Biography
Biography ContentTranscript
CD: This is Cynthia Devlin and I'm interviewing Tanner Hunt, it's around 11'0 clock in the morning on July 21st, 20005 we are at the federal courthouse in Beaumont Texas.
TH: I was born in 1936 in Beaumont and I've always lived here attended public schools here and graduated from Beaumont High in 1954, my father was the editor of the Beaumont Enterprise and Journal, the daily Newspaper here, I attended the University of Texas undergraduate school, majored in English, went to the University of Virginia Law school in Charlottesville, Virginia for one year, and then graduated from the university of Texas law school in Austin, I graduated in 1962. Immediately after law school I was employed by then congressman Jack Brooks who was chairman of the government operations subcommittee and I served as an investigator during one session of congress for congressman Brooks, then I went down the street and worked for the Department of Justice for a couple of years in the civil division the court of claims section. During the Kennedy administration I came back to Beaumont, my home where my parents live in June of 1964, and joined the law firm of Wells, Duncan, and Beard as it was called then, I became a partner in the firm in 1968, and have been with that firm ever since, firm's now called Wells, Patton, Greenberg and Hunt. My primary area of practice is school law, I represent school districts and have since 1968 we represent the Beaumont district and about a dozen other school districts in south-east Texas large and small, and what has brought me into federal court in representing school districts began in 1970 when the Beaumont school district, then it was called south Parks school district was sued by the Department of Justice for failing to voluntarily desegregate it's school system, Judge Joe J. Fisher heard the case and we were back and forth in forth in Judge Fisher's court for the next twelve years, as well as back and forth in the fifth circuit on appeals gradually the school district moved towards, desegregation it was very slow process and I'll have to tip the hat to judge Fisher because he gave us home-cooking on that and only in 1983 after Judge Fisher recused himself because he had grand children attending Beaumont public schools, the case was assigned to Judge Robert Parker sitting in Beaumont at the time and he very swiftly desegregated the schools root and branch as the supreme court said must be done, he also desegregated the faculty and staff of the school district of about thirty schools, about twenty-five hundred employees. Practicing before Judge Parker was interesting, practicing before was very interesting in a different way, Judge Fisher ran his court something like a county judge might run it up in San Augustine county and there was a lot of collegiality, everybody knew everybody, he was very welcoming, his door was always open you could stop by and meet him and visit with him I remember when we were in his court in the first school integration, a young lawyer from the Department of Justice in Washington was down here trying the case for the government and it lasted several weeks, and so judge Fisher called him in his office on Friday afternoon after we had concluded proceedings for the day and asked him what was his plans for the weekend, if he going to go back to Washington, and he said 'no I got to stay here and work,' and so judge said well come on we'll go out to the country club what are your interests, and the fella happen to be a bridge player, so judge fisher lined him up with a bridge game with a group of friends and he was just that sort of guy, very, very, welcoming, he was concerned about everybody, meeting everybody else having a good time and made this fella feel welcome, and even though hammered him when the decision was rendered he was still appreciative of his hospitality and his courtesy to him throughout the case. I've appeared before Judge Fisher in other kinds of cases, primarily employment law cases, our firm also did some admiralty work, admiralty maritime lawsuits were much more prevalent then than they are now, there's very little admiralty practice left, and so I was in his court with some admiralty cases, the employment law cases primarily involved school personnel who felt that they had been discriminated against in some kind of way, first it was race, later gender, and also some age discrimination cases. I also appeared before Judge Parker on other kinds of cases, he was a very, very scholarly man and wrote extremely well, and it was always a pleasure to practice before him, later as you probably know Judge Parker ascended to the fifth circuit court of Appeals in New Orleans and has now retired, and is living up near Longview I think. Let's see others… I'm just rambling here, is this good at all?
CD: That's exactly where we wanted you to go
TH: Ok.
CD: Just in the character of the Beaumont division have you gone any other divisions to have argued or anything?
TH: Yes I have.
CD: How is this? Is Beaumont different is it more collegiate, friendly, family-like? How would you describe the?
