6 minute read
Listen to Your Elders
On March 23, Bill Ramsey was presented with the David Rutherford Award at the 2024 Nashville Bar Foundation Fellows Gala. This award is given to a Fellow of the NBF who exemplifies the memory and ideals of David Rutherford, which include professionalism, charitable contributions in the legal field and in the community as a whole, and the spirit of collegiality among the bench and bar. The below is Bill Ramsey's speech following his receiving this award.
Thank you, John, and thank you everyone. First, I am humbled to receive the honor of this award, and I thank the Bar Foundation Board even considering me. I must confess that I do not deserve to be in the company of those who have received this award. Listen to this list of prior award winners.
2007 | Presented to David Rutherford’s family in his Honor
2008 | Justice Frank Drowota
2009 | not presented
2010 | Hon. Robert Echols
2011 | Charles H. Warfield
2012 | Margaret L. Behm
2014 | Jack Norman, Jr.
2015 | Aubrey Harwell, Jr.
2016 | Ashley T. Wiltshire, Jr.
2017 | Hal Hardin
2018 | Hon. Aleta Trauger
2019 | John C. McLemore ……
John McLemore!!!! (Now I don’t feel so bad). All joking aside, tonight I want to talk about “Listening to your Elders.”
There are many sources for that quote, from the Bible to literature to famous speeches, but the best one, in my opinion, comes from an anonymous source:
“Listen to your elders, not because they are always right, but because they have more experience at being wrong.”
In my mind, I am not old, but now that I look around the room, I guess I am one of the oldest people in this room. So, I must be old – an elder.
Now, in my generation, we totally distrusted our elders. Does anyone remember the saying from the 1960s? “Dont trust anyone over 30.” That quote is Jack Weinberg — who is now 83.
So, listen to your elder here for a while — humor me. Because tonight I want to talk about someone who taught me to listen to my elders: David Rutherford I feel we should honor him tonight. After all the award is named after him. I am proud to call him friend.
How many of you knew David? Just us old folks, I guess. Not many of us old folks left, I guess. He would have been 100 years old in April of last year.
David was NBA President in 1980, the year before I joined the NBA. David had the vision to start the NBF as the charitable arm of NBA. And he was quite a character.
David grew up in Nashville, and after WWII he went to Vandy Law School and was President of his class. When I met David, he practiced in his offices in the Washington Square Building. I was on the NBA Board in 2002. I helped him prepare Bench and Bar 2003. How many of you have a copy of this wonderful book that documents the history of the practice of law in Davidson County? If you don’t have a copy, you should.
David had already published a first edition, and he wanted to publish an updated edition. He had asked the NBA Board to support his effort to produce “Bench and Bar II” as he called it then. He asked the Board for editorial and fundraising assistance.
To be honest, some folks on the NBA Board opposed the request… It would cost too much – we had Budget issues, –too much trouble etc. And, frankly, some thought he had lost a step.
Maybe he had “lost a step.” After all, he was 80 years old at the time. But I couldn’t tell that he had lost anything. He was “sharp as a tack” to me.
I volunteered to help him organize and edit the book. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. We became immediate and fast friends. We went to work on an updated version of the book and launched our plans to raise the money to publish it.
More importantly, we would just “hang out.”
Sometimes he would call me early in the morning at the office and tell me he was going to pick me up and show me some things.
He would take me on tours around the city. He put me in a boat with one of his friends and we went up the Cumberland River to look at Timothy Demonbreun’s cave. On another day, our boat ride took us to an island in the river on the other side of Jefferson Street. That was Lower City Island. David said “I have searched the real estate records. We could make a homestead claim for it.” I pointed out to David that the island did not seem very desirable and was infested with rats. Of course, he laughed at the joke he had played on me.
He took me to a place on lower Broadway where there was a deep construction hole. He showed me the many layers of prior streets and construction underneath. He gave me a taste of “Germantown Wine” – a homemade Concord Grape wine that was aged in whiskey barrels – a sort of poor man’s Port wine. I thought it was delicious.
Throughout these “field trips,” he would regale me with anecdotes and stories. I was captivated by his stories, his wisdom, and his charm.
Most importantly, David taught me: To love the NBA; To love helping others; To volunteer my time for charities; To realize that some of my best friends will be other lawyers.
All of you know that I am a computer and technology nerd. And I do love all that stuff. And we all know technology has given us Wikipedia, smart phones, and yes, ChatGPT and AI. We can look up answers to questions and research facts in an instant. But, none of these sources are better and more fulfilling than listening to your elders and learning from them. You will be surprised at how much information can be obtained from your elders that is nowhere to be found on the Internet.
So here’s to David Rutherford, and here’s to the NBF for giving me an award I will always cherish, but will never deserve.
And here’s to “listening to our elders.”
