Grace. Humility. Perseverance. Grateful. Courageous.
All words that fittingly describe Hon. E. Richard Webber. There are so many other words in the English language that could describe the honor and dignity in which he has served the legal profession as an attorney and as a judge.
He also recently “officially” received the title of “Distinguished.”
Immediate Past President Bob Tomaso often tells the story of how he was called to Judge Webber’s chambers for an early morning “conference” without any knowledge of the topic. Judge Webber had called on his longtime friend to consider becoming President of BAMSL. In telling the story, Tomaso often says, “Who is going to say ‘no’ to Judge Webber? And of course, it was a great honor to have him ask.”
On May 2, 2022, Tomaso turned the tables on the Judge when he announced during his final act as BAMSL President that BAMSL’s annual Distinguished Lawyer Award will forever be named the Hon. E. Richard Webber Distinguished Lawyer Award. After a lengthy standing ovation from his colleagues, Judge Webber stood in shock, tears in his eyes and was rendered speechless.
The Distinguished Lawyer Award is the highest honor BAMSL awards. It is given annually to a lawyer who has made a great and lasting contribution to the St. Louis region in the area of law and community service, has motivated other lawyers to work in the public interest, and who exemplifies lawyers as good citizens contributing significantly to the community.
“I was overcome and overwhelmed,” Judge Webber said. “It was an amazing ovation. It’s still so hard to think that could happen. It was one of the most overwhelming moments of my life to be recognized like that.”
Judge Webber currently serves as the Senior District Judge for the United States District Court, Eastern District of Missouri.
As a terrified 12-year-old wondering what it was going to feel like to be burned alive, he never dreamed he would receive such accolades and about to retire from the federal bench this fall. Moments like the one at Law Day have become permanently etched in his memories, as yet another milestone benchmark that shaped his life, views and decisions made as a lawyer and as a judge. He not only has an incredible knack for recalling in vivid detail significant events that marked turning points in his life, he also remarkably can recall the exact dates.
Life for the judge, who turned 80 on June 4, was not easy as a young boy. On May 18, 1955, at the age of 12 and just a couple of weeks shy of his 13th birthday, his life was permanently altered. Reflecting back on that moment, he astonishingly calls it a blessing.
While working on his family’s farm in northeast Missouri, he became trapped underneath a burning tractor.
“The disk that tills the soil was 12-feet wide,” Judge Webber said. “My Dad told me to go to a spot in the field that was wet and lightly disk the area so planting could normally proceed. I kept shifting to lower gears when the tractor slowed. When I released the clutch on the last shift, the front of the tractor immediately went straight in the air and fell back in the disk. I was smashed between the disk and the tractor, which became inflamed. While lying there, I was wondering what it would feel like to burn to death. Additionally, battery acid and hot water from the radiator ran down from the tractor onto my partially severed arm. My uncle had to drive a mile to get a chain to pull the tractor up. I was lying there for about 45 minutes. I was sure I was going to die, and that I was going to be burned alive.
“My father put mud on the flames with his bare hands. When my uncle returned with a chain, another tractor pulled the tractor up sufficiently and my father pulled me from under the tractor. Somehow, a friend and neighbor, who lived a few hundred yards away, came to the rescue with a 1952 Ford. After I was placed in the back of the car on the floor, Luke gladly used the occasion to drive 100 miles an hour to take me to the local doctor’s office.”
Judge Webber said a crowd gathered at Dr. Lowe’s Office on the Square in Memphis (Mo.), among them his mother.
“I was transferred into the brand new 1955 VFW ambulance, and another race was on to the Kirksville hospital, where I remained from May 18 to Aug. 8, 1955,” Judge Webber said. “I was told later, the word around town was that I was going to die. The badly burned left arm had become infected. Our neighbor told my parents they needed to get me out of there. I was transferred to St. Louis.”
He had gone from 120 pounds to 60 pounds between May and August. While in St. Louis, he had to learn to walk again because of being confined in a bed in traction for nearly three months.
“The doctor in St. Louis came in and asked what I thought about him removing my arm,” Judge Webber said. “I just said simply that it was OK.”
The arm was amputated 10 days after arriving in St. Louis.
“Other than the date of my marriage to Peggy, December 23, 1955, was the happiest day of my life, when I was released from the hospital,” Judge Webber said. “While recovering in the hospital, I gained weight and was eating well and going to regular physical therapy. By December, I was pretty much back to normal.”
He received a prosthetic arm and returned home to finish the eighth grade.
While recovering at home, he still had a deep wound in his back from the disk that was still unhealed. One day while at home, the family received a visitor, a nurse named Irene Keith with Crippled Children of Missouri.
