Charles T. Wells: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida.

• Author: Blankenship, Gary

A basketball sharpshooter keeps his eyes on the goal of an efficient, humane court system

If you close your eyes and listen to the cadence, not the content, of Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles T. Wells' words, you might be fooled. The pace is relaxed and easygoing, with some words drawn out.

But if you listen to the words, the illusion is gone. Wells does not waste words; he cuts to the core of a legal issue like a laser through an apple.

The eyes really give him away. If it is during an oral argument, his gray eyes are sharp, boring in as he asks an attorney a question. If it is in casual conversation, they are likely to be merry and lively, ready to crinkle into a laugh. Especially if he is in his office, surrounded by orange and blue memorabilia and mini mascots of his beloved University of Florida Gators.

Perhaps it helps to know Wells was the point guard--and captain--on his high school basketball team. The point guard is the player charged with bringing the ball up the court and analyzing the defense, not missing anything but also not wasting any time. Then the point guard makes the pass or play that gets the offense rolling.

SEE IT ALL and get the job done. Be spontaneous, innovative, competitive. And professional.

Longtime associates and friends of Chief Justice Wells say Florida's lawyers and citizens can expect that in the next two years as he leads the Florida court system.

"Charley is one of the most creative legal minds I have ever met," said Fifth District Court of Appeal Judge Jacqueline Griffin, who worked as an associate with the future chief in the late 1970s. "He can look at a legal issue almost as if he's floating in space looking down on it. He sees it from all sides. If he sees any point of entry, he hones in on it. It's amazing how often his insight proves to be accurate and proves to be the solution."

"Charley is one of the most gifted legal minds I have encountered in my career and I like very much that kind of intelligence being in the justice system," said wife Linda Wells, herself a successful commercial litigator who now volunteers with a legal aid agency. "He's very succinct and he's very well organized. He's possibly the best organized person I know, except for our daughter Ashley. He always has things very organized. He doesn't waste time, but he does know how to have fun."

Or as Pam Blackwell, his assistant, puts it, "He's the easiest going Type A person I've ever known. When Justice Wells is here, he's in his office with door closed, working. There's not a whole lot that's worth interrupting him for. He goes in there and closes that door and works incredibly hard."

CHARLES TALLEY WELLS was born March 4, 1939, in Orlando, and law would seem to be in his blood.

One hundred years before Wells became chief justice, his grandfather, Joel Wells, was named as a county judge in Washington County. He retired from the bench in 1909 and moved to Panama City to practice law. That was a fortuitous move, because it was in Panama City where Wells' father, Joel, Jr., met his mother, Julia Talley, daughter of a circuit-riding Methodist minister.

In 1922, his father enrolled at the University of Florida, where he went to law school and eventually landed a job as a legal stenographer with Harry Voorhis and Raymer Maguire. In 1926, the senior Wells moved to Miami to practice law, and returned to Orlando in 1929, linking up again with Voorhis and Maguire. They eventually became the firm of Maguire, Voorhis, and Wells.

"From a young age, he was always a leader: student body president, captain of the sports team," said Second Circuit Judge L. Ralph Smith, who met the future Chief Justice in Little League and has been a lifelong friend. "Really, truly, we thought he was going to be Governor."

At William R. Boone High School in Orlando, Wells served as an officer on the student council every year he was there, and played several sports, including being captain of the basketball team. Playing basketball has remained a lifelong passion, although he stopped playing in a Tallahassee lunchtime league, on doctor's orders, about a year ago. ("I told him [the doctor] if you're not going to let me dunk the ball anymore, then I'm not going to play," he recalled with a laugh.)

When it came time for college, there was never really a question of where.

"Of course, I was a Gator by birth. My father had been to the University of Florida and my brother went to the University of Florida and I had grown up going to the University of Florida football games from the time I was six in 1945 -- right after the war when you could buy some gasoline," Wells said. "I really never had any other university much in mind."

At college, Wells was a political science major again active in student government and other activities, including becoming president of Florida Blue Key, although he eased up on athletics to concentrate on academics. He also became acquainted with Linda Fischer, although they never dated. Like him, she was active in a variety of campus activities.

HE GRADUATED in 1961 and entered the U.S. Army Reserve on a program that allowed six months of active service and then five and a half years of reserve status. Uncle Sam had other plans, however. When the Berlin Wall crisis erupted, Wells was kept on active duty and sent to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, serving more than a year and delaying his entry into law school.

As for the decision to become a lawyer, Wells said it really was not much of a struggle.

"I was interested in government and I always had been around the law when I was growing up. It was something I felt was my natural interest," he said. "My brother [Joel III, 10 years his senior] by that time had been practicing for about 10 years."

"The image of Charley I have in law school is that he was a very good student, but he was also very interested in politics," said Fourth DCA Judge Larry Klein. "We all thought he would be Governor some day."

"He was just like he is now, just less gray and wrinkled," said Vero Beach attorney George Moss, another college classmate who also served on the Bar Board of Governors with Wells. "He's always been a great leader and a great laugher. He's got a great sense of humor."

But it was wise not to take the easygoing exterior as the complete Wells, he said, adding. "Student politics at UF was fairly vicious, like regular politics. Charley wasn't vicious, but he knew how to take care of himself."

He graduated from law school in 1965, and was one of the top three scorers on the bar exam that year. Wells went to work for Maguire, Voorhis & Wells, the fifth family member to join the firm, after his father, brother, uncle (Maxwell, Sr.), and cousin (Maxwell, Jr.).

Wells did mostly insurance defense trial work, and his interest in government and civic activities remained. That led him in 1969 to take a position with the U.S. Justice Department as a trial attorney in its tort claims section -- a move than changed his life in more ways than one.

"I was mainly interested in moving to Washington," Wells recalled. "I was interested again in governmental matters. I thought trying to work at the Justice Department would be a way to live in Washington.

"It was a city that was a great place for a young professional to live. It had all of its problems of the late 60s in that there was a lot of racial tension. But it was also just a beautiful place. There was a lot going on for young professionals."

The future chief justice may have gone there for professional reasons, but it was his personal life that reaped the biggest benefit.

A mutual UF friend of his and Linda Fischer's was teaching at the George Washington law school where Linda, then working a federal job, was taking night classes. By that time, both had been married and divorced, without children. "I was in contact with the mutual friend who said, `You should call Linda because you two are a perfect match.' I said, `I'm not interested in that right now.' But I did call," Wells said.

LINDA, who was born in Key West and raised in Clearwater, had been in Washington since the middle of 1963, first at the Census Bureau and then the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, working on gathering criminal justice statistics. Like her husband, her undergraduate degree was in political science. But after several years in government jobs, "I decided I would like to do something where I was involved with clients, so I went to George Washington University law school in their night program," she said. And, of course, there were many UF people in Washington.

"I was already part of a Gator crowd," she said...