Column: Remembering Chuck Bate

Dear readers,

It has been a long time since I sharpened my No. 2 Ticonderoga pencil and wrote a column. Once upon a time, my columns appeared weekly like clockwork. Lately, not so much.

Last week, my granddaughter, June, stepped in as guest columnist. She explained that I had been neglecting my duties because I discovered the 1960s soap opera “Dark Shadows” streaming on Prime.

Like an adolescent with a new video game, I was spending too much screen time. That was true, as far as it went. But it wasn't the whole story.

Today's column should have been written two months ago. It is my goodbye to my former law partner Chuck Bate (photo). Chuck passed away earlier this year, and I was on vacation and missed the event his family held to celebrate his life.

I've been carrying the program from Chuck's "Celebration of Life" in my pocket for weeks. I pulled it out a dozen times, thinking I should write something. But I kept putting it off. It's easier for me to write about Elvis sightings or promote The Helbing. I have always found it difficult to write a serious column.  Especially one about someone who helped make me who I am.

So, Mr. Peabody, have your boy Sherman set the Wayback Machine to the fall of 1976. A time when the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series and Elvis was still among the living.

Fifty years ago this fall, I first met Chuck Bate. I was teaching math at the local junior high school, and Chuck and his wife, Barbara, came to parent-teacher night. Their youngest son, Jeff, was in my eighth-grade math class.

Chuck was old enough to be my father. He was born in the final months of the Hoover administration. I didn't make my arrival until the Eisenhower years. He was already a successful local lawyer when we met.

Chuck gave me a firm handshake and said, "I certainly don't envy you being stuck with teaching my son Jeff and his friends Kiefer, Peduto, and Bass. Why don't you quit this job, become a lawyer, and join my law firm?"

If you guessed that conversation only happened in my imagination, you would be right.

Chuck returned to the school a couple of weeks later to speak to all of the teachers during an in-service program. He was a motivational speaker and gave a presentation on achieving goals and finding greater fulfillment in life. He was good at it. He had presence, a way of making you feel like you could actually do the things you'd only dreamed about.

That next summer, Elvis performed his last concert on June 26, 1977, at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

Fifty-one days later, I was sitting at the stoplight at the intersection of 25th and Washington Streets in Columbus, on my way to Bloomington to enroll at the I.U. School of Law. The news came over the radio: Elvis was dead.

Elvis was 42. I was 21. Chuck was 44. Chuck had already outlived Elvis, and he would go on to outlive him by another 51 years.

I hadn't thought about Chuck Bate since he spoke at that in-service program. Then, one day when I was home on break from law school, I dropped off a suit at Dellekamp and Dean Cleaners on West Broadway Street. Chuck's law office was next door.

On a whim, I stopped in without an appointment. I didn't ask for a job. I just told him I was in law school, asked about Jeff, and exchanged the usual pleasantries.

Chuck asked if I had any plans for the summer.

"Too busy trying to figure out what a tort is," I said.

Chuck laughed and told me to come back when law school ended. He would give me a job for the summer.

I came back in the summer. Chuck introduced me to his partner, Dennis Harrold, and put me to work. My job was mostly running errands and filing pleadings at the courthouse.

After I graduated in 1980, Chuck invited me to join the firm. Being a lawyer in those days felt like something out of “Perry Mason.”

Perry’s secretary was Della Street. Chuck had Mary Kay Bush, Denny had Jimmie Ann Buckley and I had Kim Medsker. 

There were no computers, no word processors, no printers. Just the repetitive sound of clacking typewriters. Secretaries wrote in shorthand on steno pads. Copies of letters were on onion skin and made using carbon paper. The office smelled like perked coffee, paper and ambition.

I had a lot to learn, and Chuck knew it. He sent me to seminars on everything including law, ethics, and even a memory seminar. He invested in me, not just as a colleague, but as a person. And with every investment, he made me better.

The firm became Bate, Harrold & Meltzer. We moved from West Broadway to South Harrison. And somewhere along the way, a small law firm became an extended family.

We celebrated birthdays, holidays, and each other's milestones. I was at Jeff's high school graduation. Later, Jeff went to law school and joined the firm. I read at Jeff's wedding. Years later, I read at his son Taylor's wedding.

Chuck was a mentor, a partner, a friend.

When I heard of his passing, I felt the heavy sadness that comes from losing someone who gave you so much. A relationship that began years ago with a firm handshake and turned into a career.

I stopped by my old office on S. Harrison St. where Chuck’s son Jeff continues the practice as Bate & Bate and Kim Medsker still knows how to take notes in shorthand.

And I remembered that day fifty years ago at the old junior high school listening to a man I barely knew talk about goals and fulfillment.

See you all next week — same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.