Jac Chambliss, a longtime Chattanooga attorney and civic leader known for his newspaper columns, died today at age 99.
“Jack, if there ever was one, is a Renaissance man,” said Max Bahner, his law partner for 46 years.
“He was a man of letters he was a man of athletics, he was a people person and a consummate trial lawyer,” Mr. Bahner said, as well as a man with a wide range of friends and interests.
“He was like a second father to me, and I loved him.”
Mr. Chambliss was born in 1910 to John A. Chambliss and Margaret Sizer Chambliss of Chattanooga. His grandfathers were Alexander Wilds Chambliss, several times mayor of Chattanooga and later chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court, and attorney James Burnet Sizer. He was educated at the Webb School of Bell Buckle, the Virginia Military Institute, Southwestern (now Rhodes) College and Cumberland University Law School. He entered his family’s law firm, Sizer, Chambliss & Kefauver, in the summer of 1932, and practiced until his death.
In addition to his legal career, he served as a gunnery officer in the Navy in World War II in the South Pacific.
Active in the Episcopal Church, he was for many years a teacher, vestryman and lay reader at the Church of the Good Shepherd.
He served on a number of corporate boards, among them Richmond Hosiery Mills, Tri-State Telecasting Corp., TAG Railway, Standard-Coosa-Thatcher Co., Provident Life & Accident Insurance Co. and Gilman Paint & Varnish Co. He was active in the founding of St. Barnabas Nursing Home and served several terms as president of the YMCA.
With a talent for writing both poetry and prose, for more than 60 years he contributed columns to the local newspapers and was sought after as a speaker. A guitar and banjo player, he composed and sang ballads for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Mr. Chambliss was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London, and he both lectured and chaired lectures there.
Married in 1934 to Bena McVea of Baton Rouge, La., the couple spent many winters in Winter Park, Fla., and traveled extensively. He also was a talented photographer.
One of his proudest accomplishments was serving as co-founder of the Citizens Good Government League, a nonpartisan group dedicated to promoting better government on the local level.
He is survived by his daughter Ann Lacambra (José Maria) of Winter Park, Fla.; his son, John A. Chambliss III, of Chattanooga; daughter, Betsy Chambliss McLean, of Wenatchee, Wash.; eight grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
Family visitation and a memorial service at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Episcopal, will be announced at a later date.
Interment will be in Forest Hills Cemetery, where his gravestone already is engraved with “Amare et Pugnare,” Latin for “To love and to fight.”
Contributions may be made to the Reflection Riding Endowment Fund, 400 Garden Road, Chattanooga, TN 37419, or the McVea-Chambliss Scholarship Fund of the Webb School, 319 Webb Road East, Bell Buckle, TN 37020-2044.