overwhelming sense of justice, right? There’s no greater sense of justice than to have somebody who’s wrongly accused be found not guilty.

But I also knew that if I was going to be in a growing community, but when I got it was a small community, you needed to be a little bit of a jack of all trades. As the attorneys [00:27:00] that I respected and grew up in Laurinburg, a lot of them did a little bit of everything to build their businesses.

And so, I did take family law in law school. And I thought that it might be something I could do when I started because there’s always people needing family lawyers. And it’s a small business. It’s cash and carry kind of thing. A personal education works on for 12 or 18 months before you get paid.

Family law case, somebody, it’s like a criminal law case. If they hire you today, you get paid today, you get that money, you represent them tomorrow. So when I came here, I started doing criminal defense and some family law, cause that’s what was coming here. And I really didn’t want to do real estate closing.

So, there was tons of those cause of all the houses around here. And so, for 7 or 8 years, I was on the court-appointed list and I represented attempted murderers, rapists, all that on the court-appointed list. And I also was representing people in DSS court, and that’s where their kids have been taken by the county, and they’ve been placed in foster care.

And I represented parents trying to get their kids back. And I really loved that work. It was hard work because it takes a lot for the state to take your [00:28:00] child, but I was able to get a lot of kids back for those parents, working with those parents, providing good representation of them. And I started getting people showing up to my office as I was starting out here at 4042 with family law needs.

And I started taking those cases because I wanted to eat, but then I found that I really enjoyed it. And I found that I really enjoyed representing parents in DSS court, and I really enjoyed the family law cases I was getting, and I was taking small ones. I wasn’t doing the multimillion-dollar cases that we sometimes do now, where there’s lots of assets.

I was doing really simple stuff, simple custody cases. I tried to stick with something I thought I could do. I got to go to court, I got to try cases, I got to be on my feet, I got to make arguments to judges. And I felt that I was a person that could deal with the emotions of family law.

Most people, most lawyers, 98% of lawyers, 99% of lawyers wouldn’t touch family law for a 10-foot pole. Because of the sheer emotions of the people going through it. But I found that I could deal with those emotions, and I could understand those emotions, and I had empathy for those [00:29:00] people, and for what they were going through, and I could help them. And ultimately, I found that even the clients that were the most difficult, that we’re not very nice to me and not very nice to their spouses, they all love their children, right?

And they all wanted to be involved in the children’s lives in some way. And so, the more I realized that I was helping children by helping get them out of foster care and back to their parents, help getting children out of bad situations where they’re not going to have a chance to be successful, and getting children to places where they could thrive.

That’s where I found my joy and my passion was just making children’s lives better. And unfortunately, Raena, and you work here, you see it. Every week, we’ve got kids in really bad spots. And every week, we’re working to get them into better spots. And when you can get a child from a not great situation to a great situation where they’re going to be safe, and they’re going to be supported, and they’re going to go to school, and they’re going to [00:30:00] have food and all of those things.

There’s not a whole lot more you can do better in this life as we’re all children of God, than helping a child be better into a better situation. And I go into all of these cases, and I train all the attorneys that work for me that our clients can be extremely difficult, they are stressed, they may be suffering from mental illness, they may be suffering from personality disorders, they may be having all kinds of issues.

But they’re parents, and they love their children, and their children love them, and children only get two parents. And we need to make it to where these children can have the best relationship that they can have with both sets of parents. So that these children have the way to be successful, or at least have the chance to be successful by going to school and having their basic needs met. Because somebody’s got to fight for them, and while we’re representing their parents, our focus is almost always on, how we can make the children’s lives [00:31:00] better?

And now, I’ve been at this intersection for 24 years, and children that I helped make lives better have grown up, and I see them, and I see their children, and some of them have become teachers that have taught my children, and I know where it started, and I know where it ended. And I’m not going to tell anybody where it started and they’re not either. But it’s really rewarding, it really is. Because some of these people, they weren’t going to finish high school and now they’re teaching in our schools.

