John Shearer: Marvin Berke Has Enjoyed Long Legal Career

For Marvin Berke, working as an attorney for six-plus decades has been quite rewarding. In fact, even though he is now in his mid-80s, he has slowed his workload only slightly.

“Somebody asked me why I haven’t retired, and I said that I am only working half a day on the weekends now,” he said with a laugh.

It is a career and life that have brought plenty of rewards for him in and out of the courtroom. Not only has he been involved as an attorney in such high-profile cases as the 1964 Jimmy Hoffa trial in Federal Court here, but he has also seen his son, Andy Berke, go on to serve as state senator and mayor of Chattanooga.

As Mr. Berke recently sat down at his Frazier Avenue office and reflected in his easily approachable manner on his long career, he said being a lawyer was simply following in the family profession. His late father, attorney Harry Berke, was born in Europe, as was Marvin’s mother, but his father later settled in New York. There, the elder Berke sold newspapers by Brooklyn’s famed Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers once played.

Harry Berke came to Chattanooga after a sister had moved here, and he operated a clothing store on Main Street as a teenager. A nearby pharmacist Harry Berke had befriended encouraged him to become a pharmacist, but he instead went to the now-closed Chattanooga College of Law and began practicing in 1934.

When Marvin Berke was growing up, he went to the now-gone Glenwood Elementary before enrolling at Baylor School in the seventh grade and graduating in 1955. It was then off to Vanderbilt University, where he received both his undergraduate and law degrees.

“Two weeks after my 23^rd birthday, I graduated from law school,” he said. “My father said to get my degree and start work, and that is what I did.”

He had also already done some military service in the Army by that time, he added.

Mr. Berke needed all these challenging accomplishments, as he would soon face the tough courtroom battles of a lawyer, including helping represent Mr. Hoffa. He said he early on, though, sought out more anonymous criminal cases representing indigent clients in those days before the modern public defender’s office had developed.

“I went around to the different Criminal Court judges and was trying two or three cases a week,” he said. “All I wanted were murderers and robbers. I was single and didn’t have to make a large amount of money.”

“But it was very good training for lawyers. I’d hate to tell you how many murder cases I tried.”

He went on to further explain that the early work helped him learn to handle himself in court and ask questions and argue before a jury.

Regarding the Hoffa case, he said that he and his father were contacted by a Hoffa lawyer from Detroit about representing him in a case in which Mr. Hoffa had been charged with jury tampering of a Nashville jury, but the trial was to be held in Chattanooga. In this local case that has been chronicled in a recent book by local attorney Maury Nicely, Teamsters union head Mr. Hoffa was charged and convicted with the attempted bribery of a grand juror in that 1962 Nashville conspiracy trial.

Mr. Berke, who can be seen with his father and Mr. Hoffa outside the court and around Chattanooga in some historical news photographs that have often been circulated locally over the years, remembers well this 2½-month trial when he was only 26 years old.

“The FBI followed us everywhere we went,” he said. “I met my wife (the former Karen “Kandy” Silverman from West Palm Beach, Fl.) on a blind date during the trial and one time she said, ‘Somebody is following us.’ I told her it must be her imagination, but later I told her the truth.”

Mr. Berke said that Mr. Hoffa, whose 1975 death and dumping location of his body remain an unsolved mystery, had an interesting personality. “He was brilliant as far as I was concerned,” he said. “He was very tough on his subordinates and nice to women, a real gentleman.”

He said he has often been interviewed about the Hoffa case over the years, and he even provided some help and guidance in recent years to someone who initially had a liability-related complaint when the Hoffa-related movie, “The Irishman,” came out in 2019.

In another high-profile case in which he was involved, Mr. Berke in 1993 helped win on appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court the grandparents visitation rights case that made much local news at the time. He represented parents Bob and Bay Hawk, who had not wanted their two children visiting with Bob’s parents, Bill and Sue Hawk, due to some conflicts.

A state trial initially allowed visitation rights for the grandparents, but the appeal to the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bob and Bay Hawk.

While the case was making some national news, Mr. Berke said he and Bob Hawk went up to New York to be interviewed on the NBC “Today” show. News anchor Deborah Norville from Dalton was to interview them, but she was out sick and former baseball player Joe Garagiola filled in. With his background in sports instead of legal issues, his questions ended up not being as deep or as insightful, Mr. Berke remembered with a laugh.

In 2005 in another high-profile case, he and son Andy helped get $8 million for the plaintiff in a liability case in which a Croatian immigrant with a history of mental issues had attacked a Greyhound bus driver with a box cutter on Interstate 24 near Manchester, Tn., less than a month after the 9-11 attacks. The bus overturned, and injuries and even paralysis for one person resulted. During the trial, questions arose about the bus’s security measures.

These days, Mr. Berke and his younger brother, Ronnie Berke, primarily focus on accident and personal injury cases. But in contrast to many other attorneys who work in that field, they do not advertise. “I don’t believe in advertising,” he said. “Lawyers shouldn’t advertise.”

He does promote the legal profession in general just by his comments regarding how much he enjoys the profession. “I enjoy the challenge of it and trying to help people,” he said, adding that his firm represents mostly individuals and a few companies. “And you help yourself because you are always working and thinking.”

Among the judges he respected and enjoyed trying cases before over the years included Bob Summitt, Howell Peoples and Wilkes Thrasher Jr., among others, he said. He has also met such noted lawyers as F. Lee Bailey and was acquainted with the late noted North Georgia defense attorney Bobby Lee Cook.

“He was smart and had self-confidence and guts and didn’t mind mixing it up,” Mr. Berke said of Mr. Cook. “He was an excellent lawyer.”

Mr. Berke admitted that the number of attorneys in the immediate Chattanooga area has grown so much over the years that he now knows only about 25 percent of them.

His father had first located their firm in the Volunteer Building, where they remained for years, but about 2002 he moved to 420 Frazier Ave. in the former United Way building after his wife noticed it was for sale.

He has also seen the city of Chattanooga change over the years from when he started during the early days of urban flight to the suburbs.

“It has changed tremendously,” he said of the now-popular downtown area. “You used to walk down a street and not see another person at night.”

One person who along with many others tried to help this renaissance was his son, Andy, who served as a state senator and as Chattanooga mayor from 2013-21. Regarding his son’s foray into politics, he said with a laugh, “I couldn’t talk him out of it, although I didn’t try too hard. It’s something he enjoyed.”

Andy Berke, who had also practiced with the family firm, is now administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service under President Joe Biden. “He tries to get utilities to use clean energy to make electricity,” he said.

Mr. Berke’s daughter, Julie Berke, is a writer, producer and director in Los Angeles, who now is involved in a podcast called “Killer Psycho.” It examines the psychology behind murders and criminals who commit terrible crimes. Mr. Berke said it has been picked up by Amazon.

Mr. Berke continues to stay busy as well doing law-related work, too.

“It’s an interesting life what we do. There is always something different. We never do the same thing two days in a row,” he said.

And all of that has been enjoyable to this octogenarian who has become one of the deans of Chattanooga attorneys.

“I do enjoy it. It’s a great profession. And it helps your longevity of life and quality of life.”

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Jcshearer2@comcast.net