16 | The Summation
Members of the ESRBA Mourn the Death of Bob Mayes
by Stephen H. Echsner
in 1969 received a J.D. Degree from Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. From 1969 until 1973 he served in the U.S. Air Force as a JAG Officer and attained the rank of Captain. He was stationed at Keesler AFB in Biloxi and his service required him to travel to Tyndall AFB in Panama City to try cases and it was during those back and forth trips that he discovered Pensacola. He applied for a job at the Levin firm and began working there on January 1, 1974.
“Bob Mayes was my friend, a great person and a superb lawyer.” Stephen H. Echsner I learned many years ago that the word “Hoosier” in the South is sometimes pejorative but Bob and I were real Hoosiers. We grew up ten blocks from each other in the small town of Columbus, Indiana. Bob came from a family of six children. There were four boys and two girls. The family lived in a very modest home. His mother, Violet, was a stay at home mom and his father, Melvin, worked at Cummins Engine Company. Bob began working at age fourteen in 1959 when I was only four years old. One of first jobs was working as a helper for my father. He needed help around his office and my family’s home because my mother was busy with kids, having had four in six years, and my siblings and I were too young then to cut the grass, rake, trim bushes, clean gutters, wash windows, sweep the garage and other miscellaneous chores. For four years, Bob’s work then set the standard against which the work of all other high school workers who succeeded him was measured. Nobody who worked the same job after Bob had a chance of success because Bob worked all of his tasks thoroughly and to perfection just as he did later in his life as a lawyer. Upon high school graduation, Bob obtained a B.S. Degree from Indiana University and
Four years later, during the summer of 1978, I had just completed my first year of law school and was working for a legal aid organization in Columbus. I came home from work one day and Bob was there. His father had suffered a coronary and Bob traveled from Pensacola to Columbus to see his father and to talk with my father, his father’s physician, about his father’s condition. Incidentally, his father lived for at least twenty or more years but Bob’s presence that day was contemporaneous with the mail delivery of the report card from my first year of law school. I felt certain that I had flunked at least one course so I stealthily snuck up the stairs to my room to open the envelope. Lo and behold, I aced Torts and won the book award! I immediately shared my success with Bob and he then described the nature of his practice in Pensacola and the firm with which he was associated and I was immediately interested and attracted. Bob returned to Pensacola, one thing led to another, and within a week or so Bob called and extended an offer to me to work as a law clerk for the firm for the rest of the summer, an offer that I declined because of other commitments. Imagine being a single, twenty-three-year-old law student turning down an offer to work for a summer in Florida at the Levin firm! But Bob was responsible for extending an offer again the following summer and so I came to Pensacola and worked for the firm as a law clerk between my second and third year of law school and, upon graduation in June, 1980, loaded all of my earthly possessions into the back of my
1969 Ford and drove to Pensacola to join the Levin firm where I practiced for thirty years. Bob and I were law partners for seventeen of those years. Bob left the firm in March, 1997 to pursue bad faith insurance practice on his own and then later his son, Jon, joined. From a personal standpoint, many of the good traits observed about Bob as a kid more than sixty years ago carried over into his life as an attorney. He was always prepared and on time. Bob always produced an excellent work product, was never a quitter, was self-motivated and he always accepted responsibility for his own mistakes. He was even keeled and good natured even in the face of adversity and defeat. Bob maintained his youthful appearance, mental happiness and emotional stability his entire life. He was well adjusted, well balanced and happy with who he was. He was consistent. He loved to tell a good joke and had an infectious laugh. He was humble and never sought to be the center of attention. When the conversation turned to him, he would always deflect to a different topic for continued non-disruptive conversation. He always strived to do the right thing. Bob never spoke bad or ill of anyone and if he did utter unpleasant words it was just a sudden emotional burst of excitement or disbelief that was quickly forgiven and forgotten. Bob was honest; he would not deceive or trick anyone even if there was no risk that anyone would find out. Like most all of us, Bob was motivated by money but money was not the end all of his professional life. Doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason was his primary motivation. I knew him from early on in his life and know that his values and personality remained constant and consistent throughout his entire life. Bob’s voice had a special quality about it that was comforting and non-threatening and at the same time was full of confidence and authority. Writing a tribute about the life of Bob Mayes is easy because he was a great human being and it would be difficult to find
