By Raymond G. Hebert, PhD
Thomas More University
Part 39 of our series, “Retrospect and Vista II”: Thomas More College/University, 1971-2021
In 2021, retired Supreme Court of Kentucky justice, Donald Wintersheimer, died. He was one of the founders of the Thomas More University Lawyers’ Lunch. Thomas More president, Joseph Chillo, wrote of Wintersheimer that “the university and law communities have lost an icon in the passing of Justice Donald C. Wintersheimer ’53, [adding that] he was a brilliant lawyer, scholar, and teacher who impacted so many lives. In many ways, Justice Wintersheimer epitomized the values that Sir Thomas More instilled upon many generations of lawyers and others who have had an impact on our society” (2021 Lawyers’ Lunch Newsletter, p. 1, TMU Archives).
Justice Donald C. Wintersheimer. Courtesy of the Kenton County Public Library.
The first Thomas More University Lawyers’ Lunch was held in 1982, to honor Thomas More’s patron — St. Thomas More— during his birthday month of February. Significantly, Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was an attorney, a judge, and, at his peak politically when he was martyred. He is the Catholic patron saint of lawyers and, since 2001, of politicians.
In late 2019, a new worldwide pandemic appeared. Called COVID-19, it resulted in the cancellation of many annual events internationally, largely due to mandatory closures and quarantines. Likewise, in 2021 and 2022, the Thomas More Lawyers’ Lunch took a COVID hiatus, postposing the celebration of its 40th anniversary, as well as the college’s decision to rename the next in-person luncheon hereafter as the Justice Donald C. Wintersheimer Lawyers’ Lunch.
The tribute to Wintersheimer is appropriate for many reasons, but principally for his role in the luncheon’s establishment. The college sent an invitation letter, dated January 8, 1982, to the many alumni of Thomas More who had sought and earned law degrees. The salutation read “Dear Fellow Lawyer,” and was signed by the first Honorary Chairman of the Lawyers’ Brunch Committee, the Honorable Donald C. Wintersheimer, who at the time was a judge on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. A fellow alumnus, attorney Jesse R. Boone, also co-signed the letter as the Planning Committee Chair.
Dr. Ray Hebert, Professor of History. Thomas More University Archives.
The first lawyers’ lunch was held on the birthday of St. Thomas More (February 7)—also the birthday of Dr. Raymond G. Hebert, a history professor at the college and the luncheon’s first speaker. The title that Hebert chose for that presentation was “Thomas More: A Man for All Ages.”
The concept of celebrating St. Thomas More’s birthday weekend every year — with a special remembrance of his role as the patron saint of both the college and the legal profession—was popular enough to encourage a bold step in the very next year. In 1983, we invited one of the leading St. Thomas More scholars in the world, Dr. Richard Marius from Harvard University, to be the speaker. Marius had been a very popular speaker at the Thomas More Quincentennial Conference (500th), held in 1978. (See: https://nkytribune.com/2021/09/our-rich-history-st-thomas-mores-500th-birthday-celebration-at-thomas-more-college-1977-1978/)
Dr. Marius gave an address entitled, “Thomas More and the Law.” He noted that, while on our campus in February 1978, he bonded with other St. Thomas More scholars, and made a career-changing decision. He left the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he had been comfortable and happy for many years, to go to Harvard University to assume the role of director of the expository writing program there. At Harvard, Marius would author what became one of the leading books written on St. Thomas More entitled, Thomas More: A Biography (1999).
In 1984, for the Third Annual Lawyers’ Brunch, the approach shifted to feature a leading Kentucky attorney, Herbert D. Sledd, Esquire, from the prestigious Lexington law firm of Brown, Sledd, and McCann. He reprised a popular presentation he had made at the previous year’s national meeting of the American Bar Association called, “A Lawyer’s View of the Trial of Thomas More.” It was well-received by all and helped to set in motion the popularity of the luncheon.
In the 1980’s, we were blessed with a series of other nationally-known speakers who continued the tradition of honoring St. Thomas More as a man, lawyer, judge, and influence on the present. In 1985, the renowned legal scholar Thomas Shaffer, who was Professor of Law and Director of the Frances Lewis Law Center at Washington and Lee University, spoke about the “Manifestations of Thomas More: Hope and Skill.”
