Eugene K. Pettis: first African-American president of the Florida Bar.

• Author: Pudlow, Jan
• Position: Cover story - Interview

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When Eugene Pettis was a little boy, a speech impediment smacked a "K" sound at the start of every word. Neighbors would tell the other Pettis kids: "Go get your brother," because they wanted to hear Eugene talk for comical entertainment.

Lifelong friend and neighbor Lockey Anderson remembers Eugene called her "Kockey"; her dad Joe, "Koe"; and her mother Shirley, "Kirley."

They laughed, and little Eugene laughed with them.

But his first-grade teacher wasn't laughing. When school officials said Eugene had to wait until the second grade to receive speech therapy, his first-grade teacher insisted: "No, he's getting help this year."

Not only did Eugene get into the speech program as a first-grader, he can still remember the green and beige books his mother would lecture him on every night at the dining room table, pronouncing word after word until that "K" sound vanished.

"The neighbors still remember it as if it were yesterday. And now I make a living talking," Pettis said laughing. "Who would have thought that?"

Years later, after building a reputation as a successful civil trial lawyer, commanding the attention of jurors with his deep, sonorous voice, Pettis invited that first-grade teacher, along with his kindergarten teacher, high school basketball coach, and a few other special mentors to his home just to say thanks.

"Life had turned out pretty good for me, and I could look back with clarity and see that those six people, along with many others, had a hand in that," Pettis said. "While I was blessed with a great family, I've also been blessed with an even greater community of people."

Now the 52-year-old, co-founding partner at Haliczer, Pettis & Schwamm in Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando becomes The Florida Bar's first African-American president. He credits God and his strong mother for giving him the confidence at an early age to know he could be whatever he chose to be.

From basketball captain at Stranahan High in Ft. Lauderdale, to Black Student Union president and treasurer of the entire student government at the University of Florida, to launching his own law firm, Pettis tempers his achievements with a humble gratefulness that he didn't get there alone.

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His focus as Bar president is to offer the promise of inclusion to lawyers willing to meet him halfway by asking to be involved, and to help build leadership skills in those who have, until now, sat on the sidelines.

"I've been who I am for a long time, and that is a person who thinks we owe it to society to be engaged," Pettis said. "We owe it to do whatever we can to make the world better. And I don't think I've ever had an occasion or a platform that is as respected and coveted as the Bar presidency to try to enhance our professional canon of doing public good."

Gene's Time to Step Up

Pettis is quick to say he may be the Bar's first African-American president, but he's not the first one qualified for this milestone.

"I'm humbled, because clearly there were men and women who have come before me who are as capable or more capable to do the task," Pettis said. "But the opportunities were not there, for whatever reason. The centers of power were not open to them."

The significance of his historic presidency was captured when Pettis gave a speech in Atlantic Beach last year. A young African-American mother came up to congratulate Pettis on being president-elect and said she showed an article about Pettis to her seven-year-old son, telling him: "See, you can be anything you want to be."

Chris Mobley, Pettis' white neighbor, golf buddy, fellow Gator fan, and publisher of the Daily Business Review, said: "Anybody who thinks Gene will use this platform solely for the advancement of African-Americans in the legal community couldn't be more wrong.

"Gene is beyond ethnicity and race. He certainly is keenly aware of it. He has lived it. But it does not limit his scope of inclusion in his everyday life. Gene is about all the people."

In line to become the Bar's first African-American president was Henry Latimer, a respected Broward County lawyer, former judge, and Bar Board of Governors member tragically killed in a one-car accident on January 24, 2005.

"I was close to Henry Latimer. After his death, I realized we had no minority representative from this circuit," recalled 17th Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes.

"The first and only person who came to mind was Eugene Pettis. I called him up and told him he had to run for Henry's Board of Governors seat. I said, 'Don't make me get the application and fill it out. I'll make up stuff.'"

Pettis laughed, put his name in the running, won that seat in 2005, ran unopposed for the Bar presidency in December 2011, and the rest is history.

"This is the time for Gene to step up and show true leadership," Judge Holmes said. "I had hoped it would have been Henry. I always say God needed Henry in the court of justice in heaven. He's looking down on us, and I know Henry would be proud of Gene coming in as Bar president."