TH: Well I have not had a lot of cases in other divisions. I've been in the southern district little bit, the northern district once or twice and I really have not been in those courts enough or been in the same judge's court enough in those place to have formed an opinion about how they do business over there. But I would have to say that when Judge Fisher was our chief judge here and for a time he was our only federal judge here, let's see how best to put that; it was almost a cult of personality; judge Fisher was such a formidable man, and such a strong personality and so decisive and sort of larger than life that people who came to practice in his court from other places would comment on that fact. And of course it's well known that judge Fisher was extremely friendly to plaintiffs, he had been a plaintiff's attorney before, he was actually, he was briefly a state district judge up in Jasper for just a short time before he, Jasper or San Augustine, I can't remember, but anyway I think Jasper, before he came down, before he ascended the federal bench in I think 1959. But he was plaintiff oriented and if you were a plaintiff you could be certain that you would get a fair trial in his court, maybe more than fair but anyway that was the orientation of the court, then later as other judge's came and were in this courthouse trying cases here, judge Parker I mentioned later judge Richard Schell came down the character of the court house generally changed it was no longer a court of personality if you will, here a brief anecdote others have probably told you this as well; but during the Carter administration we had an energy crisis and so he ordered that all the government offices in the nation have their thermometers cut up during the summer, do you remember this? Somebody else told you about this or not?
CD: One of the security people here mentioned it, he wanted it cool
TH: I'm sure the security guy did, but Jimmy Carter in order to save energy wanted all the government thermometers in the summer to be cranked up to about 76 degrees, 75 degrees. Well judge Fisher felt that that would make people uncomfortable including himself and the lawyers in his court and the witnesses and the jury and the staff and so he just issued an order instructing the general services administration which manages all of the federal buildings to keep the thermostat in this courthouse at a convenient level, I don't know if it was 70 0r 72 or whatever so this courthouse was cool while every other courthouse in the nation was uncomfortable, cause the windows don't open in these buildings.
CD: And no one said anything…
TH: Nobody said anything because this had come down from on high, and it never occurred to anybody to question judge Fisher's decision, certainly not the federal government they were not about to challenge him in his own court
CD: That's a great story
TH: But anyways I thought of another anecdote about Judge Fisher that might be of interest. I lived in a neighborhood just a few houses down from where judge Fisher used to live and at one point there was a break in at his house, I don't know whether they got into his house or just his garage, I can't remember, maybe his house, anyway so appearing at my door one evening were two FBI agents and so I asked them their business and they said well, we've been assigned to investigate the burglary in Judge Fisher's house around the corner and I'd just like to ask a few questions, have you seen anybody suspicious or anything like that and so I said 'really well the FBI is investigating a simple house burglary, how unusual isn't that a state matter.' The answer was 'judge Fisher has asked us to assist and so the federal government is now on the case,' and FBI agents are all over Old Collwood going door to door cause judge Fisher had asked them to but that's a little unusual but that's the sort of influence he had and that's the sort of impression he made upon people
CD: Did they find the burglar [laughs]
TH: I don't even remember that detail, this was probably…
CD: He didn't fare well am sure [Laughs]
TH: Oh no, you wouldn't have wanted to be in his situation but anyways that's just the way the courthouse was runned back in the day when judge Fisher was the chief judge and the only judge assigned here in the eastern district of Texas
CD: Do you think that over the years you've just told me some of it certainly about Judge Fisher, but the judges you have seen, have they mostly reflected the community's values?
TH: As I think I've mentioned in the school desegregation case judge Fisher was from the old east Texas school…
CD: How would you define that?
TH: Ok, what I mean by that, he grew up in Bland Lake which is a tiny little hamlet just north of San Augustine and he was born and raised there then went to school at the University of Texas and well he was an experienced man of the world but he retained in many ways the attitude of I'll say benevolent paternalism that probably prevailed in that southern community, he died at 90 and so he was you know a child of his times, I don't know a better way to put it than that, I would refer you for further study to an article in Texas monthly magazine and I cannot give you the date although I'm gonna say it was probably in the late 70s but that's just a guess, it would have been sometime after 1970, but judge Fisher permitted a reporter for Texas monthly to interview him on a wide range of subjects but in particular about the local school districts integration case and although judge Fisher knew that the fella was a reporter and he was there from Texas monthly the judge let his guard down and spoke very candidly to the man his name by the way is Geoff Winningham if you were to Google it under his name, he is a professor at Rice, and also sometimes a journalist, anyway and as a consequence when the article came out Judge Fisher was pretty unhappy about the candor that appeared in the article and I will leave it with your own good researches to come up with exactly what it was judge said to the reporter that he probably would rather not have said but that would give you some flavor of his deep east Texas roots and how the public school district here basically went about twelve years after most other districts were integrated with only token integration, in fact it was only after Judge Parker took the case in 1983, I think that we had anything here that really resembled the sort of student and faculty integration that the supreme court in Brown and later in McLeod Burge and the other cases had intended. So I'm rambling again
CD: That's a good thing.
