An Incredible Attitude | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Hindman takes Susie for a walk on the "Hindman Trail."

Family time
Although Hindman is enthusiastic about being mayor, it is evident that he – and Axie – are not always thrilled with the time the office requires. Between representing the community at various events and dinners and his legal career, he no longer has the time to participate in what he calls "discretionary activities."

"This mayor business takes up a lot of time," he says.

Or, as Axie puts it, before he became mayor, they "used to do a lot of things," like walking on the MKT and Katy trails.

Hindman says he thinks Axie misses those "discretionary activities." Although she has gone with him to a number of events where he has represented the city, Hindman says there are many events to which his wife does not get invited. He says there are still others for which his dinner as mayor would be paid, but Axie’s would not be.

"It can be expensive, and we have to pick and choose," he says. "She stays at home quite a bit when I’m gone."

Spending time with his family is important. Skip Hindman says that when he was growing up, his father spent lots of time with him away from his law office. Skip, who, like his father, is a lawyer, says that his father separated his work life from his home life. He would not discuss his work at home and engaged himself in his children’s lives.

"I don’t think there’s any doubt he put his family first," Skip says from his office in Nashville, Tenn. "It only becomes more clear to me now that I am working and practicing law."

When he and his sister were younger, Hindman would take time out to take driving vacations with his family in their 1962 Volkswagen, Skip says. Although they lived during those years first in Mexico and then in Columbia, the family traveled all over the United States, visiting the Everglades in Florida, art exhibits in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

"Now that I am an attorney, looking back on those trips, I wonder how he ever had the time to practice law," Skip says.

Optimistic representative
What Hindman makes time for now is representing the city. And in doing that, he brings to the job his optimism, his hunger for new experience and his love of life.

These aspects of Hindman are on display even when his boxer shorts are not.