WWHS ALUMNI PAGE

R. Fred Lewis ('65)

Beckley Native To Become Chief Justice of Fla. High Court

By CHRISTIAN GIGGENBACH

A Beckley native who will become the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court in July attributes much of his personal and professional success in life to his days growing up on South Kanawha Street.

R. Fred Lewis, appointed to the Florida Supreme Court in 1991 by Gov. Lawton Chiles, was unanimously selected Wednesday by six of his colleagues to become Florida’s 52nd chief justice.

In a phone interview, Lewis, 58, recounted his days in West Virginia and Raleigh County as being instrumental to his outlook on life.

“In my formative years were grown the foundation for the moral values and life values that have been confirmed and reinforced in my legal career, and I trace my roots very firmly back to Beckley,” Lewis said from his office in Tallahassee. “I grew up on South Kanawha Street and all of my family comes from the Cranberry area.”

Lewis also recalled a stint working in the offices which formerly housed Beckley Newspapers and fondly remembered the days of helping get the Beckley Post-Herald to its readers.

“I worked in that building as a child doing odd jobs and getting the Post-Herald out in the summers by wrapping papers and putting them down a chute,” he said. “I worked just about everything in that area.”

Lewis made a special point to thank the Raleigh County public school system, which he says “helped raise” him after his mother died. Lewis attended Lincoln Elementary School, Beckley Junior High School and went on to be a star athlete at Woodrow Wilson High School, where as a senior in 1965 he helped guide his team to a state high school basketball championship.

“I am very proud of the educational background I received in Raleigh County,” he said. “My mother died when I was very young and I feel many public school teachers helped raise me and I am indebted to them for that. This has given me an extreme interest in reaching out and educating students in Florida about the law. I feel anything that I have been able to achieve is directly attributable to those good people.”

A news release provided by the Florida Supreme Court indicated Lewis routinely travels around Florida to teach students from elementary school to the university level and has become instrumental in developing law-related education programs that involve other judges, lawyers and organizations.

“Justice Lewis has distinguished himself as the education justice,” outgoing Chief Justice Barbara J. Pariente said. “He is well known throughout the state as a frequent guest teacher in schools where he is passionate in his efforts to help children grow in their understanding of the law.”

Lewis is also part of presidential political history because of a vote on the high court during the Bush/Gore 2000 election debacle. With hanging and pregnant chads the new buzzwords of the day, Lewis voted with the majority in a 4-3 decision which ultimately required some votes to be recounted.

After graduating from Woodrow Wilson, Lewis accepted a basketball scholarship at Florida Southern College and was elected president of his sophomore, junior and senior classes. Lewis went on to graduate from the University of Miami Law School with honors. After serving in the Army, Lewis entered private practice, specializing in civil and trial litigation.

He was selected as Florida’s citizen of the year in 2001 and has received numerous other accolades and rewards for his work with children’s issues and the law. Lewis and his wife Judith have two children, Elle and Lindsay.

Lewis, who lives with his 96-year-old father, a former coal miner, says he wishes he could visit West Virginia more often, but he doesn’t have to look any farther than his own desk to remind him where he came from. Lewis keeps a jar of coal on his desk among other mementos which easily take him home to West Virginia’s country roads.

“I went to Cranberry and picked up this coal from the railroad tracks many years before the mines were sealed off,” Lewis said fondly. “I also have scrip from New River Coal Co. that was given to me and my grandfather’s carbide light that he used as a coal miner.”

Lewis, with a home-spun attitude that Will Rogers would have appreciated, summed up many of his successes due to being “blessed to be around so many good people my whole life.”

“You know how they say even a blind pig can find an acorn?” Lewis asked. “Well, I kept finding the acorns. Many times when things you perceive are out of your reach, with the help of other people, it’s possible to make them happen.”

Fred Lewis ('65) May Play Role in Bush-Gore Squabble

By MANNIX PORTERFIELD

Talented hands that once helped guide Beckley to a state high school basketball crown could play a historic role in resolving the Bush-Gore election squabble in Florida.

As legal maneuvering accelerated Wednesday in a battle over the state's 25 pivotal electoral votes, the Florida Supreme Court was asked to intervene.

One of those seven members, all appointed by Democratic governors, is Beckley native Fred Lewis.

Under judicial ethics, Justice Lewis cannot discuss any pending litigation - and that includes a move by Florida's secretary of state to seek a legal roadblock to any hand recounts.

"It's a humbling experience to serve on the state Supreme Court," said Lewis, named to his post in 1998 by then-Gov. Lawton Chiles just days before the former governor's death.

"And you have no control over matters that come before you."

While Lewis couldn't discuss what could be historic rulings in resolving the war between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush over the White House, the justice holds fond memories of growing up in Beckley.

"Wonderful," he recalled. "How could they be anything but wonderful?

"Those were my formative years. The values and the values system of the people there are part of me. I have carried them with me. Those were good values that have been reinforced as the years moved."