TH: Have you been told of Judge Fisher's funeral, is that of interest
CD: It's of interest, everything is of interest…
TH: Well as I mention he was 90 when he died and he was working full-time with a staff and a courtroom until just weeks before his death, he was diagnosed with cancer and he went very quickly at 90, but he was a vigorous man, and active and his mind was clear and he was decisive until just a few weeks before he passed away,
CD: That's amazing
TH: Hi funeral was one of the, was undoubtedly the most extraordinary I've ever attended certainly in this town, it was in the Methodist church downtown here, which has a huge auditorium it was jammed standing room only, I want to say it lasted about an hour and a half or longer it began with a full military color guard with flags sweeping down, no marching down very slowly down the center aisle, appellate judges, distinguished friends, family members gave eulogy after eulogy to this remarkable man and as I say it lasted not two hours but it was a good hour and thirty or forty minutes and it just the most extraordinary funeral I've ever seen, I mean this is how wide a spread his influence was not just on lawyers and people who had business with the court but on everybody. And now I'll tell you a little funny story about judge fisher, and he had a sense of humor and this will illustrate it, I mentioned earlier my father was the editor of the newspaper we have something in Beaumont called the Neches river festival in the spring, have you heard of this?
CD: Oh yes
TH: Ok. A man named Tom Swope had been chosen king of the Neches river festival a year prior; the following year judge fisher was chosen king of the Neches river festival, and Tom Swope and my dad at the newspaper got together and they dummied up a Beaumont enterprise the morning paper, it was the regular newspaper that would hit the streets that morning except the headlines say Swope named King Again and they took this single issue of it very early in the morning and put it on judge Fisher's doorstep so when he came out I his pajamas and robe to pick up his paper 5:30 in the morning expecting to see his name on page 1 and a big fine picture of him in his king suit, the headline says 'Swope named king again,' [Laughs], as I said he got a great sense of humor and so he immediately knew who the culprits are and would call Swope and my dad and they had a lot of fun about it, but that just an amusing anecdote that I remember about him. Gosh, let see…
CD: In your career, well I guess doing the type of law you do that the integration case you would consider quite significant I mean obviously but there other cases that you've worked on in the area that…
TH: Yes I have, that particular case because it affected everybody in town and cause major turmoil when it was file, for example it was filed in august of 1970 by the Department of Justice and within just weeks after that, one whole neighborhood of the town was deserted lower middle class white families who lived in this particular neighborhood that was located near the all-black high school knew that if anybody was going to be integrated it would be that neighborhood because it was so close and so I'm talking about a 12 twelve block area, for sale signs were everywhere, people were moving north going into the surrounding counties where the school districts were not integrated or don't have any African-American students and so this one neighborhood had just transformed overnight which I found startling and interesting but because of the broad impact, because of course the black community was up in arms as it turns out the very little bit of integration that judge Fisher did order only affected the people who lived in that little neighborhood near the black school, the white people who live there, and then one small pocket of black children in the fifth grade only were bused across town to deep wested Beaumont quite an enclave out there, those black families while they supported integration generally opposed that moved because they were singled out and had to get up at 5 0' clock in the morning and ride a bus across town
CD: Why just the fifth grade?
TH: It was a tow in the water sort of token beginning and the idea was that eventually it would evolve and more and more children would go but no white children came from the affluent west end into the Pear Orchard which is the black community it was a one-way bus ride and so the black families bitterly opposed it
CD: They didn't want to do it either?
TH: No, they didn't want to be the only ones going they wanted to see cross-town, full on student desegregation, and that not what the initial court had ordered in the justice department appealed it they got some results we were back and forth as I said in court from 1970 to 1983 before the case was assigned to judge Parker when judge Fisher finally recused himself, and then we were integrated in six weeks, he did a very interesting thing he said 'now the only fair way to decide who goes, who remains in their neighborhood school and who is transferred across town is by lottery, by random selection because some people have to stay over there and we only have a certain amount of space in each school, in each part of town, some people have to stay over there and some people but some people have to go,' and this was true in the black community as well, so he conducted a lottery using ping pong balls, I mean it looked like a game show he had a great big drum with colored balls in there and people would go by pick out a ball and it would say so and so…
CD: so every what parent picked it out?
