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 The Chairman of our Firm, Richard T. ("Dick") Watson, died on July 20 in New York City. Dick suffered a heart attack on July 15 after wrapping up a meeting with a five-generations client family. As Bishop Hollingsworth said at Dick’s memorial service, Dick Watson was simply “the best thinker most of us have ever known.”
Dick’s career was remarkable from the outset. After graduating from Maple Heights High School, he entered Harvard College three weeks after his sixteenth birthday, graduated, served for three years in United States Army Intelligence doing counterespionage work in Germany, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1960.
Dick then returned to Cleveland and practiced law with us at Spieth, Bell, McCurdy & Newell for his entire fifty-one year legal career. Dick’s practice centered on business and estate planning and the tax issues central to both. His prodigious mathematical facility, understanding that the key to a successful business deal is finding a way for all parties to get something they want, and empathy for the human problems of client families, earned him the deep friendship as well as professional respect of his clients.
Although much of his work was with multi-generational families whose identities and affairs are confidential, one well-known series of public transactions was Dick’s representation of Gordon and George Gund in their acquisition of the Cleveland Barons, the Richfield Coliseum, the Minneapolis North Stars, the San Jose Sharks and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Dick served as Vice President and General Counsel to these businesses. He led Spieth Bell’s work on the construction of the Gund Arena (now Quicken Loans Arena) and ensuing relocation of the Cavaliers to downtown Cleveland, the Cavs signing of LeBron James, and later, the strategic sale of the Cavaliers. The exceptional soundness of Dick’s representation of his clients so impressed others in the field that they secured his help in developing the NBA's 1999 Collective Bargaining Agreement and in advising the NBA and NHL Boards of Governors.
Dick counseled three bishops as the Chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, served on the Dean's Council at the Harvard Divinity School, was President of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, chaired the Cleveland Tax Institute, and was a director of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Case Western Reserve University, and many private charitable organizations.
Spieth, Bell has benefitted greatly from Dick’s high standard of co-operative rather than top-down decision-making, thinking outside the box before others even realized they were in a box, steady calmness in trying circumstances, and above all, sheer brain power. He gave his fullest attention and intelligence to every problem clients brought before him, whether it was a devilishly complex financial entanglement or an all too human cri de coeur at 1 a.m.
Dick Watson was truly a counselor, not just a lawyer. Spieth, Bell will honor his legacy by upholding the fine standards his leadership has set for the Firm. |
