Hughes Spalding Jr.

News Obituary Article

Legal giant Spalding dies at 85

By STEVE VISSER, SAEED AHMED

Hughes Spalding Jr. had a prestigious name, a gentlemanly character and some odd but pleasant tastes. He saw himself as a frustrated railroad engineer, one who was stirred by train whistles and rumbles as some men are by Beethoven.

But Spalding, 85, who died Saturday, never became an engineer. He fell into lawyering as naturally as a hobo would hop a freight.

"I was always going to law school. That sounds like the horse with blinders," he said in 1981. "The path was there and I followed the path."

He was the last of his family to grace the halls of the Atlanta law firm King & Spalding, and his death from pneumonia marked a milestone for the silk-stocking firm he watched grow from 11 lawyers to more than 500 when he retired in 1990.

"We lost the man who had his name on the door," said Richard Woodward, a King & Spalding lawyer. "His grandfather founded the firm and his father and he worked here so we've always had a Spalding until yesterday."

He is the second scion of the family to die this year. His older brother Jack, a former editor of The Atlanta Journal, died in January.

Woodward, 58, described Spalding as his mentor when he joined the firm in 1972.

The older partner, who specialized in municipal bond law, often took young lawyers to breakfast or lunch but it was invariably Dutch treat. The practice was so consistent that once when Spalding did pick up the tab, Woodward feared it portended his dismissal.

"He always took time to give counsel to young lawyers," said Woodward, who is to speak at the staunch Catholic's funeral Monday at Cathedral of Christ the King. "It was almost like the sanctity of the confessional. He always kept your confidence."

While Woodward found Spalding the "perfect Southern gentleman," he also noted that some of his breakfast tastes, while having a Southern tinge, were slightly unusual. Spalding preferred Coca-Cola to coffee --- one of the firm's perks is free fountain Coke --- perhaps because Coke is one of its biggest clients.

"He always assumed that everybody else would enjoy a Coca-Cola at eight in the morning," Woodward said.

But the lawyer --- who sat on boards of banks, foundations, hospitals and universities --- found his real sense of relaxation and fascination with locomotives, having grown up by the tracks, on the right side of course, in Buckhead where Piedmont Hospital sits now.

His son, Bo Spalding, said a rail trip was one of his father's passions. In retirement, Spalding liked to go to an overlook by Inman Yard.

"This might sound crazy to people who aren't into it, but he would go out to Inman Yard and just watch the trains go by," Bo Spalding said. "He had a train radio and he would listen to the engineers."

His lifelong friend, Cam Dorsey Jr., said Spalding could tell the types of trains by their sounds.

"He was fascinated by them. He knew every train and he knew the schedule."

His track record of service touched almost all facets of the city's development.

He helped raise funds for St. Joseph's Hospital and when the St. Joseph's Hospital Foundation began in 1981, he served as its first chairman. He served as an honorary life trustee of the hospital.

He also helped raise funds for the relocation of the Marist School from its downtown location to its present site on Ashford Dunwoody Road.

A parishioner with the Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Atlanta, Spalding was one of five Atlanta Roman Catholics who received papal honors for service to the church in 1990.

Spalding was named a knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. Membership in the order is conferred by the pope on people of distinguished personal character and accomplishments.

"I've never known anyone who was more at home with his faith than he," Dorsey said. Spalding was an emeritus trustee of Morehouse College and Atlanta University.

He also served terms as president of the Kidney Foundation, Big Brothers of Atlanta and the Sierra Club of metro Atlanta.

And, until his death, he was the chairman of the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation, an organization dedicated to the support of women in need in nine southeastern states.

Spalding also served as an Army infantry officer during World War II.

His first wife, Ann Graham Spalding, with whom he fathered his eight children, died in 1969. Among his survivors is his second wife, Florence Taylor, whom he married in 1972.

He said of the marriage to his former secretary in a 1981 interview with the AJC: "I guess it raised some eyebrows. But I figured I was old enough to do what I please."

In his last years, Spalding was racked by emphysema and often frail, and Florence spent her time nursing him, the 84-year-old Dorsey said.

An inveterate smoker, Spalding wouldn't bow to bad lungs.

"Once in the hospital, one of his sons said, 'What can I get for you Pop?'" Dorsey said. "He said, 'Well get me a cigarette.' Of course they didn't."

© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution