R. Fred Lewis Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court: a coal town's son who is guided by the rule of fairness.

• Author: Pudlow, Jan
• Position: Interview

On his desk, a jar holds chunks of coal plucked from railroad tracks near the spot his mother's house once stood a few doors from the coal company store.

Nearby sits the carbide light his grandfather clipped to his helmet to see down dark mines.

Preserved under glass is scrip, currency paid by the New River Coal Company that employed his ancestors and kept his family stuck in the bowels of the earth for long days of hard labor.

Above his chair hangs a linoleum lithograph of a coal miner, taken from the original artwork in the Capitol building in Charleston, West Virginia.

Another drawing depicts a tipple, where coal is processed.

Each day when Chief Justice Fred Lewis walks into his chambers at the Florida Supreme Court, he is reminded of his hardscrabble roots in Beckley, West Virginia, the mountains and "hollers" where he learned the values of compassion, honesty, and hard work.

"Most folks had one red-dog road that went into those communities," 58-year-old Lewis said. "Later in life I understood why it's a one-lane road, because once you got in there, you never got out."

Good grades, gifted athleticism, and caring teachers rescued Lewis from a coal-mining destiny in West Virginia.

His big break came in 1965, when a visiting college coach checked out Beckley's state-champ high school basketball team and liked what he saw in the just under 6-foot point guard, described by the Beckley Register-Herald as "cat-quick and aggressive."

"Following the game, the coach came down and said, 'Would you like to go to Florida?' And I mean, for a kid from the coal-mining area, that's like being asked to go to heaven," Lewis recalls.

And so began Lewis' metamorphosis from coal town's son to chief justice:

* All-State and All-American scholar athlete with a basketball scholarship to Florida Southern College in Lakeland.

* Full scholarship to the University of Miami School of Law, where he graduated third in his class.

* A successful career as one of Miami's top-notch appellate lawyers.

His appointment to the high court came December 7, 1998, just five days before Gov. Lawton Chiles died, and the governor autographed a picture of the two of them with these words: "You will make me proud."

Very proud of Lewis is UM law Professor Minnette Massey, who taught him civil procedure. She can still see "the nicest and most pleasant and cooperative student I've ever had" sitting in her classroom.

"Some people outgrow their background. Fred Lewis didn't. He came enriched and proceeded to enrich everybody around him," Massey said.

"He knows how the men in his family had to really work and slave in hard, dirty labor. He was blessed coming out of a family and community that had values the depth of any coal mine."

P.J. Carroll, a Miami lawyer, longtime client, and old family friend, said that coal-mining heritage gave Lewis "true grit."

"My parents were Irish immigrants and I was born in a house in Queens, New York, and lived in a five-story walkup. I had a little true grit. I saw that Fred had true grit and I said, 'This is the guy I want handling my appeals,'" Carroll said.

"Fred has so much grit that is sincere and driven for the side of justice and protecting the rights of fringe people," Carroll said. "He teaches children and young people what our justice system is all about.... He didn't get that from anything but true grit."

As Lewis wrote in his application to the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission in 1998: "I offer eyes and ears that cannot only see and listen, but also understand and hear human difficulties. My lessons of life came from being born into generations of coal miners in the mountains of West Virginia and the sense of community and human interaction necessary for survival at that time."

Ties that Bind

Centered on a glass coffee table in Lewis' chambers is a scrapbook embossed with the words: "The Flying Eagle Soars."

It's a gift from Beckley buddy Ron Lilly, who came to the June 30 passing-of-the-gavel ceremony when Lewis was sworn in as chief justice. Pages hold newspaper clippings of those glory days of the 1965 Woodrow Wilson High School Flying Eagles state basketball championship, the winning football team, and personal congratulatory notes penned by each high-school teammate tracked down across the country. A cherished keepsake of the enduring bonds of friendship, Lewis said it means more to him than any award ever could.

Lilly and Lewis shared something in common growing up in Beckley: Both boys had lost a parent.

Lilly's father was killed in a mining accident, leaving his young mother with four children to feed.

