Mel Heckt, 84, is a partner at Luther, Heckt & Cameron, a Wayzata firm that focuses on wills and trusts. A graduate of the University of Iowa Law School, Heckt has been practicing law since 1950.
I started out being an insurance defense lawyer, and I tried cases in conciliation court, municipal court, district court. I had a few appeals to the Minnesota Supreme Court. I got my job before I graduated from law school, at the firm Snyder Gale Hoke Richards & Janes. The firm is now called Bassford Remele. I spent my career there until I was 70.
I could have stayed there as of counsel. At the time, I had a daughter who was mentally retarded. I pioneered a special trust for parents who have retarded children, substantially disabled children, autistic children, mentally ill children. We used to call them discretionary spendthrift trusts; now they are called special-needs trusts.
When I turned 70, I shut down my insurance defense practice and concentrated solely on wills and trusts, especially for parents of high-cost-to-care-for kids. There were no lawyers doing estate planning in the law firm. My heart wanted to stay and my mind said, 'This doesn't make sense.' So I went with Dick Luther, who had been a member of the firm, who is 20 years younger than I am and did this kind of work.
I have learned two good lessons. One, don't procrastinate in getting out wills and trusts. Put them on top of the pile, and get them executed. And two, when you get to be 65 and older, you'd better have a young lawyer in the office or your clients might be afraid that you're going to get senile and die on them [laughs]. So that made my decision to come here easy.
I'm still doing wills and trusts. My goal is to make just enough to pay for my expenses. Some years I'm a little over and some years I'm a little under. If I'm under I've got to make it up the next year. And my wife wouldn't let me come home for lunch [laughs].
Law has changed quite a bit since I started. For example, a negligent father could not be sued by his daughter or spouse injured in an automobile accident. Now, of course, he can be sued. Malpractice litigation was nowhere near as common as it is today. There's been a litigation explosion in that area. Class action lawsuits were either nonexistent or very, very scarce. Judges directed more verdicts in those days than they do now.
Law schools used to be much more balanced between conservative and liberal professors. I remember going to my 50th reunion in Iowa City and I asked the dean, "Of the 53 law school faculty members, how many are conservative Republicans?" And he said, "Oh, there may be two." And a law student who was standing with the dean said, "Mel, there may be one, but I'm not sure."
In those days, the plaintiffs' lawyers were primarily Democrats. Most of the insurance defense lawyers were Republican. Now I think the plaintiffs' bar is almost entirely Democrat and the insurance defense lawyers are Republican. I think my old firm has many more Democrats than Republicans now. When I joined the firm, I was the only Democrat they had ever hired. But I found out that Minnesota Republicans were more liberal than Iowa Democrats, so I became a Republican [laughs].
The firm has some outstanding women lawyers now. There weren't any when I started. Then you had to be a white, Protestant Republican, from Harvard or Yale, with one lawyer from the University of Minnesota.
We had an advantage over some of the young lawyers today because we could start securing trial practice earlier, in conciliation and municipal court. For my first six months, I did errand running, checking abstracts. But after that I started going to municipal court to try lawsuits. And today, because there isn't municipal court, young lawyers have a little more difficulty securing that experience.
I think the rules of civil procedure came in after I joined the firm. I remember that my senior partner, Bergmann Richards, who tried a lot of automobile and malpractice cases, didn't like the idea of disclosing all this information or having it disclosed to him. He'd rather go down and cross-examine and try the case that way-cold. His depositions were probably the shortest depositions taken in the county.
The lessons I learned from practicing law, and probably from my education and service in the Marine Corps, was the importance of working diligently, working hard. It taught me to respect opinions of people on the opposite side of the fence. It gave me an appreciation of a lot of changes that were made in society.
Ward Lewis, 97, of Minneapolis, spent his career as a business attorney at Best & Flanagan, starting in 1936 as a young graduate of Harvard Law School.
After law school I worked in New York for the Federal Communications Commission. I got married right after law school, and my wife and I agreed that we'd go to New York for one year but that we'd come back here because this is where we wanted to live.
We were investigating AT&T. All of the state utility commissions could never really find out much about AT&T because if, for instance, the Minnesota utility commission asked questions about Northwestern Bell Telephone, the answer to any question was 'We really don't have the answer to that-that information is all in New York' at AT&T headquarters.
So they finally decided they should get to the bottom of AT&T and find out these answers. After a year I decided to quit. My boss said, "Lewis, I was just about to recommend you for an increase in pay." And I said, "I appreciate that, but that's one thing wrong with working for the government. You continue to raise the pay by small increments, and it makes it hard to leave. So that's why I'm leaving now." I took a pay cut of over 50 percent.
When I came back to Minneapolis in 1936, there were four jobs available and I got the fourth one. I didn't show up until late August looking for one. I knew nobody. I'd gone to Harvard Law School and the one other person in my class got a job with Faegre & Benson. I got a job at Best & Flanagan. Of the five lawyers there, three of them had graduated from Harvard.
