Eleven years after retiring from his 22-year career as a U.S. magistrate judge in Little Rock and heading to Virginia to begin a new phase of his life, John Forster Jr. died suddenly and unexpectedly at his Lexington home Tuesday night.
As news of Forster's death at age 76 rippled across Little Rock's legal community Wednesday; it was met with surprise by those who knew the former runner as not only lean and fit, but always upbeat and spry. Earlier in the day, he and his wife, Jane Lee, who had been a law clerk for him in Little Rock, were excitedly going through their belongings in anticipation of moving to his native Texas in July, said his older brother, Bob, of Mobile, Ala.
"All we know is it was very sudden," Bob Forster said. "It had to be a massive stroke or a heart attack."
Retired attorney John "Dewey" Watson of Little Rock, who called the former judge his best friend, said Forster had a bout of pneumonia last year but he "looked much better in March." He said Forster had recently been wearing an atrial fibrillation monitoring device and was scheduled to see his doctor Monday to review some "funny things" the tests showed earlier Wednesday, but no one considered him to be in need of immediate care.
Although the former judge was three years younger than his only sibling, with whom he grew up in Dallas, they so closely resembled each other that Bob Forster, who is in the men's apparel business, said he was often mistaken for his brother while visiting Little Rock's Mr. Wicks men's store, which is owned by close friends of theirs.
"People would come in and say 'hi judge' to me," Bob Forster recalled. Often, he said with a laugh, he would reply with his own "hi" and let them think he was the judge.
He said John Forster was moving to Houston, where his oldest child, a daughter, lives and where Jane Lee's son, Thomas, whom he had adopted, has been living. Thomas Forster is preparing to move to Austin to attend law school at the University of Texas in the fall. The former judge also has a son, Robert, who is a lawyer in Dallas, and a son, Chris, in Little Rock who is a teacher. Bob Forster said the move to Houston was a way for the Forsters to live closer to everybody.
Little Rock was his second home, and John Forster Jr. left an indelible imprint on those who knew him here.
Mark Hampton, a Little Rock lawyer who became close friends with Forster while working alongside him in the Hilburn Law Firm in Little Rock before Forster became a magistrate judge, said his 20-year-old son, John, was named after Forster.
"It just kills me," Hampton said Wednesday of Forster's death. "He was my mentor. ... He was like a big brother to me."
"He was just a wonderful, wonderful man," Hampton said. "John was always there. You could not ask for a better man in this world. He was a lawyer's lawyer."
On May 5, 2008, during John Forster's retirement ceremony at the federal courthouse in Little Rock, he was praised by district judges, who select magistrate judges for eight-year terms; former law clerks; and defense attorneys for his fairness on the bench, as well as for his cooking skills at the courthouse's annual Columbus Day golf tournament.
"He cooks up the best hamburgers, hot dogs and chili that can be found anywhere," U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes said at the time.
Joe Volpe, who had been a law clerk under Forster and replaced him on the bench, said Wednesday that he still talked to Forster from time to time, and knew that "he really had found his home there in Lexington" and "really enjoyed" his time there teaching, before he fully retired.
At age 65, Forster moved to Virginia to teach full time at the small, historic Washington and Lee University, where Jane Lee was one of the college's first women graduates. He said the couple became interested in moving there after attending summer Alumni College programs there for about three years.
Bud Cummins, another law clerk of Forster's who went on to become U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, said Wednesday that he hadn't spoken to Forster for a year or more, but had visited the couple's home in Lexington while speaking at the law school. He said Forster "loved to teach" and had once been his trial advocacy professor at the law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
After law school, Cummins said, Forster "actually tracked me down ... and invited me to be his law clerk. I was pretty flattered by that, and not sure I would have used my law degree" if not for that encouragement from Forster.
"He was as nice and as fair as any judge could be," Cummins recalled. "He taught me, when I was young and impatient, about the importance of anyone's day in court, to them. He was so patient about letting them get their story told."
Watson, who is retired from the Friday Eldredge & Clark law firm in Little Rock and now works as an arbitrator and mediator, said he met Forster in law school, and he and his wife lived in the same neighborhood, off Barrow Road, as Forster and his first wife, Nancy, back when that was considered "west Little Rock."
He recalled how he and Forster were two of the first avid runners in Little Rock, just as running was becoming a popular pastime, but before there was such a thing as "running shoes."
"He truly believed in justice and fairness," Watson said. "He didn't see race, he didn't see gender, he didn't see power or privilege."
Before becoming a federal judge, Forster was also a Pulaski County deputy prosecuting attorney and an assistant U.S. attorney.
While in the latter role, he was one of the prosecutors sent to Wounded Knee, S.D., after the 71-day occupation of the town by followers of the American Indian Movement, who took a stance to demand civil rights. The 1973 siege ended after the occupiers surrendered their arms and U.S. Marshals took control of the town.
Metro on 05/09/2019