Florida Bar Journal

James E.C. Perry: Justice of the Florida Supreme Court

James Perry was only 11 when he joined his first civil rights demonstration: a mock funeral procession with a casket symbolizing the death of Jim Crow.

They marched from the church in front of his home in the segregated projects of New Bern, North Carolina, to the field where he played sports.

It was May 17, 1954, the day the U.S. Supreme Court declared separate schools for black and white students unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.

“We thought he was dead, but, you know, the expense of that funeral has yet to be paid,” Florida Supreme Court Justice Perry said with a wry laugh.

Growing up with a strong social conscience on the front lines of history, Perry joined many more peaceful civil rights demonstrations as a boy and young man, living the philosophy he now passes along to college students: “Don’t be afraid to seek the truth or rock the boat.”

During his undergrad years at Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, he and fellow football team members protested unequal treatment and sought understanding from kindred spirits. They didn’t find it at the First Baptist Church of Raleigh. Along with three students, Perry dressed in his Sunday best to attend worship services with the all-white congregation, only to be ordered removed from the sanctuary by the pastor from the pulpit.

He will never forget the day he heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speak, and then marched with the civil rights icon in downtown Raleigh, while the Ku Klux Klan — some wearing white hoods and some dressed like storm troopers ready for battle — glowered and shouted the n-word, trying without success to intimidate.

“When you are not allowed a seat at the local lunch counter, it’s hard to imagine a seat on the Florida Supreme Court,” Justice Perry once wrote.

After nine years as an 18th Circuit judge, followed by nearly eight years on the Florida Supreme Court, 72-year-old Perry will finish his judicial career in December because of “constitutional senility,” the Florida law mandating judges retire during the term they hit 70.

“I will rest a little while, but I won’t stop. I have no idea,” Justice Perry said, when asked what he plans to do next. “You see, my whole life has never been planned. Opportunities will present themselves, and I’m flexible enough to be attuned to those opportunities. As long as it’s positive, as long as it’s helping other people, as long as I’m happy, I’ll do it.”

Describing himself as “a public servant who loves the public,” Justice Perry is a gentle giant who likes to hug, a colorful storyteller who’s good at listening, a straight-shooter who’s true to himself, an accomplished jurist who never lost the common touch.

‘Apartheid in America’
Perry’s life began in New Bern, North Carolina, as a poor child growing up in the segregated projects, at a time he calls “apartheid in America.”

In one of those moments he describes as “life having a way of correcting itself,” in 2004, Judge Perry returned to his hometown to be honored with the “Key to the City.”

To better understand his own story, Perry shares New Bern’s unique history as a Union city during the Civil War that became a safe haven for slaves.

Led by Union General Ambrose Burnside, the Battle of New Bern on March 14, 1862, captured the strategic river port town, with a combined force of 11,000 soldiers. With Confederate forces driven away, slaves flocked to New Bern and nearby James City, in what historians described as the largest refuge in North Carolina for black men and women.

“The first blacks to fight for the Union out of the South came from New Bern,” Perry said.

In exchange for fighting for the Union, New Bern’s blacks demanded benefits: Take care of our families and educate our children. Teachers from Massachusetts came down to teach.

“So we had a head start on everybody else,” Perry said. “There’s a certain uniqueness about black people from New Bern. Nobody has a Southern drawl accent in New Bern.”

Though there were lynchings in North Carolina and crosses burned on the front yard of his uncle, Perry said those scary facts were kept from him as a boy, so he never feared standing up for what’s right.

He describes his parents as “people of integrity, loving Christians, people of faith.”

His mother, Julia Mae, finished the third grade and worked as a maid at the Queen Anne Hotel. She was 40 when she delivered a little boy she gave the big name of James E.C. Perry (though she always called him “Sonny”).

The E.C. stands for Edward Clark.

“My favorite uncle’s name is Seth Clark Williams. He was president of the NAACP. My mother met this woman, whose name was Ms. Edwards. She told my mother, ‘If you name him after me, he won’t have to want for anything.’ I haven’t seen her since, but the name sounds rather aristocratic. You’d think I was born with a silver spoon. But, actually, I was born with a wooden spoon, like you get with ice cream,” Justice Perry said, belting out a belly laugh.

His father, Glado Alonzo Perry, known as G.A., worked as a lathe operator in a veneer plant to help support his mother and younger siblings.

“My dad’s mother was a teacher. She graduated from the normal school, like the 12th grade today, and she home-schooled him. He could read and write. He taught himself to play the piano and organ. He could make anything. He became foreman of the veneer plant,” Perry said.

“I was the only guy in the projects whose dad would write poetry.”

Asked if he respected his dad, Perry answers softly: “I guess I do now.”

But as a kid, he admits he hated his dad who forgot Christmas, never showed up for James’ high school football and basketball games, and missed his graduations from high school, college, and law school.

When he was 11 and already 6-foot-2, James asked his dad for a bicycle, and his father said: “You’re bigger than I am. Go get a job.”

James lasted one day in the tobacco fields, where the leaves stung his eyes and he couldn’t work fast enough. He cleaned offices and became a driver’s helper on the Coca-Cola truck that would later lead to rather lucrative union summer jobs in high school and college working for Coca-Cola in New York City.

In 1952, his father borrowed $50 from an uncle to publish a book of poems, Inspiration — The Gospel in Poetry, and James helped peddle the little blue books for 50 cents each to church-goers.

But he never read his father’s poems. Not until much later.

In 1991, after his dad had died and Perry was a successful lawyer in downtown Orlando and doted on his three children, in stark contrast to his father’s example, he asked his mother if she still had one of those poetry books.

Reaching under her bed, his mother pulled out a worn copy of The Gospel in Poetry. Perry read the 62 poems over and over, verses about racism, segregation, marriage, fatherhood, and faith, with these titles: “The Prodigal Son,” “The Devil,” “The Day of Grace,” “Discrimination,” “A Parent’s Duty,” “Father’s Day.”

And this from “The Golden Rule”:

“ Do unto others as you would
Have them to do unto you.
Try to accomplish something good…
Be loving, kind and true. ”

In 2000, the year he was appointed to the circuit bench, Perry published 5,000 copies of the book to pass out to folks who crossed his path. Calling it his legacy, Perry keeps a framed copy of the book under glass.

“My father set an example of what not to be,” Perry told the Tampa Bay Times in 2009. “When I read this book, it seems paradoxical. It talks of family and love….When I read this, I said, ‘Wow! Maybe he did love me.’ Because you couldn’t tell by his actions.”

While his parents worked, young James was sent to a babysitter they called Mutt, who cared for 10 kids in her home. She set up a school, like an early version of Head Start, that gave him an educational boost. the time James started kindergarten in New Bern, he not only knew the alphabet, he could read, write cursive, and spell. In the first grade, he was put in the upper tier with children of professional parents.

Thriving in school, James sang in the choir, was the first male to take a typing class, captained the football and basketball teams, was elected vice president of student government, and was voted “Most Versatile, All Around Student.”

“I was taught I was never better than anybody else, but I was no less than anybody else,” Perry said. “So I never had an inferiority complex. Never thought that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do. Never knew what that was.”

No one — not his parents, not his teachers, not his high school guidance counselor — suggested he go to college. It seemed like a luxury reserved for people with money.

Briefcase-Carrying College Student
A mere month before high school graduation, one of life’s unexpected opportunities plopped in Perry’s lap. He grabbed an offer to play football at Saint Augustine’s University, a historically black university in Raleigh. National student loans and work-aid paid tuition and room and board.

First, Perry declared a major in sociology.

“I had no idea what that was. It sounded sophisticated. I took the introduction to sociology class and thought, this is just common sense! Association brings assimilation. Well, we call that ‘birds of a feather flock together,’” Perry said with a laugh.

Looking for a more pragmatic path, Perry majored in business administration and accounting and took to heart a professor’s advice: “You have to look the part to play it.”

Perry carried a briefcase and wore suits and ties to classes.

“He presented himself as one of the professors,” recalled college friend Robert L. Thomas, now a retired regional superintendent for Miami-Dade schools.

Saint Augustine’s Falcon football teammates, Thomas was a defensive corner back and Perry played receiver.

But Perry stopped playing football after his first year, stopped playing basketball after his second year, and instead focused on his academics and became the founding president of Phi Beta Lambda, a student business honor society.

Sports were just a means to an end.

“I wasn’t one to put myself at risk for the team,” Perry said. “The coaches called that ‘having heart.’ I thought it was stupid to get my head banged around.”

Thomas remembers Perry as “a very friendly, kind person, a student leader who was very focused and set goals for himself and made sure he followed through on those goals. And Jim was always political.

“When we were in school during the Jim Crow days, we would picket in Raleigh and try to eat in restaurants and have the same rights as others. We wanted to be able to go into hotels and movies and not be segregated. We wanted to be treated as human beings, and we were not treated the same because of the pigmentation of our skin,” Thomas said.

“We had to march and express ourselves in a nonviolent way. The football team would monitor us and make sure we stayed in line as we marched downtown.”

Rev. Hilton Smith, assisting minister of The Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, first met Perry in college, and remembers him as a jokester who was serious about academics, loved his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, and was dedicated to the civil rights cause.

“We were always amongst a group of adults who strived for better jobs and equality in every way,” Smith said. “In order to do that, we marched, but we did not march in such a way that activism was created. We marched in such a way that people knew what our struggle was and would hear us and give us opportunities. We always looked for a hand, not a hand out. We knew there was no free lunch at the breakfast table of comfort.”

Propelling themselves forward with the “ultimate strength of love,” Smith said, “We had a lot of people who served as role models, whether they were educated or not. They served as solid citizens in the community, solid citizens in the churches, and gave us a lot of help. They didn’t have money, but they gave us encouragement. God can make a way out of no way.”

