Elizabeth Fite Takes Her Turn in a Partnership of Presidents
| Publication year | 2021 |
| Pages | 0044 |
| Citation | Vol. 27 No. 1 Pg. 0044 |
“I very much so respect the perspectives of my fellow officers, my fellow EC members and the Board of Governors. I just want people to know that their interests are represented and that they can always feel free to reach out.”
BY LINTON JOHNSON
Should the need arise during her service as 59th president of the State Bar of Georgia, Elizabeth L. Fite won’t have to go far to seek input from one of her predecessors on an issue or idea. Her law partner, Brian D. “Buck” Rogers, just happens to have served as State Bar president four years ago.
It’s likely the Rogers & Fite civil plaintiffs’ firm is the only two-member partnership of presidents in State Bar history. Fite—also known to many friends by her monogram “ELF”—says she is glad to have Rogers nearby, not only as a sounding board but also as someone who knows the level of commitment that leading an organization of more than 52,000 members can require
For Fite, the path to the State Bar presidency started in Camden, Arkansas, a town situated on a bluff overlooking the Ouachita River in the south-central part of the state. The daughter of a warehouse foreman and a schoolteacher, with a brother 11 1/2 years her senior, “I had a really traditional upbringing,” Fite recalls. “We went to church on Sundays. I was in Girl Scouts and was in every extracurricular activity. I sang in the church choir, I sang in the school choir, I played the piano and briefly played a couple of other instruments. Music was an important part of my upbringing.”
When she was 15, “the minute that I was allowed to work somewhere,” Fite took her first part-time job and has worked ever since. During her senior year in high school, a Camden lawyer named Allen P. Roberts, whose clients included the local School Board, asked the school superintendent to recommend some students who might want to work at his solo firm. Fite, a straight-A-plus student who had expressed some interest in the law, got the job and her first experience in the legal field.
Roberts, a Marine from Texas, had gone to law school at the University of Arkansas and in 1966 moved to Camden, where he lived and practiced until his death last January. Roberts’ obituary noted, “Allen was particularly proud of the work he did over many decades working toward the desegregation of several school districts across south and central Arkansas.” To Fite, he was an influential mentor and lifelong friend.
“He was a retired Marine, he was gruff, he had a big, booming voice, and he was smart,” she said. “He lived in Camden because that’s the kind of lifestyle he preferred, but he would have been successful in any major city being a lawyer. As a general practitioner, a sole practitioner in a small town, he did everything.” As his protégé, so did Fite.
“So as a senior in high school, I started drafting pleadings, I...
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