Chesterfield Smith 1917-2003.

• Author: Pudlow, Jan
• Position: Obituary

In his best Southern drawl, with a hearty laugh that revealed the glint of gold teeth, Chesterfield Smith liked to say he was a "cracker from Arcadia and "just a country lawyer."

More like cracker with cosmopolitan connections who earned a countrywide reputation of being such a bold and visionary attorney that he was dubbed "America's Lawyer" and "the conscience of the legal profession."

He thought nothing of hobnobbing with the power-elite at Coral Gables' Riviera Country Club, while sitting near the golf course shelling a bushel of white-acre peas former ABA President Martha Barnett had selected from Tallahassee's Tomato Land and shipped to him on dry ice.

Giving a rousing speech about the independence of the judiciary at a chief justice's investiture at the Florida Supreme Court, he tossed in a homespun, "Dadgum that!"

Boosting the early career of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, he got away with greeting her in a crowded room in New York City as "Hey, Baby Doll!"

Both down-to-earth and dignified, folksy and famous, Smith had infectious charm that dazzled the influential upper echelon, yet he had the courage to speak his mind in a loud, booming voice when the powerful did wrong.

"I care about things. I have always wanted things to be better than they are," Smith said in a 1982 interview with The American Lawyer. "If the house is not neat, I want the house to be neat. If people are poor, I want them not to be poor. If the laws don't work, I like to change the law. I have never been satisfied with the status quo."

As Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead said shortly after his "dear friend and role model" died July 16 at the age of 85: "Chesterfield Smith was the quintessential American patriot and lawyer. He remains Florida's version of Atticus Finch standing firm for justice, who played out his life on a larger-than-life stage with real-world consequences."

Catapulted to national fame during his reign as president of the American Bar Association in 1973-74, it was Smith who changed the stodgy image of that group into a bold activist vehicle that brought the first public call to investigate President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Smith's straightforward rationale resonated when he declared at a news conference: "No man is above the law."

That famous statement, carried on the front pages of the nation's major newspapers, Anstead said, was "no political gesture, but a plea to save the bedrock of our constitutional system, the rule of law. Whether the issue was the rule of law, racial justice, or funding the courts, Chesterfield Smith never stood on the sidelines."

In his home state, Gov. Lawton Chiles and the Cabinet honored Smith in 1997 with the designation of "A Great Floridian." Long before then, Smith's reputation had spread nationwide.

While ABA president, Smith was among the 60 most influential Americans named by U.S. News & World Report, honored as fourth in the "law category" in the issue called "The Most Influential People in 12 Fields--As Ranked by Their Peers."

In 1975, Time magazine named Smith among 35 "non-candidates truly qualified to be president of the United States."

Thanks, but no thanks. Smith never aspired to hold public office.

His son, Chesterfield "Chet" Smith, Jr., senior assistant attorney general and chief of state programs litigation, said his dad was offered many opportunities for public office, but turned them down.

"He was urged to run for high and low office: governor, senator, president, you name it," Chet Smith said. "I really think his lifesaving decision was not to succumb to public office. That's an intoxicating thing. You see lots of good people quit doing what got them in a position that people think they are so good they should lead us. But he never took that bait.

"I think he would be quite raw about it and say, 'Well, how many 15-minute periods of time do you think it would be for me to have the governor sitting here? I can have him right here in 30 minutes, if that's how long the plane takes.' He chose to do it through the law firm and make the law firm the institutional vehicle of his authority. He would say, 'This is the way you get it done, not by being a legislator or elected person.'"

In his extraordinary career as a lawyer for 55 years, Smith earned the moniker "Citizen Smith" while he perfected his many roles:

Mover-and-shaker with friends in high places influencing political appointments and policies.

One of the first to conceptualize and build a national law firm as founder of Holland & Knight, now the country's eighth largest firm, that made pro bono service and diversity cornerstones of the practice.

Father of Florida's Constitution, as chair of the first Constitution Revision Commission that brought an end to the "Pork Chop Gang" era, helping replace an obsolete Constitution drafted by unreconstructed Confederates in 1885, ushering Florida into modern statehood.