Some would ask why it's important to have an African-American president of the Bar in 2013, Judge Holmes acknowledged.

"I'm a black female," she answered. "We bring to the conversation a different perspective. We can articulate the struggles and problems and hurdles and concerns that perhaps the others cannot articulate as plainly. Gene brings that. He didn't grow up rich with a silver spoon in his mouth."

The Draw of the Home Place

Eugene Pettis was the youngest of seven children of Sara and Cyrus Pettis, who raised their big family in northwest Ft. Lauderdale, where they lived since 1947.

"We lived in Black Town and the others lived on the other side of the tracks in White Town. You'd better be in Black Town at night. And that was not that long ago," described Eugene Pettis' 65-year-old sister, Dr. Lydia Patton.

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She now recruits students internationally for the Illinois Institute of Technology, and comes back to the family home whenever she visits Ft. Lauderdale.

Even after all the children moved away and their parents passed away, the Pettis family home is filled with so many loving memories, it's too precious to sell.

"There's not a place on earth that has as much love and comfort as 824 N.W. 17th Avenue," said Patton.

"Not many people can sleep in the same bed they slept in when they were two and three years old. On Gene's bedroom door, the little sticker he got when he went to the fair--a little truck that says 'Gene's Room'--is still on the door. Every plaque, every award, everything we have is still in that house. It's almost like a museum," Patton said.

All the children gathered at the family home in February, on the first anniversary of their mother's death at age 90 in 2012.

"It was a true testament to the love of family that Mom had instilled in us," Eugene Pettis said. "Even though she's gone, we still feel that draw back to the home place, and laughing and celebrating her life and our family, even in her absence."

Father Cyrus Pettis, who died in 2004, was a quiet, solid provider, and worked for more than two decades as a waiter at Polly Davis Cafeteria, before working another 28 years at the post office until he retired at 70.

"He would come home and empty his waiter's deep pockets on the dining room table," remembered Eugene Pettis. "We just loved to count his tips. On a good day, he would get $25 or $30 in tips."

Mother Sara Louise Jones Pettis worked as a maid for the rich folks living on the beach before becoming a teacher's aide. Serving as Parent-Teacher Association president of Dillard High School, the school for black kids during segregation, she was instrumental in raising money in 1959 to build a large gymnasium that holds thousands. Sara volunteered at local schools, churches, and charitable groups.

Congressman Alcee Hastings commemorated Sara Pettis on the House floor on February 29, 2012, shortly after her death. Years earlier in 1985, through the Urban League of Broward County, Hastings nominated the Pettises for special recognition from then-First Lady Nancy Reagan as a "Great American Family."

Brother Cyrus "Bubba" Pettis, a dentist, remembered feeling like celebrities as more than two dozen members of the Pettis family were zipped around Washington, D.C., in limousines and took center stage under glittering chandeliers at the White House.

"It was a great honor. I was most proud for my mom and dad. They were the ones who made sacrifices for us to achieve," Cyrus Pettis said. "My dad, who at that time was working for the post office, when we left the White House we went to the postmaster general's office. My dad was just tickled to death to be recognized by the postmaster general."

Describing his parents' 63 years of marriage, Cyrus Pettis said: "She was his strength, and he was her strength. Through difficult times, they didn't let anything break the love they had for each other....

"We were blessed with a wonderful mother who taught us values that never go out of style, sound values I taught my children and now they are teaching their kids: How to treat people. How to respect our people. How not to be ashamed of who you are. And don't let anyone tell you you can't do things."

Sara Pettis was the family's strong church-going disciplinarian.

Talking back to Mom or calling his sisters names meant a whipping.

"Mom would literally make you go get the switch off the cherry bush. If you got too small a twig, she would go out and get something bigger. You were caught between the dilemma of what size do I get? Do I get the size that's going to bring me great harm or do I get the size that I hope suffices for her?" Eugene Pettis said, grinning at how many spankings he suffered growing up.

"But then, man, when I got older those little cherry bushes did not do anything. I remember she had a palmetto bush, with those sharp edges. She would put them in the hallway on a cabinet as a reminder to me not to get out of line."

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