Monday morning, as I was preparing for a mediation, my longtime friend and fellow attorney, Benton Patton, texted me with terrible news.
Don Smith had died.
I stopped working, sat back in my chair, and sighed heavily. And then the strangest thing happened. I smiled. Why? I smiled because that's what I do every single time I think about Don Smith. Like perhaps no one else I have ever known, my interactions with Don always made me smile. He just had that gift.
Now, left only with my memories of Don Smith, I am still smiling.
Don Smith was one-in-a-million. For me, there was no one else like him, not when I worked at his law firm in the mid-1990's and not afterwards, when our professional relationship turned into a friendship. He was an original to the very end.
He also was a devoted husband and father. I'm not sure I know anyone who has raised three sons as universally admired and successful as Andy, Richard, and Mark. Don was a consummate family man. Everyone knew that about him. He was a naval veteran and to me, a lawyer's lawyer.
When I began working at Manier, Herod, Hollabaugh & Smith in the fall of 1993, fresh out of law school, I had absolutely no idea what it meant to be a lawyer. I had even less of an idea about what it meant to work at a law firm. I was young, dumb, and naive. Don, and other partners, made me feel welcome. It didn't hurt that I was a softball pitcher, given that the law firm typically fielded a competitive softball team in the lawyers' league and the team needed a pitcher due to Jay Stapp's recent departure.
In those days, the softball team was a point of pride at Manier, Herod. Richard Smith and Jeff Orr played, as did Benton Patton, Paul Sprader, Ken Weber, Stephanie Jennings, and me, among others. Along with Steve Cox, Don Smith was one of our biggest supporters. More often than not, he showed up at game time in East Park on Woodland Street, still in his suit, drink in hand, to socialize and watch us play softball.
Initially, I was intimidated by Don. After all, along with Lewis Hollabaugh, he was one of the name partners at the law firm. He ran the show. My professional future was in his hands or so it seemed to me at the time, even though I worked on a different floor than him. I wanted to impress him.
In those early, impressionable days of my professional life, Don was everything I imagined a name partner at a law firm would be. He was supremely self-confident, loud, opinionated, authoritarian, old school, funny, ethical, honest, emotional, a consummate story teller, kind hearted, and successful. All of those things and so much more. He was the heart and soul of Manier, Herod, or so it seemed to me.
Don knew at least one thing about every single person who worked at the firm, attorneys and staff.
Invariably, he asked me how my mom was doing and what she thought about Vanderbilt's basketball team's chances in the coming season, although he only had met her a time or two at law league softball games. Other times, he asked a legal secretary on the floor below him how her daughter was doing. He knew just what to say to every single person at the law firm to make them feel like they belonged.
Intuitively, Don knew how to reach people and to connect with them. When Don turned his attention to you, almost always with a twinkle in his eye, you felt important and part of something bigger than yourself. Don made me proud to work at Manier, Herod, Hollabaugh & Smith. More than that, he made me want to practice law in a way that would make him proud of me. That never went away for me, although it's been more than 25 years since I worked for Don.
What I realized, today, as I thought about Don, is that as one of the name partners of my law firm in Franklin, for the past 25 years - Puryear, Newman & Morton - I've aspired to be be all of those things, too. Right or wrong, so much of what I do and how I act at my law firm, every day, is a probably a direct reflection of what I learned from Don in the mid-1990's at Manier, Herod. Without me even knowing it, Don taught me who I needed to be, and how I needed to be, to lead a law firm. Maybe that's a small part of his legacy.
At work, Don treated John Rowland, Benton Patton, Ken Weber, Brett Oeser, and me like surrogate sons. He was forever buzzing and ordering us up to his office because he was in the mood to talk about sports, a game from the night before, or a specific player. He loved it when we argued with him or, more often than not, bet with him. If we lost, and we usually did, the money needed to be on his desk first thing the following morning or he'd buzz us as soon as he got in to the office and demand payment.
