By Jan Pudlow
Senior Editor

Doubly historic was the day James E.C. Perry became the 85th justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

“The court now has a majority of its members who have been appointed by a single governor — and during his first term in office!” exclaimed Chief Justice Peggy Quince to the overflow crowd June 5.

“This day is also historic in the sense that we have seen by this appointment the increase in diversity on this court that reflects the state’s population. James E.C. Perry becomes the fourth African-American jurist to join the Florida Supreme Court.”

Florida’s other three were proud to take part in the ceremony that left Perry dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief and laughing heartily.

Joseph Hatchett, the first black appointed to the Florida Supreme Court, swore in Perry, the first African-American judge appointed to the 18th Judicial Circuit in Seminole County. Leander Shaw, the state’s first black chief justice, presented him a Bible from Florida Bar President Jay White. And Chief Justice Quince presided over the ceremony with gentle reminders to try to keep 14 speakers’ comments to three minutes, challenging them to beat Justice Charles Canady’s current record of a 58-minute investiture.

But accolades and anecdotes spilled over to 90 minutes while honoring 65-year-old Perry, with a poignant personal story of growing up poor in North Carolina, serving in the U.S. Army as first lieutenant, and graduating from Columbia Law School in 1972. When Georgia refused to let him sit for the bar exam, the 27-year-old new law school grad took them on with a class-action lawsuit — and the rest is history.

Gov. Charlie Crist good-naturedly acknowledged, without actually mentioning the specifics, a case pending before the Florida Supreme Court on his stalled judicial appointment in the Fifth District Court of Appeal, because he wants more minority nominees.

“I’m very proud of the diversity that this appointment represents. It means a lot to me. I’ve actually been embroiled with a challenge with some other circuits, and that’s OK,” Gov. Crist said, as chuckles rippled through the courtroom.

“You know, if it wasn’t worth fighting for, we wouldn’t fight for it. I’m appreciative of the process and I respect it.”

The governor then turned his gaze to Justice Perry, and told him: “I’m grateful that you said, ‘Yes,’”

“Justice Perry and I had a connection during the interview process that was undeniable,” Gov. Crist said. “I was struck by his humility and his demeanor and his calm. I always say to people, when I have the opportunity to interview them for such a prestigious appointment, ‘Please relax. Don’t be nervous. This is going to be a piece of cake.’ And they all look at me, like, ‘Yeah, right,’

“But not him,” the governor said, gesturing to Perry. “He said, ‘I’m the most relaxed guy you are ever going to meet.’

“I said, ‘Why’s that?’

“He said, ‘Because I just try to do what’s right.’

“That was profound to me,” the governor said, adding it reminded him of his favorite poem, “If,” by Rudyard Kipling.

“There’s one line that stands out and it relates to you, Justice Perry. It’s the line that says, and I’ll paraphrase it: ‘If you can walk with kings, yet keep the common touch, you will be a man, my son.’

“And that is you. You have kept the common touch and you have risen.”

Miami lawyer Phil Freidin, of Freidin & Dobrinksy, left no mistake he adores the humble friend who shuns titles and prefers to be called “Jim.”

“He wins you over with that irresistible smile. . . . Then he wraps in those big arms for a gentle, loving, hug. . . . And his voice is a river of kindness and hope. Even his voice mail chokes me up,” Freidin admitted.

Freidin delved briefly into Perry’s background as an athlete and scholar, back in a time and place “when the idea of a black man going to college was rare.”

“On the night Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed, Jim made a decision that would change his life. Though he’d never met a lawyer, he decided to become one so that he could become a man of impact,” Freidin recounted.

When Perry applied for admission to the Georgia Bar, “he came face- to-face with full-blown institutional racism,” Freidin said.

“All 51 blacks were excluded. Jim decided he wouldn’t stand for it and he fought back courageously.”

Perry’s victorious lawsuit “doubled the black lawyers in Georgia in one fell swoop and resonated for African-Americans for years to come.”

Freidin thanked the governor for recognizing in Perry his “vast love and knowledge of American law,” and his “extraordinary wisdom acquired from a lifetime of good and bad experiences of all kinds, during tumultuous and halcyon times”. . . that have made Perry a “completed human being loved by and in love with his family.”

Justice Perry beamed, surrounded by his wife, Adrienne Perry, the former mayor of Longwood and a professor at Stetson University, and their three children: Willis Perry, a businessman in Tallahassee, and Jaimon Perry and Kamilah Perry, both Central Florida attorneys.

“I’m not sure he even knows now what nudged him at the age of 65 to start filling out an application to become the oldest justice ever appointed to this court,” Freidin said. “I suggested that he use the words ‘age-enhanced.’ Jim said to me, ‘Are you crazy? Being old is my best qualification.’”

Again, the well-wishers laughed.

“Perhaps, though, it was the bright light of audacious hope created by our nation’s first African-American president that beckoned him.”

Other speakers including third-year Florida A&M law student Bruce Mount, Jr., who described how this “giant of a man” came up to him at a Boys & Girls Club dinner and inspired him to go to college. And daughter Kamilah Perry, a lawyer at Tampa’s Phelps & Dunbar, said her father’s “true philosophy boils down to two questions: “‘What’s the problem? And why are you worried about that?’”

When the last speech was given, the last tear dried, the last laugh chuckled, Perry donned the robe and took his place on the high court bench.

He remembered “my loved ones who are observing these proceedings from on high and thank them for the great values they instilled in me. My mother and siblings would have been so proud and happy. And my father, well, he would have been astonished,” Justice Perry said.

Saying his promotion is “bittersweet” because he will “miss being in the trenches and working with the Drug Court team attorneys and clients on a daily basis,” Justice Perry said he is deeply honored “to take this seat so ably filled by former Justice Charlie Wells for 15 years.

“I am acutely aware that I would not be here if it were not for the services and sacrifices of civil rights leaders who turned so many stumbling blocks into stepping stones and paved the way of progress for me and our nation on the whole,” Perry continued.

“I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge their heroics. May God grant me the grace and the wisdom to honor their memories and earn the faith you have placed in me.”