Dick Beyer's 50 years of practicing law with heart

To sit down for a long conversation with Morganton attorney Richard “Dick’’ Beyer in his cozy law office just across the street from the courthouse is to have a number of stereotypes contradicted.

The notion that all lawyers pore over the finer points of legal precedence while enjoying a steaming cup of hot black coffee?

Nope. Dick proclaims himself an attorney who is “Powered by Pepsi,” popping open his first can shortly after 4:30 a.m. each day.

What about the idea that lawyers are deadly serious all the time and smile only when the check arrives in the mail?

No again. Dick loves a good story and a good laugh — especially one at his own expense.

Recounting his 1979 run for a Morganton City Council seat against the late Molly Darwin, he said, “I couldn’t be satisfied with just losing once. I had to call for a runoff so I could lose twice.”

But surely a lawyer who is in his 50th year of practice and is pushing 73 only shows up at the office a few hours a week and then only to get out of the house?

Wrong again. Dick still works 60-plus hours a week and often spends a few hours in his office on Saturdays and Sundays.

“If your mind is still good enough to remember how to get to work every morning, why not show up?” he asks. After pondering his own question for a moment, he continues, “I like working. It’s who I am.”

Who Dick is also includes being the guy who has been practicing law in Burke County since the Bicentennial Year of 1976, making him the dean of the current crop of Burke attorneys and one of the longest serving lawyers in the county’s history.

Not bad for a fella from a small town in coastal New Jersey who once dreamed of driving a Pepsi delivery truck for a living.

Growing Up

Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Neptune City. Few have.

It’s a small burg of around 5,000 that sits on a bay of the Shark River, whose downtown is about a mile from the Atlantic Ocean.

But Dick remembers it as a great and safe place to grow up. As a teen, he especially loved afternoons at the beach, or should we say, “The Shore?”

“My dad worked for Pepsi, with his own distributorship for a while and then he went to work for the Pepsi Corporation,” Dick remembers.

One great thing to come out of his dad’s job — a lunch with Yankee legend Yogi Berra when Dick was 10. He remains a passionate Yankee fan to this day.

Summers during high school and college found Dick behind the wheel of a Pepsi delivery truck — a job which he says helped him develop an affinity for people and the ability to communicate with those from all walks of life.

Although he loved New Jersey, Dick wanted college to be in a different environment and considered Wake Forest and Duke in North Carolina and William and Mary in Virginia.

Dick’s older brother, Fred, who was on the path to becoming a physician and was already an undergrad at Wake Forest, helped influence his younger brother to choose Wake.

That choice proved fortuitous, for Wake proved to be, “just about the perfect school for me.”

Dick appreciated the beautifully groomed campus, the small student population which allowed for meaningful relationships with professors, and a program which allowed him to enter law school after only three years as an undergrad.

It was also at Wake that Dick met his future bride, Mary Simpson, daughter of the late Dan Simpson, a respected attorney and civic leader in Burke County.

“It was a very good fit for me,” Dick said. “I cherish my ties to Wake Forest to this day. We still go to a lot of football and basketball games, and we still have a lot of good friends that we met there.”

A Young Lawyer in Morganton

After receiving his degree in the spring of 1976, Dick joined his father-in-law’s firm, Simpson, Baker & Aycock, and did everything required of a young attorney, from criminal cases to property matters.

“I’ve always done a lot of work in district court,” he said. “The real nitty-gritty of the legal system. Criminal. Domestic. Real property. Two of my clients have been sentenced to death, but both had their sentences commuted to life.”

As to a guiding philosophy in doing that work, Dick responded, “I’ve always believed that people ought to have a lawyer who knows what he’s doing, even if they can’t afford to pay for him.”

Dick noted that during the early decades of his career, the Burke legal landscape was populated with giants — lawyers whose reputations live on long after their deaths.

“Doggie Hatcher (born John Howell Hatcher) was the best storyteller I’ve ever listened to,” Dick remembered. “And a John McMurray argument to the jury could be an absolute work of art.”

Other attorneys mentioned by Dick as being particularly outstanding and well respected were the Byrd brothers, Joe and Bob, Harold Mitchell, and of course, his own father-in-law, Dan Simpson.

Dick left the Simpson firm in 1993 and set up his own practice — Richard W. Beyer, Attorney at Law. The firm is now Beyer & Lippert, with his partner being Michelle Lippert, a UNC Law School graduate and a former assistant district attorney for Burke, Caldwell, and Catawba counties.

“Larger law firms were the rule when I first got started,” Dick recalls, “but most practices now are either solo or two partners. We’re going to need more lawyers in the years ahead, but it’s difficult to attract them to small communities like ours.”

Asked if he considered other tries for political office after his 1979 defeat, Dick laughed and said, “I think I learned my lesson on that one. I remember what one of my professors at Wake Forest told me, ‘Running for office is a great thing. Holding office, not so much.’”

Dick was also never interested in a judgeship, saying he simply did not have the temperament required to calmly and impartially preside over a courtroom.

“When Judge (Livingston) Vernon threatened to have me locked up if I didn’t sit down and shut up, I knew being a judge was not in the cards for me,” he recalled.

“I’ve always felt that I could be more effective as an advocate for the people in the courtroom,” he added.

Summing Up

Having now lived in this community for nearly half a century, Dick was asked what needs to be done if Burke County is to grow and thrive.

“I know it’s primarily a state issue,” he answered, “but we have got to spend more money on education. We have got to increase teacher pay. We can’t continue to allow these ‘opportunity scholarship’ programs to drain our public schools dry.”

Also required, Dick said, is “a strategy to keep our kids here with good jobs and good opportunities and to get our kids who have moved away to consider returning here.”

To do that, however, will require a combination of higher paying jobs and affordable housing. Quite the challenge, Dick admits.

“But,” he said. “We’ve got to grow if we’re going to thrive. We can’t have a stagnant or shrinking population base.”

As to his own future with his 73rd birthday approaching, Dick said, “I’ll probably always keep an office, as long as I can get here. I don’t know that I’ll be going to court after age 75 or so. Might not be sharp enough for that.”

Although who’s to say just how long an attorney who is “Powered by Pepsi” might stay sharp as a tack?