I started in September 1936 and I stayed there all my life. I did whatever they asked me to do. When I got some clients of my own, then I had more choice of what I could work on. We represented a lot of corporations and some successful business individuals, and we tried to help them out with whatever they had. I was in some negotiation of some rather significant opportunities for my clients to expand their business and engage with other companies. I always had plenty to do and I always enjoyed what I did.
When I started at Best & Flanagan, I was the sixth lawyer in the office, and when I left there were nearly 60. We had some very capable people and always enough work to keep us busy.
[Over time] the practice of law became more difficult, and there were more people engaged in it. But we never had any trouble finding our own niche and holding on. When Roosevelt came along, the playing field was changing a great deal. You had to educate yourself and the clients to a great extent.
In the past, the legal community was much better than it has been in recent years. The Hennepin County Bar used to have a lunch for lawyers every Tuesday at the Radisson downtown. There were 1,000 lawyers in Hennepin County and about 250 would be there. The programs were always interesting and sometimes you got to meet some of the older lawyers. Everyone would be on a first-name basis with a lot of lawyers-people you were proud to know. I used to go with one of the other men from the office. He was 20 years older, and he knew a lot of people and I knew none. It was very helpful to me.
I think there is a lot more specialization than there used to be. People are inclined to get into one niche and stay there, which is probably good for the client because the lawyer's skill increases. It may not be quite as good for the lawyer because it becomes pretty focused, but that's a question of opinion.
I retired at age 70; that was our firm rule. But I had an office at Best & Flanagan until two years ago. I had business interests of my own and my secretary. I wasn't doing firm work, but I was doing things associated with the firm.
I enjoyed everything about practicing law. I enjoyed meeting and associating with other lawyers and I enjoyed the people in our firm. From practicing law I think I learned to live a full life, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I worked hard and played hard.
The late Wille Radde Tuvey of Watertown worked in state government for more than a decade, much of it for Secretary of State Mike Holm.
My dad, Fred W. Radde, was elected to the Legislature from Carver County. I had a job in St. Louis, but this firm sold out to another one, so they canceled all their Minnesota help. I went back to Minnesota in December 1932, and he was elected to the House for that term. They can take one person to plug into work. So I worked in the Legislature until the session was over. Then they put me in different departments of state. I was a good typist and I was doing stenography.
I got a letter from the Department of Banking. At the time, the banks were all closed. They sent me to Taylors Falls, Minn. I stayed there until the end of 1934, working as the banker's helper, doing banking and bookkeeping.
Then my father said, "Quit your job. I've got something else for you." He was in the Legislature for his second term when I went back. At the end of the session, I took it easy for a couple of months and in August I got a call from Secretary of State Mike Holm. I went to work for him from August 1935 to March 1943.
While I was working for Mike Holm, he wasn't too happy to have young girls get married. So my husband and I eloped. We didn't even tell my parents. And about a year after that, finally I told him I was going to get married. And he said, "You're married now, aren't you?" He knew. So I said yes. He said, "That's OK, because you're a really good stenographer." I worked there until I was expecting a child.
I started in as a typist and pretty soon I was taking dictation from everybody. Mike Holm was a very good fellow and he was very well-liked. In the summer we had picnics and he was there taking part with the rest of us. So I enjoyed that. They asked me to come back after my oldest son was born, but I didn't want to leave him with a babysitter.
We worked in the Capitol. Mike Holm was upstairs and we were downstairs. There were rows upon rows of desks with typists in them. It was a whole floor of the building and there must have been 100 in that one room all working for the Secretary of State. Mostly, I was in the motor vehicle department. Mike Holm was nice to work for. He was strict, but he appreciated what you did.
When I worked in the pool while my dad was in the Legislature, mostly we typed bills. At the end of the session I remember they kept back one or two people. We'd work long into June typing bills, and you couldn't erase like on a computer. So if you made an error, you did the whole sheet over. After the session was over, you'd work through the night until 8 o'clock the next morning.
I thought it would be fun [to work in government]. I wanted to have a voice in what was going on, and I was really interested in politics. It was my dad's fault. When I got out of high school, he wanted me to go to school for teacher training because my sister was down in Mankato studying to be a teacher. I said, "Save your money. There is no way I want to be a teacher." And he said, "Then go out and get a job." So I did, and I've been working ever since.
I always thought I wanted to be a politician but I changed my mind. I wasn't really interested in the issues, so I didn't have any business in politics. I always did my job well, but that was it. I loved to do what I was doing.
One time I got called to the governor's office. Governor Olson was out and Elmer Benson, one of the other department secretaries [and later governor], was in the office. He called me to take dictation. He was a young fellow, sitting in the governor's chair, with his feet up on the desk. So I was in the governor's office taking dictation, but not from the governor.
It's definitely more partisan now. I've always been a Republican, and they went to hell. But my values haven't changed.
—We were sad to learn that Ms. Tuvey passed away Dec. 14.
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