TH: Yes, right, right, exactly, and national news picked it up…
CD: so if they had three children they would pick up three?
TH: No it was one per family and so if you had a family with several children then that family all did the same thing, you didn't pick, cause obviously carpool…
CD: Yeah obviously because you could have kids going to three different schools, and…
TH: At different parts of town, and so you know to avoid that kind of carpool chaos or bus riding chaos then you choose per family and you were assigned to a school zone which would have an elementary school in it, a middle school in it, and a high school in it, so whatever ping pong ball you drew that was a comprehensive school assignment for all the kids in your family, but as a result kids who lived next door might be going all over to different towns because it was random purely random, so it was not done by neighborhood but just by family and as I mentioned national news picked this up they sent cameras down here all of us who were involved in it were on TV national, the ping pong ball was a novel creative way to get the job done some people criticized judge Parker for the method, I thought it was brilliant.
CD: What else could a person do really?
TH: Right and nothing could have been fairer, everybody was involved everybody had the same chance to stay in their neighborhood or not, and so surprisingly after the initial shock and reaction people went along with it because it did make logical sense, so anyways that was an interesting way to get at the problem and to solve it quickly and fairly for everyone, and really once that plan was in place we have had virtually no unrest among students of different races in our schools, once it was in place it worked, here an anecdote from the judge Parker trial 1983 that you might find interesting judge parker had a courtroom full of people every day during the trail the lawyer by this time we have local involvement, in the beginning in 1970 when desegregation case was filed only the department of Justice was plaintiff the government brought the suit against the school district as time passed we began to get local plaintiffs, we got a group from the west end of Beaumont who wanted no change represented by Joe Thornhill, famous lawyer who represented Jack Rubin, and judge Fisher former law partner by the way before judge Fisher came on the bench, Joe Thornhill represented the west end, Elmo Willard an outstanding black lawyer here represented black families in the case and so when they filed the case before judge parker the courtroom was packed of course it was front page news everyday because everybody who cared about the system had a vested interest into how it was going to come out, so Elmo Willard in his closing argument, and he was my dear, dear friend, as it happened on that day our wives Elmo's wife and mine who were very good friends they came in court to hear us give our closing arguments in the afternoon before judge parker, so the four of us had lunch together that day, arguments were supposed to start that afternoon, and I said Willard what you gonna say and he said wait and see he wouldn't tell me, so he began his closing argument by quoting a song from the movie south pacific, form the Broadway play, and then the movie south pacific about racial disharmony and it's called 'you've got to be carefully taught' and he did this without notes he just walked up and down in front of the bench and recited this song, he didn't sing it he just recited it you remember south pacific
CD: It's been a while, but I've seen it several times
TH: right the song is great and it all about mixed race and Polynesia, and the point is if you leave the children alone they will sort it out and that was his theme, the people in the courtroom who opposed desegregation are adults, if you leave the children alone they will sort it out, and there's a line in there before you were 6 or 7 or 8 you got to be carefully taught to be prejudice
CD: That probably got everybody for sure; it was probably just a totally quiet courthouse
TH: Awe, just this collective sound, I taught judge parker was gonna break up I was gonna break up because it was just emotional because it was from the heart, it was completely from the heart and
CD: and so true
TH: and so this black lawyer who had suffered discrimination in his life, that his family had, and yet become a successful lawyer, he's deceased now, but am anyway so judge Parker recessed after the closing argument and then came back in a little while and announced his decision and that was to comprehensively desegregate faculty and staff, well a lady there who had been there every day of the trial an African American lady named Marie Bullard no not Bullard, I'm sorry anyway I'll think, its important because I thinks she's still alive; a large African American lady in an electric blue dress big floral hat on and most of the African American people who came to the trail everyday were elderly in suits and ties, you know dressed to the nines and they came early to get a sit, because they were the ones who attended all black schools as children, they knew prejudice better than anybody else more than young people because they've always known it in their lifetime so they had vested interest, anyway so in the end when judge parker announced his decision, this lady Marie I want to say Bullard but that's not quite right stood up in the back of the courthouse, in the federal courthouse, w e got marshalls and bailiffs and the courtroom is packed, she stands up after judge Parker announces his decision and says praise the lord we have found a messiah and it is judge Robert Parker, and he just went crimson on the bench [Laughs] this distinguished judge I mean he just went crimson and you know he smiled of course couldn't say anything you know, she was so out of order to stand up in the middle of a federal court proceedings in a room full of people [Laughs] but it was just magnificent
CD: And he said nothing?
