Strikingly frank (and funny) Dad-of-two Stephen Pezanosky serves the Fort Worth corporate community as a partner and chair of the bankruptcy and business restructuring section at Haynes and Boon, LLP. His love for children is obvious – his kids, Christopher, 5, and Jack, 2, seamlessly find their way into his jokes and stories.
But before this dad boasted about the parenting breakthrough of “The Uh-Oh Song” (as an at-home justice system), Pezanosky was climbing the legal ladder and keeping his eye on success with the help of his wife, Christy, who is chief prosecutor at the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office. “We remained very career oriented until about five years ago,” he says. “The birth of our first son, Christopher, changed our focus and the way we think about things.” Add 2-year-old Jack, who has Down syndrome, into the mix and you get one very busy – and happy – family of four.
In between the daily schedules of two full-time lawyers and two energetic kids, dad helps juggle Jack’s physical therapy and doctor visits. “It can be difficult,” he admits, “especially because Christy and I weren’t always the most organized people [before we had kids]. Now we have to make sure that we communicate our trial or travel schedules and the kids’ schedules.” What happens when the legal-minded duo find themselves in a bind? “We work it out – we both have to be flexible, which sometimes seems impossible,” he asserts. “We have to ask for help when we need it, yet we also put our family above everything else.”
Despite their harried agendas, both mom and dad make a point to be home and sit down as a family for dinner. “That’s sometimes the greatest accomplishment of a day’s work,” Pezanosky laughs. The give-and-take marriage affords the family (some) free time to enjoy the fruits of their labor: The couple and their boys love hanging out at their Possum Kingdom lake house.
And when he’s not relaxing, Pezanosky coaches Christopher’s baseball team and raises money alongside his wife for Texas Christian University’s KinderFrogs (an early childhood education center for children with Down syndrome where Jack attends). “If you’re interested in a charity or cause, you’ll make time for it,” he says. And, he explains, his once-popular weekend golf outings are now “pretty far down on my list of importance.”
To say that children have changed Pezanosky’s life is an understatement. His sons have completed his very fortunate life. “I never thought a whole lot about kids,” he says. “But if I knew that it would be so great, I would have had children a lot earlier. It has put my life in a whole new perspective.”
