RANDY BELL’S PORTRAIT UNVEILING
BY
C. TOLBERT GOOLSBY, JR.
JUDGE, SOUTH CAROLINA COURT OF APPEALS
In the album Daydreams and Lullabies, a poem accompanying Johannes Brahms “The Sandman” reads in part:
The stars, they travel far and wide,
Then linger at the mountain side.
But their task is only done
When the birds release the sun.
Randy Bell, the star of the South Carolina Court of Appeals, traveled from Kentucky to Virginia to England to Massachusetts before he lingered at these foothills of the Appalachian Mountains that you and I know as South Carolina.
I count it as one of life’s blessings to have known Randy Bell and to have participated in much of the work that he did before he was released to the sun at age 48.
I knew him first as a fellow employee at the Attorney General’s office. In fact, I was his supervisor. When Randy, fresh out of law school, joined the attorney general’s staff in 1971, then Attorney General Dan McLeod assigned him to special litigation, the section I headed. At the time, I was prosecuting the South Carolina Senate and defending the State House of Representatives in two different reapportionment suits before a three-judge United States District Court.
I called Randy into my office, told him I wanted him to help me on the two cases, and gave him his assignment regarding which portion of the two briefs he was to write. I also told him that the court had set a deadline for our brief in each case and that the deadline was now just two days away. “We gotta work fast,” I told him. I returned to my office where, in those pre-WordPerfect Days, I furiously wrote, striking through words, inserting others, and cutting and pasting pages from a yellow pad to hand to the secretary for her to type or retype.
Several times during the writing of the briefs, I left my office to fetch a law book. Randy’s office sat right at the entrance to the library. Whenever I passed by his office, I observed him just sitting there, staring out into space, an empty yellow pad on his desk.
As I frantically struggled to put my portion of each brief together and as the deadline quickly approached, I got aggravated walking by Randy’s office and seeing him simply sitting there and doing nothing.
I couldn’t take it any more. I didn’t care if he did go to Harvard, and Oxford, and William and Mary, he was gonna have to learn how to work. So, I stormed into his office, pointed to my watch, and said to him, “Listen here, when do you intend to get down to doing some work?” Randy looked at me and said, “I am working. I am thinking.”
Because of the efforts of William Witherspoon, Steve McKelvey, Ken Ritchstad and others, we are able to honor Judge Bell today with his portrait. This portrait, as you will soon see, captures his gentle spirit and basic goodness. It mirrors his brilliance. The portrait will help us to remember Judge Bell—not that we need a portrait of him to do so, however. As Benjamin Franklin once observed, “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing about.”
Randy did both. He wrote things worth reading and he did things worth writing about.
Phaedrus, the Roman fabulist, lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. One of his tales, a very short one, is entitled “What the Old Woman Said to the Wine Jar.” It goes like this:
An old woman once caught sight of a wine jar
which the drinkers had drunk and left empty.
The flask had held a fine [wine]
and its dregs still diffused a delicious aroma.
As she eagerly sniffed the scent, she sighed. “Delightful perfume, how perfect in your prime
you must have been, when your remains are so marvelous.”
In the generations to come, there will be lawyers, judges, law professors, and law students who will catch sight of the South Carolina Reports and of the Southeastern Reporter. In each of these works, they will find reports of cases long since digested.
But if they will look closely at these reports, they will discover that these printed remains still convey a delicious aroma. That aroma, they will also discover, stems from the opinions authored by Randall T. Bell, Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals and Associate Justice-Elect of the South Carolina Supreme Court. And if they will read these opinions and think of their author, they too will say, “Delightful perfume, how perfect in your prime you must have been, when your remains are so marvelous.”
Did he really write opinions worth reading? Read, for instance, Wardlaw v. Peck or Snakenberg v. Hartford Casualty Insurance Company and you tell me.
One other thing about his opinions, if memory serves, no one on our court ever penned a dissenting opinion to one of his; that’s not to say, however, that the Supreme Court didn’t quash him a time or two though, earning him the right to display outside his chambers the coveted quash bowl.
Judge Bell’s writings, in the words of Bayard Taylor, will last “Till the sun grows cold, and the stars are old, and the leaves of the judgment book unfold.”
But what did Randy do that is worth writing about?