TH: He said nothing, what are you gonna say, what are gonna say?
CD: what is left to say….
TH: But he, he made an impression on him you should ask him about it, you were going to interview him for this, you should ask him about that, Marie Hubbard and she had been a lady who had come to school board meetings for years and for a while she came to every school board meeting and usually it was to praise people to thank people for something, some teacher had done something for a kid, she was never an angry militant person, but she felt this prejudice and appreciated what just Parker has done .
CD: it's a magnificent story
TH: And everybody went just Yes!! They didn't cheer exactly but it sort of a collective Amen throughout the crowded courtroom when she stood up and said that, just extraordinary, but anyway
CD: You have had some marvelous experiences.
TH: Well that, that as something, anyway let's see if can think of anything else that might be special or of interest. I don't know whether you have the name Robert Robertson in your file
CD: I don't believe so
TH: Well Robert Robertson is an historian here in Beaumont, and he has written a book about US district judge Lamar Cecil who was judge Fisher's predecessor and that book will be published by Texas A&M press this October, but Robertson has done an enormous amount of research and to prepare himself for the book on Judge Cecil in particular, Judge Cecil's rulings in civil rights cases because Judge Cecil he had died before I was licensed, he was a friend of my father's and I did know the family, but you should talk to Robert J. Robertson, and the way to contact him is to call him in his office, J. S, Edwards and Sherlock is his company, they're in the book and tell him that I suggested you talk to him about Lamer Cecil, Judge Cecil because he'll know everything there is to know about Cecil like nobody else would…
CD: Let's see if he is on the list…
TH: He not a lawyer by the way he is an historian but…
CD: he is not; I didn't think the name was familiar
TH: But he's someone that would be very good for the Cecil's questions, and another name, I bet you got this fellla's name, its Bob Keith
CD: Is he here in Beaumont?
TH: he was but he's now living out in the Hill country, but Robert Q. Keith
CD: So he's in the Austin area?
TH: Yeah, actually Johnson city and his ranch is at Round Mountain Texas, Robert Q. Keith and he practiced in the federal court he is a little older than I am during all this period his father who was also a judge but not a federal judge he was a state appellate judge and Lamar Cecil were law partners and he has a wonderful store of anecdotes about judge Fisher, and Judge Parker and Judge Cecil and he would definitely be a good lawyer to talk to, and he comes to Beaumont from time to time anyway so you'd probably catch him when his down here, but I'm sorry I don't have numbers but…
CD: that's Ok, and it's Keith?
TH: Yeah K-E-I-T-H, Johnson City Texas or Round Mountain which is just a hamlet outside of Johnson City. I'll tell you a Bob Keith story about federal court and you can get him to confirm it cause he told it to me, he took a school district case to the fifth circuit court in new Orleans appealing a decision by judge Fisher and in his case after he had made his argument to the fifth circuit the presiding judge on the appellate court said Mr. Keith did you drive over from Beaumont or did you fly and Keith said well I drove your honor why you asking. He said well since your drove our order denying your motion will probably beat you back to town, this is Keith's story check and confirm with him [Laughs] I don't know it could be my own personal opinion, but when I went to New Orleans to argue one of the several Beaumont school district cases it was called South Park then we used to have two here and then later they were combined, but anyways in the early days it was called south park, and Joe Thornhill I mentioned who had been judge Fisher's law partner up in Jasper was representing the white west end Beaumont families and then justice department fellow was there and so after we argued it was on towards lunch time Thornhill argued, I argued, the department of justice fellow argued, one of the judges in his robes on the three judge panel called to Mr. Thornhill and said Joe lets go have some lunch, are you free for lunch, and the expression on the department of justice lawyer's face at that moment was priceless because he just finished pouring his heart out for his argument to the government and then his opponent, one of his opponent gets invited to lunch with one of the judges [Laughs], and I'll tell you who that guy was he used to be governor of Mississippi before he became a federal appellate judge on the fifth circuit, he and Thornhill had been friends from some place, and so they were going to get together for lunch, but that was an amusing sidebar, Ross Barnett that was his name he was governor of Mississippi one time, very segregationist government by the way…
CD: As most were
TH: Of course if you want to get elected in Mississippi that's was gonna be the deal
CD: Yeah Mississippi, Alabama…
TH: Indeed. Oh my goodness let me see, do you have any questions there you want to?