Once Perry graduated from college, he returned to help others.

“We must go back as we pass along the way, so our living will not be in vain,” Smith said.

His friend, Jim Perry, personified that sentiment, back then and still today.

They are proud they served together on Saint Augustine’s board of trustees, Smith said, “keeping the school afloat and providing scholarships for young people.”

Armed with his business administration degree, Perry landed a job at IBM in Raleigh as a junior accountant, the department’s only black employee.

In IBM’s staid world of black or blue suits and wing-tip shoes, Perry stood out with his plaid sports coats.

“I dressed with a tie, but I didn’t fit that culture,” he said.

Before he could quit that job, in 1966, the U.S. Army called his number.

Uncle Sam Wants You!
The first thing rushing through 22-year-old Perry’s mind when he got his draft notice during the Vietnam War: “I worked and struggled to get out of the projects and now they are going to send me over there to be killed!”

“My sense of mortality was intact,” Perry recalled. “You get lemons; you make lemonade.”

So Perry went to officers’ candidate school.

“This way, if I were going to be killed I would have some control over my destiny. Instead of some guy saying, ‘Charge the hill!’ I’d be the one giving orders. So that’s why I decided to go to officers’ candidate school. I never intended to make a military career.”

As it turned out, 1st Lt. Perry never had to go to Vietnam to fight, but he trained people to go to Vietnam to fight.

“A lot of my classmates were killed. If they weren’t killed, they came back totally shaken,” Perry said. “It’s a total brainwashing, is what it is. In the military, you are trained to kill, kill, kill. It’s not pretty. It’s either kill or be killed. Just that simple.”

While Perry says he “didn’t fit that mold, either,” his military training was invaluable “in terms of understanding the system, respect for authority, respect for the position if not the person. But also in terms of your whole being, in terms of the regimen and training they put you through to break you.”

Describing grueling drills in formation in 100-degree heat, Perry said, “If somebody asked me, ‘Could you do that?’ I’d say, ‘No way!’ But I learned about group dynamics. There were 300 men running in formation and everybody wanted to drop out and no one wanted to be the first one. If one dropped out, it would have a domino effect. So it instilled a sense of self-confidence. Not arrogance, but I can do whatever I want to do.”

Perry was due to make captain the next year. But his life would soon take another unexpected turn.

On April 4, 1968, Perry folded his tall body into his tiny red MG-B convertible and drove from his Army post at Fort Dix to his apartment with wall-to-wall carpet and color TV.

Breaking news interrupted the radio program: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated.

Perry calls it the “seminal moment I decided to go to law school.”

He didn’t know a single lawyer or anything about getting into law school, but he knew this much: A majority of legislators, members of Congress, presidents, and executives — those in power, those with credibility — were lawyers.

In the black community, “our leaders were preachers. And no disrespect to preachers, but I thought we needed to play the game that the system understood.”

In his apartment, Perry was glued to the TV when he heard the commentator say “King is dead,” and asked “Who will lead now?”

And 1st Lt. Perry thought to himself: “They said I was an officer, a gentleman, and a leader in the Army. Why not me?”

Bid Whist, Boone’s Farm, and Deep Talks
The next day at Fort Dix, he announced his law-school plans. Friends asked, “Have you been accepted?”

“No, I haven’t taken the test yet,” Perry replied.

“See, you shouldn’t announce things like that, in case you don’t make it,” his friends advised.

“It never dawned on me that I wouldn’t make it,” Perry said.

Because a college classmate had graduated from Case Western Reserve Law School, Perry applied there and was accepted. But in another twist of fate, he reached out to a frat brother who was a law student at Columbia in New York. When he saw Perry’s LSAT score, he said, “Man, you can attend any law school of your choice. Have you applied to Columbia?” He reached into his drawer and handed Perry an application.

Frank Bolden served in the Army and went to law school with Perry.

“What sticks in my mind back then hasn’t changed over the years,” said Bolden. “I had come back from Vietnam to Fort Dix. I had just been promoted to major. Perry didn’t care about divisions. He came right over and said, ‘I understand you are going to Columbia.’ He was completely down to earth, genuine, and fun — just as he is today.”

In the wake of King’s death, black students started sit-ins and held demonstrations and demanded Columbia Law admit more African-American students, Bolden said.

“Both Perry and I got caught up in that, and our class had the largest number of blacks at Columbia: 24,” Bolden said.

They took inspiring classes from Jack Greenberg, an adjunct law professor who served as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and had helped Thurgood Marshall argue Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It was the time of the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. We were right there in the heart of it in Columbia and New York City and talking about it all the time. It was a heated time,” Bolden recalled.

On Friday nights, Perry would come from his brownstone in Harlem (where a church let him live rent-free to pass it on) to Bolden’s place in Brooklyn. Until late at night, they’d play bid whist, drink cheap booze like Boone’s Farm, and discuss their opportunities.