The following year, Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Wintersheimer was the speaker, emphasizing Thomas More as “A Man for This Time.”
Herbert D. Sledd, attorney at Brown, Sledd, and McCann.
Then in 1987, the sixth Annual Alumni Lawyers’ Lunch gained a new credibility when it was combined on Thomas More’s birthday weekend with the inauguration of Dr. Charles J. Bensman as the tenth President of Thomas More College (Inauguration Program, February 8, 1987, TMU Archives). The Keynote Speaker was Joseph A. Morris, who was then the General Counsel of the United States Information Agency and the Co-Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. His topic was: “Thomas More and the American Constitution.”
Morris was such a success that he was invited later in the year to return to Northern Kentucky as speaker at the annual dinner of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Hebert had met Morris a decade earlier at one of the many celebrations in 1978 honoring St. Thomas More on his 500th birthday, namely at Illinois State University hosted by St. Thomas More scholar Dr. John Gueguen. For the occasion, Morris of the law firm of Rothchild, Barry, and Myers in Chicago, said of our patron:
“The magic of Thomas More is that he was one of us, a man of our world. At ease in human society, and the central figure in countless friendships, he was also imbued with deep and private passions. He was self-disciplined and hard-driving. If the day did not allow enough hours for his agenda of work, study and prayer, he sacrificed his sleep and cut short the night. Whether his client was his neighbor, his king or his God, he was a tireless advocate and an ethical adversary. His potent mind and expansive spirit dwelt in the human body of a common man of familiar proportion. It is in this that he becomes a compelling model for us.” (Dr. John Gueguen Summary of 500th Birthday Celebration at Illinois State University, February 7, 1978).
In 1988, another connection brought the nationally respected First Amendment scholar, Judge George C. Edwards Jr. (the senior circuit judge from the Sixth Circuit Court in the Detroit area) to Thomas More College. Previously, Judge Edwards had been the president of the Detroit Common Council and the commissioner of the Detroit Police Department throughout the 1960s. Judge Edwards had been the keynote speaker at a First Amendment Conference at the University of Kentucky in Lexington in 1987 and, when asked about the Lawyers’ Brunch for 1988, had agreed to return to Kentucky. His topic was scheduled to be “The Constitutional Issues of the First Amendment.” Once his subject matter was announced, however, an unexpected controversy emerged when two Northern Kentucky Right to Life representatives wrote a letter to then-president of Thomas More, Charles Bensman, accusing Judge Edwards of “participating in a judicial decision which supported the pro-abortion cause” (Letter dated January 28, 1998, sent to President Charles Bensman from Northern Kentucky Right to Life representatives, 7 pages, TMU Archives).
Richard Marius, professor at Harvard University. Dr. Marius also presented at the St. Thomas More Quincentennial Conference (500th).
Dr. Bensman’s response began with the context of the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution and the strong recommendation we had received after Judge Edwards had been the keynote speaker at the 1987 First Amendment Congress Symposium held in Lexington He then referred to the Vatican II Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, in its pursuit of mutual respect:
Those also have a claim on our respect and charity who think and act differently from us in social political and religious matters… we must distinguish between the error (which must always be rejected) and the person in error, who never loses his/her dignity as a person even though he/she flounders amid false or inadequate religious ideas. (Dr. Charles Bensman letter, February 1, 1988, TMU Archives).
Dr. Bensman then concluded by saying that “Thomas More College as an educational institution considers it not only its duty but its responsibility to keep this college as an open forum for relevant and current ideas and issues.” It is relevant here to note several points from ensuing conversations both with Judge Edwards and Judge William Bertelsman who had introduced Judge Edwards at the First Amendment symposium: 1) Judge Edwards had never written an opinion in an abortion case; 2) in the one specific case from 1971, the only connection that Judge Edwards had with an abortion-related case was Crossen v. Breckenridge in which he served as a member of a 3-judge panel which rendered a unanimous decision. Judge Edwards did not write the court’s opinion on this decision and actually remembered it simply as a decision to return the case to a lower court because there was not enough evidence for a decision to be made; 3) it was added by Judge Edwards that it must be remembered that judges do not always agree with laws that must be applied; 4) while proclaiming that personally he was a pro-life advocate, he had added that in the cases mentioned “he was merely applying the law to those situations jurisdictionally”; 5) it was relevant as well that the topic of his presentation at our Lawyers’ Lunch was the “first amendment.” The result was a difference of opinion with each potential attendee making his or her own decision about attendance or not. It is important to note that in every other case over the years the attorneys of the Northern Kentucky Right to Life Movement had been and continue to be supporters of the Lawyers’ Lunch. There was a healthy difference of opinion about this speaker and no hard feelings afterwards.
