Power Profile: Billy Martin

Sometimes a seemingly minor bump in the road can alter the course of a life. It happened to William R. “Billy” Martin in the early 1970s. Then a Howard University business major, Martin went home to Pittsburgh on a school break and got in an accident with a lawyer driving a fancy sports car.

“The lawyer’s in a Porsche; I’m in a Volkswagen. I thought he was dead wrong in rear-ending me and I got out of my car and started to tell him what I thought, and he started smiling,” Martin recalled. “He said, ‘You know, you’re very good on your feet. Have you ever thought of going to law school?’ ”