Rick Clements’s golf shot was inches away from the pin, all but ensuring he’d win the $15 prize for the best shot of the hole during a round of golf earlier this year. Then his buddy Gene Medori teed off.
“He looks at me and says, ‘I think it went in the hole,’ ” Clements said. “And I said ‘Whatever,’ because we both knew it did.”
Medori’s hole-in-one earned him serious bragging rights and the $15 prize, Clements said, but it wasn’t the most impressive thing about him. An attorney by trade, Medori had a love of information and an amazing ability to recall details.
“We’ve had several discussions about points of law and things of that nature,” his friend of some 30 years said. “With me being in commercial construction and all, I’d wonder what right somebody may have to do this or that, and he would quote certain cases just like that. I think he is the smartest attorney I’ve ever known.”
Eugene A. Medori Jr., of Stone Mountain, died Thursday from complications of cancer. He was 70.
A memorial Mass is planned for 11 a.m. Tuesday at Corpus Christi Catholic Church, Stone Mountain. A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home & Crematory is in charge of cremation arrangements.
Medori was born in New York, but grew up and graduated from high school in Hackensack, N.J. He transferred to Emory University when his father moved to Atlanta in the early 1960s. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Emory, said Claudia Medori, his wife of more than 45 years.
“He went to law school thinking he wanted to practice,” she said. “But he got interested in other things along the way. He was intrigued by law enforcement.”
Gene Medori was a special agent for the FBI for nearly four years before he started practicing law as an assistant in the North Georgia U.S. District Attorney’s office. In 1973, Medori and two friends opened a general law practice in Decatur. Though it changed names through the years, Medori and one of the original partners remained in business until five years ago, Claudia Medori said. But the closing of the office did not signal Medori’s complete transition into retirement, she said, as he participated in administrative hearings for the DeKalb and Atlanta public school systems.
Medori was known not only for his legal mind, but his good nature and sense of humor, said his twin daughters, Melissa Medori and Michele Medori, both of Atlanta.
“He would do anything to help someone,” Melissa Medori said, of her father. “Whether it was legal advice, or planning a trip, he would do what he could.”
“He had such presence in a room, and for me was kinda the life of the party,” Michele Medori said. “He made jokes, and wasn’t shy about sharing his opinions. It was always fun to have him around.”
In addition to his wife and daughters, Medori is also survived by daughter, Amanda Hallauer of Decatur; father and stepmother, Eugene A. Medori Sr. and Mary C. Medori of Roswell; brother, Steven Medori of Birmingham, Ala.; sister, Francine Franke of Greer, S.C.; and two grandsons.
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