Lewis' mother, Dorothy Beatrice, died when he was 12. In her short, hard life, she dropped out of school and married at 16, taking care of children Lewis' father already had by other women.

Lewis' father, also named Fred, is 96 and lived with the Lewises in Tallahassee, until he recently entered a local assisted living facility. He has told his son of his own tough childhood, after his mother died when he was a toddler and he became an unofficial foster child.

"The way my father tells it, his father 'gave up housekeeping.' What that means is he gave the kids away. So my father ended up living from pillar to post, and being passed around to different families," Lewis said.

"He ended up passed around to older siblings, and as he described it, he was basically an indentured servant. He had to wash and iron the clothes for their children. And if it was a sister he was living with, he had to go work for the man she was married to for no pay. He appreciated a penny, let me say that."

Without much parental guidance because their single parents were working so hard, Lilly and Lewis were there for each other.

"We went through that process of adolescence, growing up, and the problems you run into and the hormone issues, growing into young men," Lewis said. "So I guess we probably raised each other."

The teachers at Lincoln Elementary, Beckley Junior High, and Woodrow Wilson High--and he can name everyone who taught him--also did their part to guide Lewis. His deep admiration for educators was evident at his chief justice swearing-in ceremony when he honored the legacy of public school teachers: "To all the educators, we say thank you. You have our respect, our admiration, and we shall be ever grateful to you."

"The polestar for Fred Lewis for achievement in life was education," said Miami lawyer and friend Gabe Bach. "He knew that was his only way out of Beckley, West Virginia."

Bach's son, 22-year-old Marcus Bach Armas, a second-year law student at the University of Michigan, was lucky to learn from Lewis as an intern.

"He feels like the people who shaped him were the public school teachers who took him under their wings and shared and taught him in a one-on-one experience and gave him that care and thoughtfulness that I now see in him," Bach Armas said. "He carried that with him his whole life. The people who have shaped you are always with you.

"The papers keep piling up in his inbox, but he will always take the time to teach and mentor and make sure we glean everything we can from the experience. He is aware he will have to stay in the office until 10 p.m., but that doesn't faze his quest for teaching."

Whether it is spending the whole afternoon mentoring a blind law student on Florida Disability Mentoring Day, leading children on a tour of the courthouse, teaching a lively course in public school classrooms across the state on the Bill of Rights, or taking the time to make sure his interns understand the ramifications of a legal opinion, Lewis gives freely of his time to kids.

"It's a joy," Lewis says with a broad smile.

His passion to work with children was sparked during a summer job as youth director at the YMCA in West Virginia before Lewis came to Florida to attend college. Spending days reading to children and playing basketball and volleyball, Lewis thought: "It doesn't get any better than this."

Soaring in the Sunshine State

Amid the orange-grove hills of Lakeland, Lewis excelled at Florida Southern College, playing basketball and baseball, and making good grades.

But it was a whole new world to a 17-year-old who'd never before explored beyond the boundaries of West Virginia.

"I had some trepidation when I came to Florida, coming out of an area that's considered backwoods, and folks look at you a little differently and joke, 'Did you buy your first pair of shoes?'" Lewis said.

Soon, he met a co-ed who would become the love of his life, Judy Munc, from Miami.

"He just was always so kind to anybody," is what Judy first remembers about the 17-year-old boy who would become her 21-year-old husband in May 1969, after they graduated from Florida Southern.

First they were friends. Lewis dated her roommate and Judy tagged along on their dates.

By the time Rev. Tom Price came to be chaplain at the United Methodist college in Lewis' junior year, "He and Judy were an item. They were going strong and it was my privilege to marry them."

Price describes Lewis, the undergrad student, as "hardworking, cleancut, captain of the basketball team and high scorer, and conscientious about his grades."

Elected president of his sophomore, junior, and senior classes, Lewis was selected Honor Walk Student, the annual top award for scholastic and service achievements. He was also awarded the NCAA Post-Graduate Grant, as one of the top 15 scholar-athletes in the country, and that paid for housing and...