Bolden, from Albany, Georgia, said he was “wavering about coming back to the South or going to Wall Street and see how the white man made money.” He ended up choosing Wall Street, becoming the first black corporate officer of Johnson & Johnson and vice president of diversity worldwide.

“But Perry was always sure. He was going back South,” Bolden recalled. “He said, ‘That is home; that’s where my people are; and that’s where there’s the greatest need.’”

Ronald Parker, Perry’s roommate and classmate at Columbia, said, “What I remember most and what I remember about him still to this day is his honesty and plain-speaking. Whatever Jim told you, you could rely upon it as gospel.”

Parker and Perry were among many socially conscious classmates at law school, helping raise money for a breakfast program for Harlem kids.

“Probably the only difference between Jim and me is geography,” said Parker, who went to work with Legal Aid/Special Projects in East New York’s Brownsville area. “And Jim chose to come back South. We had the same goals, same ambitions to serve the same people.”

As Perry tells it: “I didn’t go to law school to make money. People never figured out what made me tick. It was never money. It was a sense of fairness and fair play. It wasn’t about race, black and white. It was just about fighting what is inherently unfair.”

With a stipend of $12,500 a year, James Perry took his law degree from Columbia and his new wife from New York City and headed south to represent the poor at legal aid.

The South Does Not Welcome Back Perry
Adrienne Perry remembers that party in Brooklyn when she first met James E.C. Perry and asked him what the “E.C.” stands for.

“Ever-charming,” he answered with a grin, and Adrienne rolled her eyes.

“He saw the look and said, ‘It really means ‘extra cool.’ He kept me laughing the whole night. That is our whole relationship,” said Adrienne, who taught school in New York, got her Ph.D., and retired from Stetson University, where she was a professor specializing in reading and teacher education. Now, she is an adjunct professor at Stetson. She was elected mayor of Longwood in 1989, and she ran for Congress in 1992.

“I’m not a Type A; I’m an A-minus. He makes me laugh and tells me I’m too serious. He takes the edge off things,” she said, of her husband.

They needed a sense of humor when they headed south together, picking up Perry’s mother, Julia Mae, in North Carolina. Perry made good on his promise to his mother that he would get her out of the projects one day, and that was fine with Adrienne. Julia Mae lived the last 35 years of her life with her son and daughter-in-law.

“My mother told me that a man who would take good care of his mother would take good care of his wife and respect women,” Adrienne said.

When Adrienne was in her twenties, she lost her own mother, so Julia Mae became her second mom, and Adrienne always called her Mother. “She really is the person who enabled me to get my doctorate because she helped take care of our children.”

Their first home together was in Augusta, where James Perry had a job with Georgia Indigent Legal Services.

“I was actually thrilled when I got to Augusta,” recalls Adrienne. “One of the first experiences was when I went downtown and parking was just a nickel. If you didn’t have a bunch of quarters in New York, you could not park, even if you were lucky enough to find a space. I thought, ‘This is heaven.’”

She also naively thought the Augusta Garden Club would be a wonderful place to learn how to garden.

Augusta was still the segregated South when James Perry, aided by the GI Bill, went shopping for a home.

A black Realtor and a white Realtor drove Perry around Augusta, and he chose a ranch house under construction in a new subdivision, so Adrienne could pick the colors.

“I said, ‘Look, we don’t want to be the only blacks in the neighborhood. We don’t want to be block-busters,’” James Perry recalled. “I am walking around the neighborhood, trying to find some black kids playing and there weren’t any. We were the only blacks in the neighborhood, and we were ostracized.

“The only one to speak to us was our immediate next-door neighbor. When Adrienne told her she wanted to join the Garden Club to learn how to take care of the grass and flowers, the neighbor said, ‘Are you crazy? They won’t let you in the Garden Club. As a matter of fact, they put me out as a member because I even talked to you!’”

“According to our neighbor, ‘The NAACP put you in there to block-bust and they’re paying your mortgage.’

“I said, ‘I wish they were paying our mortgage!’ We found out the real-estate owner who developed the subdivision lived there, too. And he fired the Realtor who sold us the house because he sold it to us!” James Perry said.

What he didn’t realize at the time, Perry said, was that there had been a riot in Augusta the year before they arrived and people had been killed.

“People were just very timid. They were afraid,” Perry said. “They would tell me, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get used to this.’ I said, ‘No, I can’t get used to this. That is not something that I want to tolerate.’

“For instance, black teachers and white teachers had different colored paychecks, and they didn’t make the same money. The schools were integrated, but the classes were segregated. This was 1974 and Brown was in 1954. They were very, very creative in getting around doing the right thing. And the black people were sort of complicit.”

James E.C. Perry et al. v. Edward S. Sell, Jr., et al.
As if finding the right home wasn’t challenging enough, roadblocks were thrown in Perry’s way as he tried to get licensed to practice law in the South.