He, more than any other judge on the newly created Court of Appeals, gave the court credibility. He did this by carefully reviewing and editing the work of each one of us. Sometimes, he gave us letter grades. Me? I was a C student.
The attention Randy gave to our work reminds me of the one joke he liked to tell. It concerned a rather hard-drinking old boy who, one day to please his wife, promised to give up drinking and agreed to be baptized. When the preacher pulled him up from the water, the preacher asked him, “Son, are you happy?” The old boy looked at the preacher and said, “I’m happy; but I ain’t damn happy.”
I always felt that, whenever Randy concurred in one of my opinions or otherwise approved it, it might be wrong, but it wasn’t damn wrong.
What else did he do for the court? Take a look at the seal of this Court of Appeals. Judge Bell designed it.
With all due respect to the South Carolina Supreme Court, is there a court seal in all the land as elegant, as powerful, as reassuring? I can’t look at it without thinking of Judge Bell. The seal is so much like Judge Bell, with its figure of a Roman praetor, sitting there, on his chair—thinking.
Note the Latin Inscription appearing on the right hand side of the seal, or appearing “dexter,” as Judge Bell would say: Ius Suum Cuique. These words mean, “To Each His Due.” The inscription is a quotation from the classical jurist Ulpian and they express the ideal of impartial justice for all. Judge Bell, drawing on his knowledge of Roman law, a subject he, as a Professor of Law, taught for many years at the University of South Carolina Law School, chose the words.
And the court-cry that announces our court each session; it too, is so much like Judge Bell. Listen as I recite it:
Be upstanding for the court! All persons having anything to do before the honorable judges of the Court of Appeals draw near and give your attendance, for the court is now in session. God save the people of South Carolina and this court.
There is a good reason why this cry is so much like Judge Bell—he fashioned it, basing the cry on a traditional oral summons once used in the English common law courts for many centuries.
Outside the legal profession, what did he do? He served his country as an officer in the United States Army Reserve and rose to the rank of Captain.
In addition to that, Judge Bell was a life-long Christian. He not only believed as a Christian, he lived his faith. Those who heard his series of Sunday School lessons about the parables of Jesus can attest to his commitment.
Just as he left his mark upon the Court of Appeals, he left his mark upon the church. You need not travel far to see this. If you should ever worship at the Westminster Presbyterian Church on Broad River Road here in Columbia, take notice of the second stain-glass window on the right side of the sanctuary. One of the two figures depicted in this unique window is the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. You remember the story, I’m sure. After Constantine saw a vision of the cross in the sky, he converted to Christianity, thus ending the persecution of the church and allowing for the unimpeded spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. Who gave this window picturing this important Roman Emperor to Westminster? Unsurprisingly, it was that Roman law scholar Judge Bell who did so - he and his wife, Pamela.
Those who knew Judge Bell well knew he suffered for many years from the effects of Fabry’s disease. He was for a long time on kidney dialysis and he later underwent a kidney transplant, which eventually failed. Through it all he maintained his faith and he continued to serve the people of his adopted state honorably and well. He did so without complaint and without self-pity, always with the hope that his physical condition would improve.
We had the occasion recently to honor the memory of the late John P. Gardner, one of the original judges of the South Carolina Court of Appeals. In honoring Judge Gardner, I spoke briefly about Judge Bell, saying that “Those who knew Judge Bell remember him as being absolutely brilliant, a devoted student of the law, and a man with few equals on the bench.”
I think all the judges who served with Judge Bell on the inaugural court will agree that he was our brightest star.
In addition to having a great, shining intellect, Judge Bell had courage. Those of us who witnessed his struggle against kidney disease know this first hand. But he also had the courage to withstand pressure to alter ways that he thought right and proper for him. I remember the first day the Court of Appeals held court. We invited the Supreme Court to take part in our opening session. While we all waited to enter the courtroom, Chief Judge Alex Sanders noticed that Judge Bell had not buttoned his robe but wore it in the manner of an Oxford academic gown. Judge Sanders often attempted to emulate Judge Bell. So, like him, Judge Sanders undid the buttons to his robe and wore it fully opened.
As we stood there waiting to go into the courtroom, Justice J.B. “Sweet ol’ Bubba” Ness walked up to Chief Judge Sanders and in his kind, sweet way told Judge Sanders, “Button you robe! What’s the matter with you?”
