Attorney Thomas Cannon was a passionate advocate for children in custody disputes, and for people struggling through divorce and other difficulties involving family law.

The law firm of Horack Talley, where Cannon practiced, has honored all that he accomplished by establishing a new Liberty Fund in his memory. Liberty Funds honor North Carolina attorneys whose careers demonstrate dedication to the pursuit of justice and outstanding service to the profession and the public, according to The North Carolina Bar Association Foundation.

The Foundation dedicated the new fund at the N.C. Bar Association Center in Raleigh. Cannon is one of only 16 attorneys in the state so honored. His likeness, name and hometown are now inscribed in glass in the Liberty Fund Wall of Honor.

“Tom was one of the very best family lawyers in North Carolina for the better part of 50 years,” says Horack Talley attorney Gena Graham Morris, who spoke at the dedication. “Family law is not an easy road for a lawyer. Few do it as long as Tom did. Even fewer do it as well. None enjoyed it as much.”

Cannon was a board-certified specialist in family law and a Fellow in the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. A native of Raleigh, he tried cases in more than 30 counties in North Carolina. He appeared before the N.C. Court of Appeals and the N.C. Supreme Court in more than 40 cases. Cannon was selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America© 2016 every year from 1995 to 2016.

Cannon was a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who served in the U.S. Naval Reserve for 20 years, first as an intelligence officer and later in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Cannon passed away in December 2015.

“Tom’s colleagues in the family law practice group and the entire firm miss him, but his legacy lives on,” Morris says.

Liberty Fund gifts to the NCBA Foundation are used, among other purposes, to study, improve and facilitate the administration of justice in North Carolina.