by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
staff writer
Mark Hulsey Jr. was a leader in many areas of his life.
He served as president of The Florida Bar, president of The Jacksonville Bar Association, chair of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce and chair of the Jacksonville Port Authority.
Associates remembered Hulsey, who died July 22 at the age of 88, as a problem-solver in all of his endeavors and as a “mentor of mentors.”
“The greatest attribute of lawyers is solving problems. That’s where the great lawyers shine,” said Judge Gerald Tjoflat of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
“He loved to solve problems. For his generation, going to court was the last resort. You solved the problem first. In today’s culture, you go to court first and solve the problem later,” he said.
Both Tjoflat and Hulsey attended and served St. John’s Cathedral located in Downtown Jacksonville and the church may have been the source of Hulsey’s greatest problem-solving achievement, according to Tjoflat.
The story of how Hulsey, Tjoflat and four other Episcopalians worked together in the late 1960s to prevent Episcopal High School from foreclosure was told at the recent Episcopal Founder’s Day celebration and recounted in a recent letter written by St. John’s Cathedral Dean Kate Moorehead.
Moorehead is vice president of the board of trustees of the school, now called Episcopal School of Jacksonville.
“The school had been built on the assumption that a bequest was coming in, large enough to put the school’s mortgage at rest,” wrote Moorehead in a letter to the congregation.
The gift was never received, so Hulsey and fellow Episcopalians were left with the task of saving the school from foreclosure.
“For years, Mark and another lawyer in this group of six went month to month to the bank, begging for more time to solve the financial crisis and avoid foreclosure. Drawing on the skills great lawyers possess, they succeeded,” she wrote
“They bought enough time to enable a plan Mark had devised to come to fruition. Another bank intervened, paid off the mortgage debt, and gave the school the line of credit it desperately needed. In time, as the school grew and prospered, the debt was paid in full,” wrote Moorehead.
Though Hulsey’s life and career included many accomplishments, Tjoflat believed that the work to save the school may have been one his most fulfilling.
“Of the all the things he accomplished, that episode with the school where he was the point man, that was his greatest satisfaction, when all odds were against success,” said Tjoflat.
Hulsey stressed community involvement to young lawyers when he joined Lloyd Smith in 1969 at a firm that would become Smith Hulsey & Busey.
“It was part of his leadership program to encourage people to get out into the community,” said Stephen Busey, chair of Smith Hulsey & Busey.
“He did it not just for leadership development, but also to show the importance of helping the community,” he said.
When Hulsey joined the firm there were about eight lawyers. It now employs 50.
Busey credits Hulsey’s high standards for the firm’s achievements.
“He had high standards of excellence in the practice of law and professionalism,” said Busey.
“He set about hiring very good lawyers, who were very capable and with a lot of character. It was his standards of excellence and professionalism in hiring and mentoring that grew this firm to what it is today,” he said.
Hulsey taught by example when it came to mentoring, according to Busey.
“He had this chair in front of his desk that had this little pillow on it with an owl on the pillow, and it became known as the ‘owl chair,’” said Busey.
“The way he mentored was that people would sit in his office in the owl chair for the whole day or a significant part of the day and just watch Mark practice law. They watched his communication on the telephone, his dictations to other lawyers and his handling of pleadings. A lot of lawyers in this community have sat in the owl chair and learned how to practice law,” he said.
“He was a mentor of mentors,” Busey added.
Hulsey also wanted to contribute to the improvement of the practice of law overall, said his associates.
More than 30 years ago Hulsey, a University of Florida graduate, partnered with Charles Kimbrell, a University of Georgia graduate, to create a moot court competition that would be held during the week of the annual Florida-Georgia football game.
They wanted to provide law school students some real-world experience in the courtroom and encourage students to pursue a career in law.
“We try to emphasize that you shouldn’t go into this profession to make a lot of money,” said Hulsey, during an interview at the 2008 moot court competition.
Smith Hulsey & Busey will continue to support the competition.
356-2466