In the beginning of his last year of law school, he applied to the North Carolina bar, only to be told their rule required law students to apply their first year of school or wait 27 months.

“That’s ridiculous!” Perry said, so he drove to Greenville, South Carolina, where he was told: “Oh, we don’t have such a rule as North Carolina. But we haven’t passed a black person in seven years.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Perry said. In South Carolina, he was told, this is the rule: If you take the exam two times and fail, you have to go back and get a master’s degree in order to take the bar exam again. And most blacks who took it twice were afraid to take the exam a third time.

So Perry went to Atlanta, where he met with Vice Mayor Maynard Jackson, who told him about Georgia’s routine: “We usually pass three blacks a year. One who graduated from the University of Georgia. One who graduated from Emory. And one other.’”

Perry said: “OK! That one is me!”

Along with 49 other black applicants, Perry took the Georgia bar exam in June 1972 and learned he passed the multi-state exam, but did not pass the Georgia bar.

“I am not used to failing,” Perry said. “So, you lament and then you call around to see what three of the 50 passed. I found out that they didn’t pass anyone. Most of the blacks were in Atlanta working for the white law firms. I decided to call a meeting in Atlanta of the applicants, and I suggested that we sue the Georgia Board of Bar Examiners.

“I could only get 16 out of the 50 to join in the suit. They said, ‘You are going to be blackballed the rest of your life.’ I said, ‘Well, I am not advocating that we burn anything down. This is what we were trained to do.’

“To me, it was a matter of fairness. It was a matter of: How am I going to support my family? How am I going to live? I spent this time in law school for three years, and I can’t ply my trade. It’s like a carpenter not having a hammer.”

The lawsuit was filed in the federal district court in Atlanta, based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, along with due process and equal protection claims. The case was certified as a class action on behalf of all black persons who have taken and failed the Georgia bar exam and not been admitted to practice law.

“That didn’t fly, but it got us into court,” Perry said. Although the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the consolidated lawsuits, Perry said, the point was made. While the case was still in litigation, the plaintiffs sat for the February 1973 Georgia bar exam.

“Miraculously, 11 of the 16 plaintiffs, including me, plus 13 other blacks, passed the bar exam at that sitting,” Perry recounted. At the next bar exam in June 1973, 24 more blacks passed, for a total of 48 new black attorneys.

Before the lawsuit was filed, Perry said, Georgia had only 38 black attorneys in the entire state, and 32 were practicing in Atlanta.

Asked whether he really wanted to be part of the legal profession that was so closed and repressive at that time, Perry answered: “I wasn’t trying to get into that profession. I was trying to tear the system down that perpetuated this. My job was to kick down doors. When you kick down doors, you never expect to be let in.”

When Perry told his mom he was taking on the Georgia bar examiners in federal court, she said, “Sonny, go back to New York and leave these white people alone.”

And Perry responded: “Mother, I can’t go, because I have to defend this fight. I have to look myself in the mirror to shave every day. I wouldn’t be able to stand myself.”

“I understood the dangers. I wasn’t stupid. But you have to be willing to stand for something or you will fall for anything.”

Seminole County’s First Black Judge
In November 1973, while in Washington, D.C., interviewing for a job with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and the FCC, Perry happened to be at a restaurant where he met Horace Orr.

Orr offered him a job as vice president in Sanford to work with the Seminole Employment and Economic Development Corporation (SEEDCO)that used federal grants to invest in new industries to create jobs. A Washington snowstorm propelled Perry to give that job a shot, and he passed the Florida bar exam on the first try in 1975.

At SEEDCO, Perry met Tom Freeman, and years later they would serve on the 18th Circuit bench together. Freeman said he was the “token white” at SEEDCO, where they were “dedicated to improving the lives of people who were not doing well,” by creating better jobs with benefits for people in the community who picked oranges for six months in Florida and then picked apples for six months in New York.

“Jim was a godsend,” said Freeman. “He was a physically imposing man who was very, very friendly. And he came from a very, very disadvantaged background. Whenever I saw him, he was always smiling and had a wonderful attitude. ”

Years later, when they were judges, Freeman remembered one day he was complaining to Perry about a big case with a lot of lawyers involving a lot of money.

“His philosophy on being a judge was very simple. He said, ‘Tom, just do the right thing.’ And after I got through
bitching in his office about what a big pain in the neck it was, he smiled and said, ‘Tom, this is the best job I’ve ever had. How in the world can you complain about being a circuit judge? Everyone stands up when you walk into the room.’ And that was great advice.”

After several unsuccessful attempts playing what Perry called the frustrating “shell game” of the judicial nominating commission process, he was surprised when, in 2000, Gov. Jeb Bush appointed him the first black judge on the 18th Circuit bench, which also made him the first black judge in Seminole County history.

Perry’s favorite job as judge was presiding over drug court.

