Alexander Wayne Bell

1944 - 2023

Alexander Wayne Bell, 79, died on February 2, 2023, at Westminster Canterbury in Lynchburg, Virginia, after a decade of declining health.

Alex is survived by his wife of 56 years, Carolyn Wilkerson Bell. He is also survived by his son, Stephen Alexander Bell; his daughter-in-law, Amy Nichols Devin; and his grandchildren, James Alexander Bell and Alexa Gwynne Bell, all of Portland, Maine.

Other survivors include Alex's younger brothers and brothers-in-law and their spouses, Joe and Ellen Bell of Austin, Michael and Bridget Bell of Dallas, Jack and Ambie Wilkerson of Atlanta, and Tom and Kay Ellen Wilkerson of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The eldest son of Mary Jane Eger Bell and Forrest William Bell, Alex was born on January 20, 1944, in Lubbock, Texas. He did not meet his father, a Navy Cross recipient, until after World War II was over. The Bell family lived in Delhi, Louisiana, and Dallas before moving to Shreveport, Louisiana, in the mid-1950s. Alex attended public schools in Delhi, Dallas, and Shreveport. He and Carolyn met and dated in high school; they married in Shreveport in 1966. That same year, Alex graduated from Duke University with a history major and entered law school at the University of Texas at Austin. There, he served as Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review. He received his J.D. in 1969.

After clerking for a federal judge, Alex took a position as a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, where he taught torts, legislative and administrative law, and Constitutional law, a subject that remained important to him for the rest of his life. He was proud to say that his birthday, Inauguration Day, was the only date mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. In 1975 he began practicing as a trial lawyer in Lynchburg, specializing in civil rights and employment law. He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. He maintained his civil litigation practice until 2013, when poor health forced him to retire.

Alex loved the law, in particular his work for plaintiffs in race and sex discrimination cases. With early lawsuits on behalf of African American seamstresses and building contractors, he established a commitment to using his law practice to advance social and economic justice. As a volunteer, he served food at Daily Bread; in later years, he worked in the emergency room at Lynchburg General Hospital. He was a lifelong Democrat.

Alex was dramatic, imaginative, curious, playful, and moody. His view of the world was dark. Ironic wit, a fondness for word play, and a penchant for allusion and for colorful, hyperbolic language made him an entertaining, challenging, and sometimes confrontational conversationalist. He enjoyed long friendships and a long and loving marriage. He treasured his son and grandchildren. For years an avid runner, he appreciated good food and drink, strong coffee, and every kind of music. He liked camping, fishing, and Duke basketball. He was an avid reader and a brilliant writer. Most of all, he took pleasure in talking. He could hold forth as volubly and extravagantly with perfect strangers as he could with his dearest friends and his colleagues in the law.

Alex's family is grateful, as Alex himself was, for the skilled and compassionate professionals who cared for him in the last years of his life: the pharmacists, nurses, and doctors at the Pearson Cancer Center, especially Dr. Cecilia MacCallum, and the staff of Drinkard Healthcare Center at Westminster Canterbury, especially those in nursing, physical and occupational therapy, dining services, housekeeping, and hospice.

Memorial contributions may be made to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., 40 Rector Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10006, www.naacpldf.org, Lynchburg Daily Bread, 721 Clay Street, Lynchburg, VA 24504, www.lynchburgdailybread.com, or the Employee Education Fund at Westminster Canterbury, 501 V.E.S. Road, Lynchburg, VA 24503.

* * * * * * *

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he

complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the

world.

. . . . . . . . . .

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.