Alan B. Bookman: president of The Florida Bar: "intelligent, hardworking with a good and friendly spirit".

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

When Alan Bookman and Connie Reeves were dating, the licensed clinical social worker couldn't resist giving her fiance the lawyer premarital evaluations and personality tests. Why not? She was curious. He was a willing subject.

Astonishing were the results of the Myers-Briggs Personality Test.

Still incredulous, Connie recounts: "Man and I are the exact same personality type--down to the last characteristic. It could be either extreme or middle-of-the-road. And we were exactly the same: ENTJ. Extrovert. Intuitive. Thinking--versus feeling, so we go with our head versus our heart. We were kind of on the line there. We both have big hearts, I think. And then there's J, which means very orderly."

Connie calls it "confirmation" that she made the right decision to marry Bookman in January 2004.

The director of the Christian Counseling Center at Baptist Health Care in Pensacola, with a pair of sons from a first marriage, and the successful Jewish lawyer, with a pair of daughters from a first marriage, make a very compatible couple. She goes to synagogue with him on Friday nights. He joins her at Sunday morning services at the Methodist church. They give and take. They blend families. They both work hard and find time for each other. It's working out beautifully.

There is no test to predict who will make a great Florida Bar president. But 57-year-old Man Bart Bookman earns high marks from someone who knows firsthand what it takes to lead Florida's lawyers.

"Alan is very intelligent, hardworking, puts in long hours and has over the years. You know he is going to do a good job," says former Bar President Patrick Emmanuel, who at 85 still comes to the office to see clients, as he has since 1946.

"But he combines that with a very warm attitude with people. Man is very, very well-liked by clients and employees. He has a good and friendly spirit."

Emmanuel earned the presidency of the Bar the hard way in 1985-86 in a hotly contested race. He's glad Bookman did not have to go through that daunting task of selling yourself statewide when you're from Pensacola, and most of the lawyers are congested in South Florida. Instead, a grateful and relieved Bookman--a board certified real estate lawyer--was elected as the Bar's 57th president without opposition.

The main thing the 76,164 lawyers of Florida should know about Bookman, says Emmanuel, is that "he's dedicated to the cause of the Bar and the judiciary. He will also attempt to look out for the public in the right way, not being partisan about lawyers. He's very active in the community. He's dedicated to Bar work and working for the public and brings to that a great amount of energy. I I think he's going to make a great Bar president."

Loyal to the Law Firm

Emmanuel was one of three partners who hired young Bookman as the firm's 10th lawyer in 1975, right after he'd finished four years with the U.S. Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps as senior defense counsel and chief of military justice. Ever since Bookman joined Emmanuel, Sheppard and Condon, one of Pensacola's oldest law firms has been Bookman's professional home.

"This law firm has been very, very good to me. But I look at it more so as family," says Bookman, sitting in his "dirt lawyer's" office packed with building plans for the next big real estate deal--whether it's another shopping center or a 750-acre housing community with nature trails.

In 1991, when a neighbor called to say Bookman's house was ablaze, he rushed home to stand in his front yard watching firefighters at work.

"Twenty minutes later, here's about six of my partners and some of the associates, and they've come with a cooler full of sandwiches and a cooler full of beer and Cokes, a cell phone, and did whatever they could to help me," Bookman remembers.

"That's the kind of law firm this is. The lawyers are not my best friends, but they are my very close friends. They will absolutely take their shirt off their back for you, and I would do the same for them."

This law firm family was greatly tested January 24, 2005. At the offices in downtown Pensacola, Bill Meador, a 30-year-old associate just elected to the Bar's Young Lawyers Division Board of Governors, was shot and killed by his father-in-law, who then rammed a police patrol car with his SUV before shooting and killing himself.

Bookman stepped up to take a leadership role in helping the firm cope with the shocking tragedy that left Meador's wife, Ann, a lawyer pregnant with their first child, a widow and single mom.

"When it happened, obviously, everybody was stunned and terribly upset," Bookman says. "We called crisis counselors and we asked, 'What do we do? What do we do?' And they said, 'Open back up at noon the next day and let people grieve however they need to grieve.'"

The next afternoon, about 100 gathered in the lobby.

"We're all standing around and everybody is hugging and holding on to each other," Bookman recalls. "Lawyers were holding hands with paralegals, who were holding hands with secretaries, who were holding hands with runners. We really came together."

Partner Al Condon gave a moving speech about taking care of each other and allowing each other to do what they needed to get through the grieving process.

And Bookman invited everyone to his house that night "to laugh or cry or whatever."

Shane Rowe, an associate in the firm who'd invited the Meadors to live with him while their house was being built, says, "Alan is constantly checking with me on how Ann is doing. That is what a firm leader is all about."

In this large, prestigious firm family, Emmanuel is the low-key, lead-by-example patriarch who has served as Bookman's role model and mentor in how to be an ethical lawyer and respected leader. Bookman, his colleagues agree, has learned those lessons well.

Sir, yes, sir, Dad!

His father--Melvin I. Bookman--was a strong, no-nonsense head of the household, a World War II veteran who saw action in Patton's Third Army. Alan's father graduated from City College of New York, worked a brief stint as an FBI fingerprint examiner, and served a total of 36 years in active and reserve duty in New Orleans, retiring as a one star general in the U.S. Army.

Larry Rudman, Bookman's brother-in-law and a retired lawyer in New Orleans, describes his late father-in-law as "260 pounds, no neck, and all head and shoulders ... He was the dominant figure in the family. He commanded a unit that had a complement of 700 to 800 here and had we been activated, it would have been several thousand. He was a fine and well-respected officer."

Steve Harris, Bookman's grade school and college buddy who's known him 47 years growing up together in New Orleans, remembers Gen. Bookman as "a pretty gruff individual."

One day, he and Alan--better known then as "Butch"--were messing around at the Bookman home when the phone rang.

"Butch answered the phone, 'Yes sir.' And I said, 'Who the hell was that?'" Harris recounts. '"That was the Secretary of Defense,' Butch says, like he calls there every day. At that time, being young and naive, I wasn't as impressed as I should have been."

Bookman was raised in a much regimented fashion, knowing right from wrong, following orders, and realizing his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps.

"When I was in high school, I received a congressional appointment to West Point. I turned it down, because that's not what I wanted to do," Bookman says. "To be honest with you, my father and I had some rifts over that."

While the Vietnam War raged, Bookman was attending Tulane University, struggling to keep up in challenging engineering school, distracted by all New Orleans has to offer a young man, including the French Quarter.

"When I was growing up, you just worried about where you could get beer. Age was unimportant. It was height. If you were tall enough to get the money on the bar, you could drink," Bookman recalls with a laugh.

There were plenty of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity hijinks.

"I was just a typical college kid, at least what I thought was a typical college kid. I just played."

Playtime turned somber.

"We were all sitting around the TV at the fraternity house when they were drawing birthdays out of the hat," Bookman recalls.

His draft number was in the 40s.

"I looked around thinking, "What can I do?' My number was going to come up. My father was career Army. I called the service. I knew I was going to be going to the Army, but I wanted to finish my education."

On an ROTC scholarship in college, the Army officials...