Mitchell remembers Bell as benefit to the nation

Victor Miller

January 05, 2009 08:38 pm

— Erwin Mitchell first met Griffin Bell when Bell was practicing law in Rome almost 50 years ago.
“I followed his career and had occasion to be associated a number of times with him in the practice of law,” said Mitchell, a Dalton attorney who would eventually serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. “He was an outstanding lawyer, person, and of course as a judge and attorney general he really excelled. So we’ve benefited from a long career of exemplary public service in the life of Judge Bell.”
Bell passed away Monday at the age of 90. He was U.S. attorney general under President Jimmy Carter. The two had grown up near each other, Bell in Americus and Carter in nearby Plains.
Mitchell said in some cases he and Bell were on the same side, and in some they were on opposite sides.
“It was a little of both,” he said. “He always commanded your respect, as an ally or adversary.”
Bell co-managed John F. Kennedy’s campaign for president in Georgia “and delivered a bigger majority even than Massachusetts did,” the New York Times reported. “Kennedy rewarded him in 1961 with a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which in those days covered the whole Southeast.”
Mitchell, now 84, also worked in the Kennedy campaign, “but we were not involved in the same phases of it,” he said.
“Griffin is somebody that I’ve known for a long, long time, and admired for a long, long time,” Mitchell said. “This fellow was a success from every angle, personally and professionally, and as a consequence the state and nation has reaped a great benefit.”