Judge Sanders quickly complied, buttoning his robe so rapidly that he hooked the middle button to the neck of his robe. If you will look at the picture taken of Judge Sanders that day, you will see that he looks like he’s literally choking to death. His robe is tightly wrapped around his throat, much like a garrote.
Anyway, after Justice Ness made sure Judge Sanders had buttoned his robe, Justice Ness walked over to Judge Bell and in the same sweet voice, told Judge Bell to “Button your robe!”
Judge Bell looked at Justice Ness, raised his chin, and said, “No, I will not. I wear mine this way, and I always shall.” Justice Ness said, “All right, then, wear it like that.” And Judge Bell did so. Now, knowing Justice Ness like I did, I think that what Randy did that day really did take courage—and a lot of it, too.
Judge Bell also had wit. I’ve alluded to that already. In Ahrens v. McDaniel, a 1985 case, Judge Bell wrote an opinion in which the court ruled against two fishermen who contested the results of a fishing tournament. (When their purported winning fish was cut open by state wildlife officials, they found it contained a quantity of ice and water in its stomach. The rules, it seems, prohibited foreign objects being inserted into a fish.)
Judge Bell began his opinion, quoting from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and he ended his opinion, writing:
We appreciate the keen disappointment an angler feels over “the one that got away.” It is unfortunate the prize eluded the plaintiffs in this tournament. But their skill with hook and line has not been entirely unrepaid. We ask them to keep in mind the first maxim of fishing (and here he quoted Izaak Walton’s 1653 work, The Compleat Angler): “Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.”
I’ve often wondered if those two fishermen appreciated Judge Bell’s reaching all the way back to a 1653 work to emphasize his point.
Judge Bell was loved by his friends and he, in turn, was not one to let them down. The Sunday before the Wednesday of the election contest for the Supreme Court, Randy and his wife came over to our home for dinner and to visit with my son, whom he adored, and his family. Afterward, I asked if he planned to spend the rest of the day making telephone calls to legislators and doing other campaigning. He said, “No. I’m going to Augusta to visit Barbara Hamilton.” Barbara was one of Judge Sanders’ former law clerks and she had just undergone a kidney transplant.
Judge Bell had unquestioned integrity. He was neither a plaintiff’s judge nor a defendant’s judge. He had no agenda except to follow, when deciding cases, the admonition of Saint Paul found in Philippians 4:8, that in whatever we do we think about “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, [and] whatever is gracious.”
More than any other judge I have ever known, Randy Bell, as a man given the power to rule, strictly abided by the words found in II Samuel 23:3. “He that ruleth over men must be just.” Judge Bell was a just and noble man, a true hero of the legal profession.
Washington Irving once wrote, “The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.” I don’t think that will ever happen to Judge Randall T. Bell, no matter how gifted his successors may be.
And when the day comes when the judgment book is opened and the Lord Almighty begins, as Psalm 82 tells us He will do, to pronounce judgment on the judges, I am confident God will find Judge Bell, to have been a judge who considered the evidence, one who did not grant special favors, and one who gave fair judgment—the very things Psalm 82 tells us God will expressly be looking for.
I think all will agree Randy died too young. Indeed, his death came as a shock. Randy’s death left his friends, his family, and the judiciary of this state absolutely stunned. When I think of his dying and of his leaving us, I am reminded of Henry Scott Holland’s poem Perspective:
I am standing on the seashore.
A ship spreads her sails to the morning breeze,
And starts for the ocean.
I stand watching her until she fades on the horizon.
And someone at my side says,
“She is gone!”
Gone where? The loss of sight is
In me, not in her.
At that moment when someone says,
“She is gone,”
There are others who are watching her coming. Other voices take up the glad shout . . . .
“Here she comes!”
And that is dying.
When the day comes for each of us who were once his colleagues to set sail across Death’s grim ocean, I am sure that when we reach the other side each of us will hear a happy voice call out, “Here he comes!” That voice will belong to Randy.
Although Randy passed away before he reached the mountain top, his writings live and his work remains. They will be judged, to paraphrase the words of William Sewell, “Not by what [he] might have been but by what he had been.”
And what was he? Simply the best, a delightful perfume.
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