Former president of The Florida Bar, in 1964, leading the charge to build a new stately Bar Center high on a hill in downtown Tallahassee, and advocating passionately for the Clients' Security Fund to pay restitution when a lawyer embezzles a client's funds.

Mentor to talented women and black lawyers, back in the days when there was a lot of talk but not much action. As Joseph Hatchett, former Florida Supreme Court justice and 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge, said: "To some of us--the poor, blacks, and women--Chesterfield Smith provided hope and assistance at a time when hope was hard to come by and assistance never available."

During a celebration of Smith's 80th birthday in Tampa, members of the Holland & Knight law firm put together a program that included a spoof of his voice mail that began: "Hello, this is Chesterfield Smith. If you are calling to secure a judicial appointment, please press 1. If you are attempting to obtain a veto of critical legislation, please press 2. If you are calling to complain about my driving, please press 3. All other messages may be left at the beep."

Nearly six years later, Smith's big, kind heart stopped beating in a Coral Gables hospital room, a dozen days shy of what would have been his 86th birthday. Those who mourn his passing describe a man who truly was great and actually did live a most remarkable and robust long life.

"We praise Chesterfield today, and we celebrate his life, knowing that he will be appreciated far into the future for his relentless work against doing wrong and his steadfast stands for doing right. Chesterfield needed no radar and no opinion poll to guide his actions. He was a strong man of good convictions," eulogized Marilyn Holifield, the first black lawyer Smith invited to join Holland & Knight more than two decades ago and certainly not the last.

When ABA President Dennis W. Archer, a former Michigan Supreme Court justice, took the podium at Coral Gables United Methodist Church at Smith's memorial service, he said: "Few in the legal profession leave a legacy such as his. His irrepressible faith in the law drove him to speak out in the struggle for all that is fair.

"Chesterfield recognized that lawyers are in a unique position to heal. In my view, he approached his life work as a healer who brought comfort and solace to people in need, his clients, organizations like the National Bar Association, and to his country," Archer continued.

"Chesterfield Smith came to the annual meeting of the National Bar Association, the largest African-American bar association in the world. And in a way that only he could do, Chesterfield began to heal the wounds of racism and discrimination felt by members of the National Bar because of the past exclusionary practices of the ABA. The result was that Edward F. Bell became the first NBA representative in the House of Delegates. And I attended my first ABA meeting in San Francisco in 1972. The rest is history."

The history of Chesterfield Harvey Smith begins with his birth July 28, 1917, in small-town Arcadia, Florida, land of cattle ranches and citrus groves.

He described his morn, Grace, a social columnist for the Arcadian newspaper, as a "happy mom."

His father, Cook Hall Smith, had an "up-and-down life," Smith told NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw in his 1998 book, The Greatest Generation, in a chapter devoted to Smith in the "Famous People" section:

Smith's father "was a schoolteacher for a while, then ran an electrical appliance shop near the town of Arcadia when power first became available to the remote cattle ranches in Central Florida. When Florida went through a boom-and-bust period in the '20s, Chesterfield's father went out of business and on the road, looking for steady work. Eventually the family returned to Arcadia, where Smith finished high school at the top of his class without making much of an effort. He enrolled at the University of Florida as a pre-law student, but he'd stay only a semester at a time, dropping out to make money and raise a little hell.

"His childhood sweetheart, Vivian Parker, who was his wife for 43 years before she died of cancer, was quoted as saying of Smith in those days, 'He was just a poker-playing, craps-shooting boy who wouldn't settle down.' Smith agrees that this is a fair and honest description."

After Smith's death, Brokaw told the The Florida Bar Journal: "Chesterfield was in the front ranks of 'the greatest generation,' and an all-around good guy. It gave me great pleasure to describe his remarkable life and values in my book. And I only wish I had known him longer."

John Arthur Jones, partner at Holland & Knight, knew Smith about as long as anyone still living.

"I knew him in the fourth grade," said 82-year-old Jones, recalling Smith, four years older, was "Big Man on Campus" at DeSoto County High School, graduating at age 16.

"Everybody knew Harvey. He just had a natural bent toward leadership," Jones said.

Smith's uncle, "a state representative forever," Jones recalls, was also named...