Attorney Don Moore, Jr., is seated in his favorite chair, his television blaring cable news and his phone within reach. He picks up a remote and clicks off his TV, and his house becomes as quiet as a thought. Being tucked away in a cul-de-sac in East Brainerd has its advantages, as there’s no traffic to disturb the calm, only the sounds of a single beating heart and 83 years worth of memories.
“My phone doesn’t ring as much as it used to,” Moore says. When it does ring, it might be one of his two daughters, or a pro bono client seeking the counsel of a man who knows a thing or two about the law.
The phone and the questions on the other end are the only things keeping Moore active in the profession to which he has dedicated 60 years of his life, as he’s no longer physically able to get out on his own. His legs might not be able to carry him to court, but he’s still able to wrap his mind around a probate matter and give sound advice. While Chattanooga is home to plenty of younger lawyers who would be willing to help a caller in need, Moore’s words contain a deeper essence, like the sage wisdom of a tribal elder.
If Moore were to stop taking the calls, the effect would be similar to his TV going dark. One moment, his living room was filled with color and light and noise, and the next, the space around him was dim and silent. With rare exception, the administration of the law has defined every waking moment of Moore’s life since the day he became an attorney.
“Many nights, I fell asleep at my computer at midnight, and then was back at the office at 8 the next morning,” he says.
Those who do not know why Moore became a lawyer miss the irony of him burning the midnight oil for decades on end. After serving as a military police officer in Mannheim, Germany during World War II, he returned home and earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Chattanooga. At the time, he aspired to become a medical doctor, but his father insisted the law would be a better choice.
“My father convinced me a lawyer had a clean desk and was able to leave at 5 o’clock. He would walk by the office of Jack Chambliss, a lawyer at the company at which he worked, and Jack’s desk was as clean as a whistle at 5 o’clock. He told me that was the life I needed,” Moore says.
Moore resolved the dilemma with a coin toss. “It came up law school,” he says. “I lost.”
Moore started his legal education at Emory. While he was attending what is known as the Harvard of the South, the Army activated him to contribute to the Korean War effort. By the time he returned to school, his GI benefits were unable to cover the increased tuition, so he completed his coursework at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Moore graduated in December 1952 and was accepted to the bar on March 6, 1953. He closes his eyes and says each part of the date slowly and deliberately, as though he’s clearing away dust to see it. The months that followed were shaky for the new attorney.
“I applied to the Department of Labor because I wanted to practice labor law. I was hired and packed to go, and the Friday evening before I was to report on Monday, I received a telegram saying the president had frozen all federal hiring. That was shocking,” he says.
Moore started hitting up local firms for work and eventually secured a job adjusting insurance for $3.50 an hour. A couple of years later, he went to work for attorneys Tom Crutchfield and Ham Cunningham. Although they also hired him to adjust insurance, Cunningham gave Moore his first opportunity to try a case in court.
“I walked in one day and Ham said, ‘Go up to the courthouse and take a judgment on this case.’ I said, ‘OK, what do I do?’ He said, ‘Just present your sworn account.’ Ham was trying to collect from a pharmacist, but the pharmacist was bankrupt and the only way to collect was against a man named Roy McDonald. He said to put the pharmacist on the stand and ask him if he was Roy’s agent. I did as my employer had instructed, and his attorney objected when I asked him to admit agency. And the judge sustained the objection.
“I tried every way of phrasing the question, but nothing worked. During the noon break, I went back to the office and said, ‘Ham, I’ve got a problem. The judge says I can’t prove agency by the admission of the agent, and as I recall, law school taught me the same thing.’ He said, ‘Then put Roy on the stand.’ I did, and Roy’s attorney objected. So around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, after I had spent the day struggling to do something I felt was never going to work, I let the judge rule on a motion to dismiss. And I swore I would never again allow someone to hand me a piece of paper and say, ‘You don’t know anything about this case, but I want you to try it.”
Despite a frustrating first experience, Moore wound up doing a lot of trial work, and eventually left Crutchfield and Cunningham to form a partnership with Milton McClure. Moore shares one choice story from that period in his career as well.