“It was through them that I was able to be transported to St. Louis in the first place,” Judge Webber said. “Much later, she came to our house one day and told my parents that if I wanted to go to college, they would pay for it if I maintained a certain grade-point average. After graduating with a BA and BS degree from the University of Missouri, I signed a $5,000 note from which proceeds I attended law school at MU.
“I thank God, because if it was not for the accident, I would not have gone to college, met Peggy and been blessed with two beautiful and outstanding daughters. God is in control. I’m a strong believer that things happen for a reason. I absolutely believe in faith. Who knew that the accident would actually be a blessing? Before the accident, I always just assumed I would live my entire life on the farm. While that is noble, I never dreamed of going to college, let alone law school.”
The accident neither defined nor did it allow him to ever use it as an excuse for anything. In fact, most people rarely notice. He has vivid recollections of many other moments in his life that helped define and shape his demeanor, attitude and beliefs.
“My first recollection of a life-changing event came when I was 4 years old,” Judge Webber said. “We were living in the southeast part of the United States. My parents had a government contract with the military to move house trailers during World War II.”
The family had moved to Mobile, Ala.
“One day I was outside, and a young girl came by,” Judge Webber said. “We had a great time playing and enjoying each other’s company. It was getting dark so when I went to my house because I wanted to introduce her to my parents. My Mom stopped her from entering our house, saying something like it is getting late. My friend walked away. I don’t know what conversation was held among the adults that night, but I was given instructions. The next day, I went out and the girl came skipping toward me. I immediately put my head down.and just stood there.
“She had her great smile, but I didn’t say or do anything. She finally turned and walked away. I never saw her again. All I knew was our skin was of different colors and I was not supposed to play with her. Oh, what I would give to fall on my knees before her, hold her hand and say, ‘Please forgive me.’ ”
He told the story with tears in his eyes, getting chocked up and visibly upset.
“That was my introduction to racism,” he said. “That was in 1946 and we never talked about it. In the 1960s, when I was in college, my Dad and I had a terrible argument about racism. My Mom got between us because we were about to come to blows. I loved him, he saved my life, but I could not convince him all of God’s children are created equally.”
The family moved to northeast Missouri in 1946 and he lived on the farm until he finished law school in 1967. He married his wife, Peggy, a teacher in 1968. He and his sister, who now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., still own the farm, which he intends to visit often in retirement.
“Growing up on a farm was great,” Judge Webber said. “You get up in the morning and milk the cows before breakfast. Our food was all raised – we had beef, chicken and fresh vegetables from the garden. It was some of the best meals I have ever had. It was a strong community of neighbors helping each other. We had a one-room country school a mile from the house, and I walked there each day. We’d all get together at each other’s houses. We worked really hard, but it wasn’t really work, it was just life. I went fishing a lot and had my own bike.”
Like some young adults going to college and then to law school, Judge Webber acknowledged he was not the most focused person.
“I went to business school, but there weren’t any obvious jobs that suited me,” Judge Webber said. “I lived in a residence hall in college and there was a lawyer there. I was impressed with him and what he told me about law school. I wasn’t the best law student, preferring the social opportunities of campus life. I did an internship in the law firm of Brown and Normile in Edina Mo., which immediately changed my perspective when I saw what lawyers did and what I could do as a lawyer. It was too late to resurrect my academic career, but the summer in the law firm totally changed my motivation in finishing law school.”
Upon graduating from law school and taking the bar exam, he began working in the Missouri Governor’s Administrative Office in Jefferson City.
“I learned I passed the bar exam on Sept. 2, 1967, and within days, (then-Missouri) Gov. Warren Hearnes appointed me prosecuting attorney of Schuyler County,” Judge Webber said. “I was forced to try lawsuits immediately, getting the opportunity early, which lawyers today frequently do not get.”
He went into private practice and was living extravagantly.
“I was annually earning $250,000 in the 1970s,” Judge Webber said. “I went to Singapore to take a doctor’s deposition. I built a big house, had 750 acres of farmland, two businesses and a full farming operation. Then the farm crisis came in the early 1980s, interest rates went to 20 1/2 percent; we had a massive amount of debt and voluntarily sold our assets at a fraction of the purchase price, to pay the debt. My wife and the girls moved into a flea-infested rental house.
“During that time, I turned my life over to God. I thought of myself as a real hotshot, practicing law, making money, but I wasn’t giving God any credit. One night lying in bed I said, ‘God, if you want any part of my life, please take it because I am not doing a good job of running it.’ At that moment, a silver/gray cloud moved over slowly. Things started turning around. I was 42 years old at the time. When I was making money, I wasn’t home enough, flying my twin engine airplane, trying many cases and making bad choices. I kept saying I’d catch my daughters’ events later. My faith turned all of that around.”