“Here you are with these addicted people for 18 months, and they relapse. And it’s all part of the restoration. We understand that. At the end, when it’s time for them to graduate, and you allow them to speak, they turn to you and say, ‘You saved my life.’ It doesn’t get much better than that.”

In 2003, Freeman and others urged Perry to take a run at chief judge of the 18th Circuit because they trusted him to leave politics and personalities out of decisions.

“Jim was always very well respected and he earned every bit of it,” Freeman said.

Another judge running for chief judge dropped out, and Perry was elected chief judge unanimously. Perry is proud that he helped bridge Seminole and Brevard counties and foster camaraderie in the 18th Circuit by having judges rotate duties and get to know each other better.

Lawyers liked Judge Perry, too.

“He always let the lawyers have their say, even when it was so much crap you almost fell off the bench,” said Freeman, now 78 and retired from the bench.

Belvin Perry, former chief judge of the Ninth Circuit now in private practice, first met James Perry (no relation) when Belvin was a young assistant state attorney and James was in private practice in downtown Orlando, always offering advice and encouragement.

When James Perry was appointed judge, Belvin Perry said, “He brought to the bench a plain, common-sense approach to complicated issues. He tended to want to simplify things to break down the complex in a way the ordinary person could understand. He was a common person’s judge.”

Chief judges at the same time, they served together on the Trial Court Budget Commission, where Belvin said James “always had opinions but was never opinionated.”

“He was a shining example to young lawyers who aspired to go to the bench, because he never gave up,” Belvin Perry said. “Most people would view the things he encountered in his life as total roadblocks. He looked at them as obstacles he had to overcome. And he never stopped his quest for achieving those, even though the odds were stacked against him. He always believed in himself.”

Controversial Appointment
Loud screaming erupted from Kamilah Perry’s law office, and her colleagues rushed in to see what was wrong. She beamed: “It’s good. I can’t tell you. But I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Her dad had just called to tell her the big news that was still a big secret: Gov. Charlie Crist had appointed him to the Florida Supreme Court and they had to fly the next day to Tallahassee to the Governor’s Mansion for the public announcement.

“I was so proud that he came from where he came from and no one would be able to believe that he could go that far. Just amazing!” said Kamilah, who practices with her brother, Jaimon, at the Perry Law Group in Tampa and Orlando and serves on the Judicial Nominating Procedures Committee.

“I am still in shock, to be honest. I still get goosebumps every time I think about it. He is so jovial and sweet. And he has every reason to be pompous and arrogant. But there is nothing in his body but being humble and grateful.”

After colleagues urged him to apply for retiring Charley Wells’ seat on the high court, and Perry became a finalist, he was interviewed personally by then Republican Gov. Crist. Perry walked into a room with a big table shaped like a horseshoe, and Crist said, “Please relax. Don’t be nervous. This is going to be a piece of cake.”

As Crist wrote in his book The Party’s Over : “Most of the time, the people I’m interviewing look at me like, ‘Yeah, right.’ High-profile job interviews can be nerve-wracking experiences.

“But not for Judge Perry.

“‘I’m the most relaxed guy you are ever going to meet,’ he said.

“‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

“He had what I thought was the perfect answer. ‘Because I just try to do what’s right.’

“That was profound to me. It said volumes. We discussed his love and respect for the law. He explained how he felt a strong responsibility to balance competing values in his work as a judge. He said he recognized how powerful the law could be and also its limits. He spoke about God, what an important part his faith played in his life.

“As our conversation continued, I could detect a real sweetness in Judge Perry, a quality I always tried to find in people who would be on the bench, especially the state’s Supreme Court….Judge Perry obviously cared about people. He understood the difficulties and challenges of life and still had a very cheerful heart.

“Just talking to him, I could tell he’d be an excellent addition to the Florida Supreme Court. I was so impressed by the man that I pretty much concluded by the time our interview was over that I was going to pick him.”

As Crist details in his book, the word got out, and Republicans sent strong signals not to appoint Perry.

“There was nothing in Judge Perry’s record that screamed ‘liberal’ or put him outside the judicial mainstream,” Crist wrote. “His temperament was certainly measured. His biography was awe-inspiring and the court could use greater diversity.”

Emails, faxes, calls, and letters denouncing Perry poured into Crist’s office totaling 27,000, some from conservative groups outside of Florida. During a fundraising trip to New York for the Florida Republican Party, a wealthy hedge-fund chief threatened never to help Crist again. While no one discussed Perry’s race with Crist directly, he wondered if that was part of the problem, especially since Republicans “were feeling battered by the election of Barack Obama.”

Or maybe, Crist thought, the political push-back was the cumulative fallout from his independent streak, regarding the environment, unions, teachers, and women’s rights.

At the swearing-in ceremony at the Florida Supreme Court on June 5, 2009, Gov. Crist turned his gaze to Justice Perry, and told him: “I’m grateful that you said, ‘Yes.’”

