Lamar, Beaumont Foundation of America to honor Major T. Bell

Lamar University and the Beaumont Foundation of America have announced the third of nine Southeast Texas Legends Scholarships - this one honoring the late Major T. Bell.

Bell's distinguished career took him from a district attorney's office in the East Texas Piney Woods to a prestigious law firm now celebrating its centennial.

Major Bell devoted almost half a century to the legal profession, beginning as district attorney for the 4th Judicial District, including Shelby, Panola and Rusk counties.

He joined the law firm now known as Orgain, Bell and Tucker in 1926 and became a partner in 1945.

He served as president of both the State Bar of Texas and Jefferson County Bar Association and was honored as the Beaumont Legal Secretaries' first Boss of the Year.

The $100,000 Southeast Texas Legends-Major T. Bell Scholarship will assist under-served individuals who attend Lamar, President James Simmons said at a ceremony and news conference Tuesday, March 6, in the University Reception Center of the Mary and John Gray Library.

"This generous gift to Lamar University will enable the name of Major T. Bell to live in perpetuity, leaving a lasting legacy for students pursuing the dream of higher education," Simmons said as family and friends joined officials of the Beaumont Foundation and the university at the event. "Through this scholarship, Major Bell will be an inspiration to future generations of Lamar students."

"Dad would have loved this because he was for higher education, for people getting ahead and for going to school and staying in school," said his younger son, Thomas S. Bell of Beaumont, owner of Thomas S. Bell Advertising & Design and a 1966 graphic design graduate of Lamar.

"He knew the value of an education because he worked his way through school. He would appreciate being honored as a legend of Southeast Texas. I think it's a great honor, and I think he would have thought so too."

Also among those attending were Tom Bell's wife, Marilyn, and Bell's older son, Richard, of Burnet.

Asked to name qualities best describing his father, Tom Bell lists honesty, integrity and kindness. "Dad had an aura about him that was pure honesty," he said. "He was quiet and unassuming and had a dry sense of humor. He never got rattled. He never lost it. I never saw him angry. He always seemed to be under control, and I guess he was that way in as well as out of the courtroom.

"He helped his entire family out, and he didn't ever turn anybody down if they needed help - financial, emotional or whatever."

Bell added: "Dad was always a straight-shooter. When I was a boy and did something wrong, he never lifted a hand to spank me. But I was always called to his office. After a talk with Major Bell, you would come out feeling about knee-high to a cricket. For days and days, I would think about what he had told me. He had a way of making you understand right from wrong."

When Major Bell was president of the State Bar of Texas, he wrote in the August 1943 Texas Bar Journal: "Every abridgment of liberty demands a reason."

Indeed, said Gilbert "Buddy" Low, a trustee of the Beaumont Foundation and a partner in Orgain, Bell and Tucker. "He was a man of honesty and integrity. He stood up for his clients and their rights. He would get off a case if it did not meet his standards."

Low and Benny Hughes, who is now of counsel with the firm, recall that when they joined Orgain, Bell and Tucker in 1960, Bell was in charge of operations.

"He was a mentor to me," said Hughes. "He was a lawyer's lawyer - he had been there and done that. He was a great teacher who would take time to look over my work, critique it and tell me what I had done wrong and what I had done right. That was extremely valuable to me."

When he and Low came to the firm, said Hughes, "While Mr. (Will) Orgain had been our founder, Mr. Bell was manager of operations.

Previous to that time, he had an extensive trial practice in litigation. By 1960, He was pretty much conducting an office practice - estates, trusts and banks - and managing the firm."

Bell was first a trial lawyer with the firm, specializing in personal injury and land cases. After World War II, he turned to probate and business law.

The law firm also represented a number of railroads, with Kansas City Southern as the main rail client, Low said.

The firm represented Gulf States Utilities Co., predecessor to Entergy - beginning when it was an ice house.

Many of the firm's cases went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Major Bell argued before the highest courts of the state and the nation.

Orgain, Bell and Tucker is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, with expertise in trial and appellate areas of civil litigation: employment, corporate, finance, immigration, real estate, business and trust law.

Major Townsend Bell was born Dec. 4, 1897, in Tenaha, Shelby County, Texas, one of eight children. His father owned the town hardware store, where Bell worked in his youth.

He earned a law degree in 1923 from the University of Texas, where he was student editor of the Texas Law Review.

"He liked to read, and he did not want to be in the retail business like his dad," Tom Bell said. "As a result of his reading, I think he got interested in the law and decided to help people by being a lawyer. So that's what he did."

Major Bell was a veteran of World War I. According to his son, while his dad was in officer training school, the commandant insisted he use his middle name, Townsend, instead of his first name, Major, to eliminate any confusion about his true rank.

So, by the time the war ended, Major T. Bell was Lt. M. Townsend Bell.

While doing legal research at Tyrrell Public Library, he met Phoebe Bone, a native of Crowley, La., who had earned a master's degree in library science from Sophie Newcomb College.

They married Aug. 12, 1933, and had two sons, Richard McCreary Bell of Burnet and Thomas Sterrett Bell.

After Major Bell died in 1969, Phoebe Bell worked as a reference librarian at Lamar's Mary and John Gray Library.

She died in 1988.

Major Bell was a founder of Calder Baptist Church, where he served as a deacon, and was a member of Beaumont Country Club.

He was a Mason and served on the board of the Beaumont YMCA. In his off time, usually limited to Sundays, Bell played a little golf and enjoyed fishing.

"He always loved hardware stores, even though he didn't want to work in one," said his son Tom. "And he loved growing tomatoes. Our whole backyard was full of tomatoes."

His son remembers the many railroads the firm represented. "He had a railroad pass on just about every railroad that came through Beaumont. He could ride anywhere he wanted to anytime he wanted because they did legal work for the railroads," Tom Bell said.

Low also spoke at the ceremony. W. Frank Newton, president and chief executive officer, was among those those joining the Bell family and friends and Lamar officials at the event.

"This scholarship will expand, enhance and strengthen opportunities for those students most in need of assistance," Newton said. "We believe scholarships such as this are the backbone of how to achieve excellence and growth."

The Beaumont Foundation of America is a non-profit corporation that grew out of an historic $2.1 billion settlement of a nationwide class action suit to obtain relief for those who bought defective computers.

"The foundation is still focused on the underserved, but our mission has broadened beyond technology," said Newton. "That broadened mission starts with a fundamental reality of our global economy - education is essential for a successful life."

Lamar will award the scholarship beginning in fall 2007.