On one occasion, Benton, Ken, and I paid off a bet in rolls of pennies carefully arranged on Don's desk. When he arrived at the office, he immediately buzzed us and told us in no uncertain terms to take all of the pennies to the bank at the bottom of the building and bring him real money. He feigned anger but was laughing the whole time, as were we.
Mostly, we sat in Don's office, talked about sports or life, gave him a hard time, argued with him, and laughed. Man, did we laugh. Eventually, he'd throw us out of his office and tell us to get back to work and make him some money. I always left Don's office smiling.
Don was the commissioner "emeritus" of the weekly college football pool that circulated in the office every fall. I picked the games but because he was the commissioner, he required that I run all of the games by him. Invariably, just to irritate Don, I picked one completely obscure game - Air Force vs. Wyoming or Montana State vs. Idaho, for example - just so I could get him to yell at me and make me replace it with an SEC football game. It was the highlight of my week in the fall.
Don also presided over the annual NCAA basketball tournament auction, maybe my favorite event of the year. On the eve of the tournament, we gathered in one of the conference rooms at the office, as Don auctioned off the teams - those seeded #13 - #16 in groups of four - and the rest of the teams individually. Don sat at the head of the table, of course, and lorded over every aspect of the auction. To say he was in his element is an understatement.
In the auction, Don loved to wait until the last minute and outbid someone for a team they really wanted. All, of course, in the service of increasing the value of the pot to be divided at the end of the tournament. In my mind's eye, I can see Don, grinning mischievously, saying, "350 for Indiana? Going once, going twice - dramatic pause - Smitty bids $375!" We groaned in protest. He loved every minute of running the auction.
Don had an ironclad rule for the auction - no consortiums - in other words, people couldn't get together and jointly bid a lot of money on a team (Duke, for example). Of course, we all ignored him, formed consortiums, and bid together on the highest seeds, feeling like we were putting one over on Don. I have no doubt he knew what we were doing the entire time.
In later years, long after I left Manier, Herod, Hollabaugh & Smith, Don occasionally called my office and asked for my partner, Mark, or me. Always, he refused to tell the staff what he was calling about, insisting instead that Mark or I would take his call simply because it was Don Smith calling. And we did, every single time, no matter what we were doing. Why? Because it was Don Smith calling.
"Newman," he'd say, "I need you to get my friend's son out of a speeding ticket in Williamson County." Not asking me, telling me, like I still worked for him at the old law firm. The truth is, though, I loved it. It made me feel good to think that there was something I could do to help Don Smith. I know my law partner, Mark Puryear, felt exactly the same way.
The interesting thing, too, is that I never got off a telephone call with Don without smiling. He had an innate ability to connect with people on a very personal level, to make them feel important, to make them laugh, to make them smile. That is a gift that few people have, I think.
At Don Smith's memorial service, I saw so many friends from the old days at Manier, Herod, Hollabaugh & Smith. All of us were there to pay homage to a true lion, a larger than life personality who had positively impacted each of us in different, yet important ways in the early stages of our careers as lawyers. We're all older, grayer, and somewhat weathered by our shared experience of practicing law for more than three decades but we share in common a love for and appreciation of Don Smith.
So many lawyers from those days at Manier, Herod - the early and mid-90's - have gone on to do great things - run law firms, run departments in law firms, try big lawsuits, become in demand mediators, serve in leadership roles in the community, and raise families. I think Don had a hand in all of that for every one of us because of the example he set, at work, in the community, and at home.
I'm 58 years old and every time I lose a lion, it hurts. Don Young was a lion. Mark Hartzog was a lion. Steve Cox was one of my lions, to be sure. Bobby Jackson was a lion. Don Smith was maybe the biggest lion of them all. And now he's gone.
Yesterday, at home after Don's memorial service, I sat with Joe, my 12-year old, and tried to explain to him how important Don had been to me and how hard it was to lose him. I told him funny stories about Don and how he loved to give me a hard time.
Joe and I laughed together, father and son, and somewhere, I have to think, Don Smith was laughing right along with us.
Rest In Peace, Don.
