Longtime Chattanooga attorney J. Guy Beatty Jr., 82, died Tuesday at Memorial Hospital after a long illness.
A native of Atlanta, Beatty was a respected and well-liked member of the community.
"He was a wonderful man, said Pete Cooper, president of the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga. Beatty was a former foundation director, general counsel and secretary "who had a vision for the Community Foundation at a time when the Community Foundation didn't exist here" and who was a driving force of the organization's success, Cooper said.
Cooper called Beatty a visionary.
"He was really one of those people who saw something that didn't yet exist, and he understood it," he said.
Beatty served as president of the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners and was a former chairman of the board of directors of the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
He also served as corporate secretary, director and legal counsel for several major Chattanooga companies at varying times in his long career. Among those companies were Olan Mills, Coca-Cola Enterprises, the Krystal Co., the Chattanooga Choo Choo Co., the Chattanooga Times Printing Co. and the Brock Candy Co., among others.
Retired Chattanooga attorney Jody Baker, who knew Beatty "way back when we were all just young people running around together," remembered Beatty's brilliant legal mind.
"He was a very, very good man and an outstanding lawyer," Baker said. "There's not enough good things I can say to fit him."