Because I went and advocated for a grandparent, or an aunt, or an uncle, or the other parent, and got them out of the situation they were in into a better situation that allowed them to thrive, and now they’re giving back to the community. So, it’s all circular here and it all comes back, whether it’s supporting the community programs, sponsoring the stuff, helping people in the community, helping make children’s lives better. It’s all the same thing of trying to make the world a better place as best I can as an attorney here in Johnston County.

Raena Burch: For the next generation.

Jonathan Breeden: For the [00:32:00] next generation.

Raena Burch: But that’s why I said, you know I feel like I already had the answer, that just based off of all of the sponsoring, and all of the support you do for the community, a lot of it. I would say, probably, 95% of it has to do with kids, supporting the kids, which is exactly what you do here.

Jonathan Breeden: Correct.

Raena Burch: So that’s why I was like, I’m pretty sure I do know the answer, but I’m going to ask the question anyway. So for the very, very last question that we ask all of our guests, obviously, what do you love most about Johnston County?

Jonathan Breeden: I’m going to say the same thing, all the guests say it’s the people. It’s the reason I started this podcast. I wanted a way to promote the people of this county in a positive light. There’s a lot of negativity in this world, there’s negativity around Johnston County, but I wanted to be able to promote all of the great people of the county, I love the people here.

I will say the same thing everybody always says, the hometown feel, the small community. I live in Cleveland and Cleveland’s not a town, and we don’t have a mayor or whatever. Some people call me the Mayor of Cleveland. But we’re probably never going to be a town, and that could be three [00:33:00] podcasts. That’s why I don’t think there’s ever be a town.

But it’s the people, it’s a small town feel, it’s everybody helping everybody, most people that live here now are not from here. They do not have a grandparent unless that grandparent has followed them here right down the road. None of my kids’ grandparents live anywhere near here.

And so, we all work together to get our kids to the different activities, and just get our friends to doctor’s appointments and stuff like that, and you don’t always get that in the cities. But you get that all over Johnston County with the Cleveland community, Clayton, Riverwood, Archer’s Lodge, Pine Level, the people here are just that way.

And I think it’s contagious, people work together and help each other out. Because you need that, particularly, if you’re going to not be near family where almost all the people that have moved here are not near family. And so, because they’ve come here for work, jobs, careers, education, whatever it is, they’re not from you.

Johnston County had about 60,000 people in 1990, and it now has [00:34:00] 280,000 people. It’s a lot, right? You think about that kind of growth, that’s like 4 or 5 times.

Raena Burch: And it’s projected to be I think, the 9th or like one of the biggest growth cities in the US.

Jonathan Breeden: It’s a percentage of his population already is, the county itself is probably one of the top 25 or 30 fastest growing counties as a percentage of population in the nation along with Wake County. So yeah, it’s going to continue to grow. But it’s the people that make up the county. It’s the people that make up the community. I love the people here. I’ve loved them since day I got here. I loved them since before I knew anybody other than Leo Daltrey and Billy Creech.

It’s just a great group of people in Johnston County, and I think it’s going to contend to do that. And good people want to be around other good people. And like I said, the secrets out of the bag. People want to come here, they’re going to continue to come here. But I do still think it will keep the same community feel that it’s had.

Raena Burch: As I say, that’s probably one of the coolest parts is it feels like no matter how big Johnston County gets, every time you go to the store, you’re going to see two or three people that you know. No matter what.

Jonathan Breeden: Absolutely.

Raena Burch: Plan that in your grocery shopping trip.

Jonathan Breeden: And if you take your kids with [00:35:00] you, your kids know even more people than you know.

Raena Burch: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: Because of all the kids they meet at school and stuff like that.

Raena Burch: So, always add in that extra 10 or 15 minutes.

Jonathan Breeden: No doubt. So yeah, that was a lot of fun. I’d like to thank Raena for coming on here and asking me the same questions I ask everybody else on this podcast. I hope y’all found this to be enjoyable, and enlightening, and seeing Jonathan Breen get put on the hot seat that he puts other people on every week.

So anyway, we would ask you again to like, follow, subscribe The Best of Johnston County podcast, wherever you’re seeing this podcast. And so, you should be aware of a future episode of The Johnston County podcast, until next time, I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.