“At that time, lawyers couldn’t advertise, so to get your name out there, you ran for public office. I was elected to the state legislature in 1952. At public meetings, all of the officials would sit in a row at a table. Raulston Schoolfield was an elected official, too, and McClure didn’t like him, so he told me to not be in a picture with him. I said, ‘Milt, I can’t help what the photographer does.’ So after three or four pictures in a row, I came in one morning and Milton said, ‘You’re in the paper with Schoolfield again. This partnership is over.’”
McClure gave Moore a promissory note for his percentage of the partnership, which Moore used to open his own office one story below McClure in the James Building.
Over the years, Moore served twice in the House and once in the Senate. He also continued to do trial work, which he loved, even though it was exhausting due to the long hours.
“Trial work was fun. We had common law rules of evidence. We didn’t have discovery, or interrogatories, or piles of paperwork. We went into court and cross-examined witnesses based on our ability to do so, not based on the research of an investigator. We didn’t have enough criminal courts, though. I tried cases until 2 in the morning, and then was back in court by 9 a.m.,” he says.
Moore used his tenure in the Senate in the ‘60s to campaign for a second criminal court in Hamilton County. With the help of a state Supreme Court justice who also lived in the county, he was successful.
As a senator, Moore also was instrumental in establishing a state university in his hometown. Concerned about rising tuition costs at the University of Chattanooga and the exodus of the city’s young people to state universities elsewhere in Tennessee, Moore drew up the bill that established the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and convinced Gov. Buford Ellington to sign it.
Moore also fathered the fiscal review commission of the Tennessee General Assembly, which was less popular with the Ellington administration than the UTC bill.
“Every two years, we went to Nashville and enacted a budget. But we didn’t have enough time to determine if the budget was good or bad, and no one knew what the state was doing with the money. I believed the only way to find out was to have a permanent committee that had year-round access to all of the state agencies and could review the state budget,” Moore says.
Moore’s legislative experience made him frugal, which encouraged a group of people to urge him to run for either county mayor or county judge. He didn’t want to be an administrator, so he chose to be a judge and won the election. He served eight years on the bench, mostly in the ‘70s, and then returned to the private practice of law.
By the time Moore was back in court, the Uniform Rules of Evidence enacted in 1974 had changed how lawyers tried cases. He did not like the new approach.
“Trying a case became drudgery. The Rules of Evidence gave a tremendous advantage to the large defense firms, which had the personnel to make up requests for interrogatories and depositions and admissions. There were no large plaintiffs firms, so the rules favored the defense,” he says.
Moore secured a million dollar verdict for a client under the new guidelines, but in time, he started seeking work that would not require him to be in court - including Social Security claims and probate matters. He continues to practice in these areas today, though in a greatly reduced capacity due to his physical limitations.
A brief portrait of a man or woman in his or her eighties must be done in broad strokes, and with the hope of capturing the spirit of the person while relating key events in his or her life. This is difficult to do with Moore, who can lay claim to a long list of accomplishments as an attorney and a public servant, including being named Legislative Conservationist of the Year in 1968. As a member of the Chattanooga Bar Association, the American Legion and the Masons, he also found time to be active in his profession and community.
Moore’s decades of hard work came at a cost, though. In his 40s, he developed an essential tremor that increased in severity until he was unable to write legibly. Other personal issues arose as well. Only in this context does his statement about losing the coin toss make sense.
Even if Moore had become a medical doctor, he would have been a sacrificial citizen. Before he became a lawyer, he served dutifully in the military, putting his plans on hold twice to answer the call of his country and establishing a pattern that would define his life. Through the years, the only pleasure he seemed to carve off for himself was golf, which he and his clerk played every day after court while he was a judge. “I didn’t start playing until I was 43, so I was never as good as the other guys. I played with a handicap of about ten,” he says, his eyes crinkling at the edges and his mouth spreading into a grin.
If any part of Moore truly believes he lost the coin toss, then perhaps he can take comfort in knowing those he has served do not see it that way. From their perspective, he won, as he went on to live a life of considerable impact. In the quiet of his home, when he’s alone with his thoughts and his memories of 83 years, perhaps knowing this would make the price he paid worth the cost.