At that ceremony, Miami lawyer Phil Freidin 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 you in those big arms for a gentle, loving hug….And his voice is a river of kindness and hope.”

Nearly eight years later, now that Justice Perry’s time on the court is winding down, Freidin said: “I met Jim Perry around the time he was thinking about applying for the Florida Supreme Court. He was about the most open, warm, humble, and straightforward person I ever met. He was also so very wise in the ways of the world we live in.

“Because of all that, I did all I could — as did so many others who felt the same — to help him get appointed. I knew he would be good for the court and our state, but as it turned out he was downright amazing.

“Jim Perry is a unique person who has been an historic member of the court. He will be sorely missed.”

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“The betterment of mankind was always my objective in life.” — James E.C. Perry

When he was a high-school senior, elected “Youth of the Year” of the Boys and Girls Club of Central Florida, Bruce Mount, Jr., was wrapping up his keynote speech at a celebrity breakfast.

He told the crowd that he had been accepted at Howard University, but he was about $27,000 short. Then he told the story about his grandmother saying her bedtime prayers, ending with, “Dear Lord, would you please let me win the lottery?” With a thunderbolt came a knock at the door, and a booming voice announced: “This is God.”

His grandmother asked if he had heard her prayers. God answered, “Yes, my child I have. Can you do me a favor?”

“Anything, God,” she answered.

“Can you at least buy one Lotto ticket?”

The moral of that story: “God helps those who help themselves.”

After the chuckles and applause, Mount looked up from the podium to see a big man approaching, who said in a deep voice, “Son, I was moved by your speech, and my name is Jim Perry.”

Judge Perry, then on the circuit court in Seminole County, told Mount that he went to Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh and went on to graduate from Columbia Law School.

“All I heard was Columbia Law School,” recounted Mount, now a partner at Stuart, Mount, and Boylston in Eatonville, and vice chair of The Florida Bar’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

The next week, Mount traveled with his family to Raleigh, North Carolina, to check out Saint Augustine’s. While in a shopping mall, he got a call from Judge Perry: “Hey, Bruce. How was it?”

“I loved it,” Mount answered.

“How would you like to be a presidential scholar? Full academic scholarship: tuition, room and board for four years,” Perry offered.

Tears streamed down his face, as Mount stood in the middle of the mall, stunned.

“Of course! Thank you! How can I ever repay you?”

Judge Perry, who served on the board of trustees of Saint Augustine’s, his alma mater, said: “Don’t make me look like a fool.”

Like a second father, Perry cheered as Mount played football for the Saint Augustine’s Falcons, the same team he once played for. Mount played on the college golf team, too.

When it was time to graduate, Mount told him he didn’t know what he wanted to do, but maybe law school.

“You are paralyzed by doubt,” Perry told him. “If you apply, everything will work out.”

Had it not been for Judge Perry’s “leap of faith” in him, Mount said, “I probably would not be a lawyer. He made me press through.”

Two years out of law school, when Mount was an assistant public defender, he was asked to run for president of the Virgil Hawkins Chapter of the National Bar Association.

“I was shaken. I was not ready to be president,” Mount recalled. “I called him, and I was expecting him to talk me off the ledge and he said without hesitation: ‘Do it!’ And it’s been such a tremendous help to me professionally and personally.”

When Mount’s mother, grandmother, and two aunts all died in 2015, and he was having a terrible time coping, Justice Perry came to be by his side.

“He is that shoulder I can lean on,” Mount said.

And he’s a friend with season tickets to the Orlando Magic willing to share. While watching a basketball game together, Mount asked Perry again, “You have done a lot for me. How can I ever repay you?”

And Perry told him: “Bruce, just promise to pay it forward. Do something for someone else.”

Mount makes himself available as a mentor to other young lawyers.

“That is a direct result of Justice Perry caring about me.”

“Three Strikes, You’re Out”
When James Perry was a lawyer in downtown Orlando, he devoted hours to community service: trustee of his church, active in the United Way, NAACP, Voter’s League, YMCA, and other nonprofit boards.

But there was a sense of urgency that led him to create the Jackie Robinson Athletic Association in the 1990s, a baseball program serving 650 at-risk boys and girls, the largest in the nation.

“When they came up with ‘Three Strikes, You’re Out,’ I knew what that meant and who that applied to,” Perry said of tough sentencing laws that sent offenders away to prison for life on their third felony. Many were young people caught up in drugs.

“I knew that 90 percent of the people in prison were functionally illiterate. So it wasn’t so much about baseball.”

Baseball was the carrot to lure kids to a program to help them with school.

Perry spoke at organizations and churches about his brainchild, hoping they’d take the idea and run with it.

When those groups wanted to set up a committee to study the idea, Perry said, “To me, it was a matter of life or death. What are you going to study? We know the statistics. Criminologists can predict from K-12, day one, how many prison beds to build 20 years later and be right on the money. That was a no-brainer.”

So Perry launched the baseball program that took more time than he anticipated, but he said it was well worth it.

