Howard Duncan is no mere company man -- unless he owns the company. "I can't work for anyone," he says.
The independent 55-year-old Columbia man has operated a car-dealing business. He's worked as a mortician. He's run a snack bar at the Howard County Circuit Courthouse in Ellicott City. Now he's a bail bondsman.
Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, the North Carolina native says an adventure for him is starting a business from the ground up. "I think he typifies the American small-business man," said Joel Abramson, a Columbia lawyer who represents the Duncan family.
Mr. Duncan settled in Maryland in 1968 while operating his family's auto business. He bought cars in northern states and resold them in the South.
When the national auto business hit "an all-time low" in 1986, Mr. Duncan said he ventured into another longtime family profession by becoming a licensed mortician and opening Duncan Funeral Services in Laurel.
Not all Mr. Duncan's career changes have come from his taste for challenges.
The death of his youngest son, Kevin Michael Duncan in a 1989 drunken-driving crash prompted him to turn away from the funeral business.
He says he could no longer stomach the job.
"I had to go down to the morgue to identify my own child," he says. "I never realized how people felt until I was there."
Catalyst of change
He tried to use his son's death as a catalyst to change state law to hold taverns responsible for the actions of their customers.
Mr. Duncan sued Happy Harbor Inn in Anne Arundel County and its owner for negligence, alleging that his 24-year-old son had been served alcohol even though he was visibly intoxicated. Kevin Duncan left the bar, drove off the road, hit a tree and died 13 days later.
But Maryland is one of a few states where taverns are protected from such lawsuits.
So Mr. Duncan then sued to change that law, but he lost again.
Now he is considering taking the case to Maryland's highest court, the Court of Appeals.
After closing his funeral home, Mr. Duncan opened the courthouse snack bar -- a business he and his son had planned to run together. He calls the business a tribute to his son.
Mr. Duncan's street smarts help to make his businesses successful, acquaintances say.
Five years ago, when Circuit Court only offered food from vending machines, Mr. Duncan saw a niche and settled into it, Mr. Abramson says. He started with a hot dog cart in the courthouse parking lot and expanded to an indoor snack bar.