CD: Well I think you have given us pretty much what we were looking for it's just been excellent and we truly, truly appreciate it
TH: Thank you. And I've tried cases before judge Schell Judge Cobb, Judge Schell has gone back up as you probably know he was the chief judge here for many years and now he's gone back up to his home area near Plano, Judge Cobb has been an old friend of mine for many years before he went on the bench and I've had several cases in his court. I do not have any information about Judge Crone, or Judge Clark, they're both quite new and I haven't had a case in either court.
CD: But what about Cobb, I can see his photograph now.
TH: Sure, indeed, well he's on the bench now as you know and still is and am gonna have to say that of all the judges that I've practiced before in the federal court he's the smartest, he's just brilliant and so well read.
CD: On the law or on everything?
TH: He's an extremely scholarly judge, but he's just well read in general and his ancestry is interesting because he's like Howell Cobb number six or something, and Howell Cobb the number something else was a general in the civil war, he was speaker of the house of representatives in the US congress and left to go back to fight for the south, and antecedents after that were judges and so forth, all from Georgia he came down to Texas after he got out of the army, but, so he's got that southern heritage and yet his rulings are extremely liberal in matters of civil rights and civil liberties, but he is and these other guys are smart guys, Bob Parker particularly is a brilliant, but Judge Howell Cobb is clearly I think the most brilliant jurist who has sat in this courthouse in my lifetime, he knows your file better than you do I was just with a case about two months ago in his court that lasted five weeks it was a superfund cleanup case.
CD: That's interesting.
TH: There was a dirty dump over here, an outlaw dump over at liberty county and so I won't go into the details of it but long story short, you had about twelve companies in the court room talking about who was dirtier than whom, who had dumped toxic waste more often than the other in this particular site and it was really complicated by all the different parties and the different times and it all happened thirty-five years ago and yet he had a grasp, judge Cobb had a grasp of the cases, of the facts in the case and the law better than any lawyer in the courtroom, I mean he knew our file…
CD: So he would know the law from thirty years ago and then everything that would be…
TH: well the facts occurred, the dumping occurred in the early 70's, but it just took this long for it to evolve into a lawsuit in his court, but he had all of that history at his fingertips and well as the current federal appellate decisions that applied to superfund cases, and when you practice law in a court where the judge knows more about your file than you do that's intimidating but it's also exhilarating because the guy is paying attention to what you say and absorbing it and understanding it so that's great fun, and that's the kind of judge he is and I'm glad that he still on the bench and feels healthy now and is able to work fulltime. Judge Schell probably carries a reputation of having been consistently the most courteous, he's a very smart judge and a very hardworking judge he was chief judge here for about fifteen years before he went to Plano, but he simply never lost his temper never became annoyed no matter how irritating the witness was, no matter how aggressive the lawyer was, he always retained his composure and continued to treat everybody who came into his courtroom with total respect even if they were a complete fool, he didn't show, people who came into his courthouse to have their lawsuit adjudicated or to have their right wronged always came in thinking that's what a judge is suppose to be so openly welcoming and thoughtful, and he like others I mentioned very well prepared always but Judge Schell stands out as being perhaps the most patient and the most courteous judge, never wasted lawyers time always prepared ready to do business but he never injected himself into the case which often judges will do they'll become involved in the case they'll get interested they'll sort of try to take over the case from the lawyers it's a natural tendency judge Schell never did that, he always let you try your lawsuit within the rules but he such a courtly courteous, fair minded man, wonderful judge, judge Schell.
CD: I that what you prefer as a litigator?
TH: Ideally, everybody wants to go in there and know that the playing field is leveled, and with judge Schell there's never a moment doubt about that , I mean I have no idea what kind of law he practiced before he became a judge, you certainly cannot tell from his rulings whether he had been defense oriented or plaintiff oriented lawyer, I don't even know, he was just that, and he was a conservative republican appointee and yet that never showed through you never got any sense of his political leanings in his decisions or in his demeanor in his courthouse.