Perry raised the money for uniforms, bats, and gloves. The baseball coaches were natural mentors the kids looked up to.

Teachers and students from the University of Central Florida came to tutor. Every night, the James R. Smith Neighborhood Center in Orlando was abuzz with kids eating pizza donated by Domino’s and soft drinks donated by Coca-Cola.

“You know, you can’t learn if you’re hungry,” Perry said. “I had a requirement that they had to attend mandatory tutorial to play in the league.”

Not only did grades improve, Perry said, there was a positive unintended consequence of parental involvement.

“With 650 kids, I had at least 650 parents, unless there were two. Most of the houses didn’t have a man in it. So this was a male image for the kids also, and males need male images. We were kind of like surrogate parents. We had 10 colors and 10 team names.

“Parents told me their kids were sleeping in their uniforms. They had never been a part of anything,” Perry said. “Kids are going to join gangs and be influenced by their peers, whether you realize it or not. So we set up a positive gang.

“I figured if they stole second base, they wouldn’t steal anything else.”

Sanlando Greyhounds
When Jaimon Perry was a boy, he shot hoops in the driveway with his dad.

the time he was 13, his dad became the general manager of their own Amateur Athletic Union basketball team called the Sanlando Greyhounds.

Jaimon played forward for the Greyhounds until he was 17. In 1987, the Greyhounds captured the Florida 14 & Under state title, with 6-foot-3 Jaimon playing center. They jetted to far-away places like Bellevue, Washington, for the national tournament.

His father, James Perry, handled the fundraising, the uniforms, and the lodging.

“Some of these kids had never been on a plane before. They had never been in a restaurant,” James Perry said. “I required them to wear shirts and ties because that impacts how you act. People said, ‘You have the most mannerly kids I’ve ever seen.’ That’s because if you look the part, you might act it.”

“My father was a role model for the other kids to look up to,” said Jaimon, who practices law with his sister, Kamilah, at the Perry Law Group in Tampa and Orlando.

Kamilah Perry describes her dad as her “hero,” helping other people in the community, while still deeply involved in his own kids’ lives.

“He really does believe there is no way you can make a mistake if you do the right thing and follow your gut,” said Kamilah. “Even if you do make a mistake, it doesn’t matter because you did the right thing and followed your heart. Everything becomes easy, once that’s your rule.”

Son Willis Perry, a human resources manager, said this is what he learned from his dad: “Do what is right all the time. Treat people with kindness. You are a slave to your words and the master of what you keep. You have to laugh or you will go crazy. Be humble.”

When Justice Perry speaks at colleges, he tells young people to be sure to vote so their voices will not be silenced.

And this giant man with a big heart, who knows what it’s like to overcome obstacles, tells them: “Keep the faith and spread it gently.”

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Biography of James E.C. Perry

85th Justice of the Florida Supreme Court

Legal Experience:

• · Georgia Indigent Legal Aid, Augusta (1973)

• · Seminole Employment and Economic Development Corporation, Sanford (1975)

• · Perry & Hicks, P.A., Orlando, senior partner (1978-2000)

Judicial Appointments:

• ·Gov. Jeb Bush appoints him to the circuit court of the 18th Judicial Circuit (2000); elected chief judge (2003)

• ·Gov. Charlie Crist appoints him to the Florida Supreme Court (2009)

Education:

• · Saint Augustine’s University, Bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting (1966)

• · Columbia Law School, juris doctorate (1972)

Military Service:

• · U.S. Army, 1st Lt., Fort Dix (1966-1968)

Community Service:

• · Managed his son Jaimon’s AAU basketball team, the SanLando Greyhounds

• · Founder and president of the Jackie Robinson Sports Association, a baseball league with academic tutoring serving 650 at-risk boys and girls

• · Captain of the Heart of Florida United Way Campaign

• · Law firm served as general counsel for the Florida Chapter Branches of the NAACP

• · Former member of the Board of Trustees of Saint Augustine’s University

• · Former member of the Board of Trustees of Carter CME Tabernacle Church of Orlando

Honors:

• · Puerto Rican Bar Associations’ Moot Court Competition Award

• · Key to the City of Titusville Award

• · Florida Memorial University’s President’s Award

• · North Brevard County Branch NAACP’s Award of Appreciation

• · Seminole County NAACP Humanitarian Award

• · Orange County Chapter NAACP Paul C. Perkins Award

• · Martin Luther King Drum Major Award for Social Justice

• · Key to the City of New Bern, NC, Award

• · Williams-Johnson Outstanding Jurist of the Year Award, Brevard and Seminole County Bar Associations

Personal:

• · Born in New Bern, NC, on January 24, 1944

• · Married to Adrienne M. Perry, Ph.D., an adjunct professor at Stetson University, and they have three children: Willis, a human resources manager, and Jaimon and Kamilah, who work together as attorneys at Perry Law Group in Tampa.