Again, in the following year of 1989, another collaboration took place which again enhanced the credibility of the Lawyers’ Brunch — a shared keynote speaker both for the Lawyers’ Lunch and the college’s Hillenmeyer Lecture for that year. Dr. Jude Patrick Dougherty, the nationally respected dean of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America and the editor of The Review of Metaphysics, was brought in thanks to the generosity of the Hillenmeyer family, who had been funding a lecture series for many years in honor of their family member, Monsignor Herbert Hillenmeyer, the former Superintendent of Catholic Schools of the Diocese of Covington. Dean Dougherty gave two talks while on Campus: “Amplifying the Voice of Being” as the Hillenmeyer Lecture, and “The Concept of Person in American Legal Theory” for the Lawyers’ Lunch. Both were great successes.
Joseph A. Morris, General Counsel of the United States Information Agency and the Co-Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Finally, the remaining two speakers in the opening decade of the Lawyers’ Brunch Program were also of a superior caliber. The 1990 speaker was the popular chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, Robert Stephens, on the topic of “Ethics in the Legal Profession,” and, in 1991, with the help of our Thomas More alumnus Willliam T. Robinson III, we were able to secure L. Stanley Chauvin Jr., the immediate past president of the American Bar Association. He was from the Louisville law firm of Alagic Day, Mashall Mintmire and Chauvin, and his talk was entitled, “The Least of Us.”
Reflecting on the first decade of Lawyers’ Lunch programs (1982-1991) it was clear that a high bar had been set. The honoring of our patron St. Thomas More as the patron saint of lawyers was well established. In turn, our college became known for celebrating St. Thomas More’s birthday month. For this success, as should be obvious, a great deal of thanks is owed to Justice Donald Wintersheimer who was involved initially as the Honorary Chairman in that first decade and became a full committee chair for all of the years afterwards up until his final Lawyers’ Lunch in 2020. Two other committee members on the Planning Committee for several decades were alumnae Donna Bloemer and Gabrielle Hils (whose entire career was spent with Dinsmore and Shohl of Cincinnati). They were invaluable planning Committee members, offering their support and suggestions for speakers over the decades that followed.
Sadly, because of COVID-19 protocols early in 2022, it was decided for the second consecutive year to postpone the event for the safety of the likely attendees. Nevertheless, we are excited that the proposed speaker, Honorable Amul Thapar, who serves as a circuit judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, has agreed to simply change the date for his presentation to one year later, Sunday, February 5, 2023. His title for the presentation will be “What Judges and Lawyers can Learn from St. Thomas More.” It will be the inaugural “Justice Donald C. Wintersheimer Lawyers’ Lunch.”
Dr. Raymond G. Hebert is a Professor of History and Executive Director of the William T. Robinson III Institute for Religious Liberty at Thomas More University. He has just completed his 46th year at Thomas More and, with that background, will now serve as the General Editor of the official history of Thomas More College/University from 1971-2021. With a projected title of RETROSPECT AND VISTA II, it will serve as the sequel to Sr. Irmina Saelinger’s RETROSPECT AND VISTA, the history of the first 50 years of Thomas More College (formerly Villa Madonna College). He can be contacted at hebertr@thomasmore.edu.
We want to learn more about the history of your business, church, school, or organization in our region (Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and along the Ohio River). If you would like to share your rich history with others, please contact the editor of “Our Rich History,” Paul A. Tenkotte, at tenkottep@nku.edu. Paul A. Tenkotte, PhD is Professor of History and Gender Studies at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) and the author of many books and articles.