Lewis was a skilled, multi-sport athlete who played football under Ken Wheeler and basketball for the late Lawrence "Preach" Wiseman at Woodrow Wilson High School.

Before his playing days, the 1965 WWHS graduate got a taste for sports as a youngster.

"I worked for a radio station there and did the spotting in the early 1960s," he said.

Lewis handled that task for WWNR sportscasters Phil Vogel and Bob Miller, a job that allowed him to attend Beckley's road games.

"Growing up there, I followed all the teams from the time before I could even walk," he mused. "They were taking me to games then. That was a way of life in Raleigh County."

Lewis remembers attending some WWHS basketball contests in the school's cramped gymnasium, the aroma of fresh popcorn and how his father enjoyed taking him to the games.

Under Wheeler, the Flying Eagles ran a single-wing attack that put the ball in his hands as a tailback.

"I also went under center and played quarterback," he said.

Lewis helped pilot Beckley to an 8-2 mark his senior season, but in that pre-playoff era, the state championship merely went to the school finishing in first place. Beckley wound up a few slots down the ladder, he recalled.

The Wiseman-led basketball team was another matter.

Just under 6-foot, Lewis had a reputation as a cat-quick and aggressive point guard with an 11.3 scoring average that ballooned to 16 points over the second half of the campaign.

"I was fortunate to start three years with Wiseman from the time I was a sophomore," he said of his late coach.

"Everyone had written us off that year, but Wiseman wouldn't let them write us off. You know how the Eagles are when tournament time rolls around."

Lewis lost his mother many years ago. His father, William Fred Lewis, unable at 90 to live on his own any longer, stays with the judge in Florida and "enjoys the rolling hills of Tallahassee," a feature that reminds him of Beckley.

"Most folks of his generation did not have the wonderful opportunities that you and I have had, but they were hard-working folks and produced a generation of people with good values," the justice said.

"I've tried to carry on some of their values. They worked very hard and did their very best."

Lewis accepted a four-year basketball scholarship at Florida Southern College.

In 1969, he was named the year's outstanding athlete and captured an NCAA scholarship award.

At the time, his coach, Tom Greene, reflected, "Fred is my idea of an all-American boy ..."

An active ROTC member, he was awarded the Military Order of World War Saber in 1970 as a cadet colonel. For three straight years, Lewis served as class president at Florida Southern.

From there, he studied law at the University of Miami.

"I came to Florida and had some success, I guess, and stayed in Florida," he reflected.

"I have a real special place in my heart for Beckley. It never goes away."

Beckley attorney Warren Thornhill, who graduated a few years before Lewis, used to watch him perform at Van Meter Stadium adjacent the old high school.

"I was not alone in that," he said. "A lot of folks watched him play over there."

As the nation held its collective breath to see what happens in Florida, Thornhill, like many Beckleyans, found it interesting a former city resident could help make presidential history.

"I thought it was interesting when I first realized the thing might land in the state Supreme Court," he said.

In Florida, it's gone beyond interest. The high court's public information director, Craig Walters, found the bench besieged by a media circus that almost defied description.

"I've never seen so many satellite trucks in one location in my life," he said.

So many reporters descended on Tallahassee that the court was forced to erect a special barrier to keep them out. One problem was an inaccurate broadcast report of a non-existent morning hearing on a ballot petition, he said.

"A large contingent of college students showed up," Walters said. "They wanted to see part of history happen. Unfortunately, history is not happening at this particular moment."

Besides the petition filed by Florida's secretary of state, another came from the canvassing board in Palm Beach County.

The Florida election gridlock has even spilled over to the gridiron, in a sense.

With so many media and the just plain curious in Tallahassee, housing is at a premium. This weekend also happens to be Florida State's home battle with Florida's Gators.

"Reporters are being kicked out of hotels," Walters said. "There's even one FSU fraternity offering to sell its rooms to whomever."

That the Florida election has been hurled into chaos came as no surprise to Beckley coaching legend Jerome Van Meter.

For about two decades, Van Meter lived in the Sunshine State after retiring from his coaching-teaching duties in Beckley.

"In the southern part of the state, you better know what you're doing if you vote," the Gray Eagle said. "I know. I had relatives down there. I know it was a tough situation."

Van Meter said one problem in the electoral process was "all these people coming in and working in the fields from the islands."

"It's a terrible mess," the 100-year-old Van Meter said of the election battle.

"But I bet you can take almost any state, any place you go, and find some stuff that doesn't sound good, in the whole United States."

Van Meter hopes Gore winds up on the short end.

"I don't like him," he said. "I just can't stand him. In my mind, Gore is a bore."

Van Meter said Bush "comes from a good family," and his father was "a better president than the way he was presented."

"He did a lot of things that other people got credit for," he said.

Thinking like a coach, Van Meter believes the simplest way to resolve the Florida impasse is by a coin toss.

Even that could invite some shenanigans.

"Somebody used a two-headed coin on me one time," he laughed.

"I didn't have much to say about it. You didn't when you went away from home. You had to keep your mouth shut."