Judge Webber was in private practice from 1967 to 1979, while also serving part-time as a prosecuting attorney for several counties in Missouri from 1967 to 1975. He tried criminal cases by appointment, before the public defender system. He was a circuit court judge for the First Judicial Circuit of Missouri from 1979 to 1996. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton on Aug. 10, 1995, to be United States District Court Judge of the Eastern District of Missouri, for a seat vacated by Edward Filippine. The U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination on Dec. 22, 1995, and he received his commission on Dec. 26, 1995. He assumed senior status on June 30, 2009, and plans to take inactive senior status on Sept. 1, 2022.
For the last several years, Judge Webber has been meeting with individuals he has sentenced to federal prison when they are released from prison and go into a half-way-house and are assigned a probation officer. He has a sentencing sheet prepared before they were sentenced. He is familiar with the defendants’ family members, their backgrounds, employment history and their criminal records.
“Most of them grew up without a father in their lives,” Judge Webber said. “I take that into account when sentencing them. I have sentenced more than 2,200 defendants as a federal judge. In the federal system, when a defendant finishes his or her prison sentence, he or she is placed on supervised release for a term of one, two, three, five years, or life. Four or five years ago, I was revoking supervised release on too many people, sending them back to prison for violating conditions of supervised release.
“I decided to start holding mandatory meetings with the offenders when they start their half-way-house commitments. I meet with them and their probation officer in the probation office at the end of a table so we are about 16 inches apart. I tell them I personally care about them and do not want to send them back to prison for violating supervised release. I turn to the probation officer and tell the person she or he will help them get a good job, will arrange for college courses or specialized training. I tell them if they do well on supervised release and I get a recommendation for early termination from supervised release because they have obeyed the rules, I will take them and the probation officer to lunch. We have had many lunches.”
And he keeps in touch with several of the reformed offenders, sharing some of the successes post-prison.
“One said to me, ‘you’re the only person who ever cared about me.’ I was astonished because I said, ‘I sent you to prison!’ ” Judge Webber said. “Another one is a Washington University graduate, with a 3.6 GPA. I went to his graduation on a hot June day. He said I was the only family member attending. Two other persons are the first people to text me on Thanksgiving and Christmas morning. I keep in touch with some of them. One man now lives in Texas, and we have lunch and recently had breakfast when he came to St. Louis to visit relatives.”
He gets just as choked up and teary-eyed sharing stories of the persons he has ordered incarcerated then visited as he does discussing his family or his own life experiences.
Speaking of which, one more moment that has been permanently etched in his memory popped up during the interview when he pointed to one of the numerous photos on display in his office.
This one was of his wife and him, when they were having fun at a Cardinals baseball game.
“Look how happy she is,” Judge Webber said, with tears glistening again in his eyes. “It’s one of my favorites. That was June 24 or 26, 2004, at Busch Stadium II. Just before she was diagnosed with breast cancer.”
She passed away on Aug. 17, 2009.
“She was so strong and such a fighter,” Judge Webber said. “It was a long battle against metastatic breast cancer. She was determined and didn’t give up. Our girls were in town when she passed away. Just eight days before she died, she asked the doctor, ‘What’s my next drug?’ Isn’t that something? She was sill determined to beat it just eight days before passing away.
“She was just amazing. I was dating a woman in the same dorm at Stephen’s College where Peggy lived and was waiting for my date when Peggy came out. We talked. She loved horses and we started dating. We were married on July 6, 1968, and lived in Memphis, Mo. Peggy taught school to eight pre-kindergarten kids in our home each year. She taught them how to read, write and do math. People would lie and cheat just to get into her school.”
His oldest daughter is president and managing partner of the biggest labor law firm in the world. His younger daughter is athletic director at a Division I university. Each daughter and son-in-law have a son.
“I hope to spend more time with my grandsons,” he said. “I recently turned 80 years old and am ready to leave what I have loved for a very long time. I sometimes sit in the quietness of the day and smile broadly as I think, ‘I am a lawyer.’ Oh, what joy that title has brought into my life. Only in America could a farm boy who only thought about milking cows and feeding chickens, sheep, hogs and cows experience what God has given me. While farming is a noble profession, I sill have that to enjoy. I started writing a book about life on the bench and I will finish that. I plan to spend more time at the farm and visit so many wonderful people who have enriched my life.”
And, he will continue to do his daily workouts, which consist of exercises in the morning, running or walking Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings in the gym.
He also promises to stay involved with BAMSL.
“I have to now,” he said. “Bob Tomaso made sure of that.”
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