CD: And that's what we wanted
TH: Oh yeah, he's a dream, he's a dream judge, he was great. Now we have a judge who's been on the bench five or six, seven years now who is also excellent and that's Thad Heartfield, I can't say enough about Thad. Thad is a bright hardworking fair-minded judge, and probably stands out most among other judges in that he has not been affected in the slightest by this glorious lifetime appointment, he's exactly the sort of guy he was before he put those robes, and you really can't say that about everybody because all of a sudden people that passed you on the street and said hi are now differential to you because they got something, it doesn't make a difference with Heartfield he gonna be just the sort of guy, and he is very unassuming sort of fellow with no ego at work, low key and he's exactly the way he was I think that's the important thing, I think that's the important thing, the point am trying to make he's exactly the way he was before he went on the bench. I heard a guy say one time he'd knew a lawyer who had became a federal judge, he said 'well they're not gonna have to send him to arrogant school he came on board with that attribute,' but nobody's gonna say that about Heartfield because he wasn't arrogant before and he is not now, so he's a delight for that reason because he just so humble, I guess is the best way to put it, self effacing sort of guy so we're very fortunate. And I've heard good things about Judge Crone and Judge Clark I know them socially but I haven't a case to practice in their court.
CD: Well you have had wonderful experiences
TH: well it's been a fun place to practice law, it really has been and you'll be talking to lots of guys who have tried more lawsuits than over here than I have, mine have been a rather narrowly focused area of practice
CD: Well that's what beneficial here to have that instead of all the different types with yours being civil rights oriented…
TH: and school district personnel sort of things, but anyway it's been fun, but I can't think of anything else to say unless you have some questions.
CD: And you're still doing it.
TH: Oh yeah, oh yeah I love to do it.
CD: Well so far no one wants to retire people like to just…
TH: Yeah, I don't want to talk about myself, but I really don't have a lot of outside interests and I'm not sure even what I would do on the first day of retirement much less on the days that follow, I'm gonna have to get some interest if I ever get out of the law business.
CD: Because law is your life.
TH: It's just what I seem to spend all my time doing…
CD: And did you always want to be a lawyer
TH: Yeah, yeah, I kind of wanted to be a newspaper man like my dad and my uncle, my dad kind of discouraged me, he said unless you're gonna own the newspaper you're gonna be working for somebody else, put yourself in a position to work for yourself and so I had friends whose dad were lawyers. Bob Keith this fella I mentioned to you his father was a lawyer and later a judge I was in their house a lot a s a kid, and it would be great to be like Quinton Keith, be a lawyer, and the other friend, his father was very prominent here they lived very well, so I thought boy I'd like to be a lawyer and live like Hill stone, amma practice law like Quinton Keith and live like Hill stone.
CD: and so you've done it
TH: I don't know, I would never be anything like the lawyer like Quinton Keith was and I probably won't ever live as well as Hill Stone did but anyways those were my reasons for getting into the business so it's been fun
CD: Unless there's anything else you can think of you have been an excellent interview, appreciate it
TH: And if after you transcribe it and get some holes well call me back
CD: ok. I definitely will, and I will tell Dr. McDonald hello
TH: Please do and call Bob Keith and Robert Robertson, Robert as I say is here and he'll be real good on Cecil and Bob Keith would be good on all these people cause he's in court a whole lot more than I am and he by way is interesting because the state bar of Texas recently I mean within the last three years initiated an award called something like 'the best trial lawyer in Texas' award and Keith got it, the first time, he was the first recipient on it and for a guy who's been practicing in Johnson city for the last 25 years that's pretty extraordinary.
CD: What kind of law does he practice?
TH: He's just a general trial lawyer, no criminal, but any other kind of civil cases he tries them all and that's how good he is and how well regarded he is by his peers, you know they could have gotten somebody from Houston or Dallas but they reached into Johnson city and got this guy, so he'll be fun for you to talk to, he'll have a million stories
CD: Well we'll appreciate it; I know Dr. Barringer will appreciate that.
TH: Ok. Cynthia well thanks a lot, it was fun.
CD: Thank you very, very much…
CD: Good luck to you, bye, bye.
TH: Bye End of Interview