Albert Lacy Russel

He was a distinguished scholar, attending Phillips Andover Academy, then Yale University, followed by Yale Law School. From Yale Law, he was hired by Senator Robert A. Taft to work in the Cincinnati firm of Taft, Stettinius and Hollister. His father was John Hooe Russel and his mother was Minerva Park Phelps. He was born in Huntington, West Virginia. His specialty was probate law and he was a prominent lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio. Albert enjoyed the outdoors and was a naturist.

"Albert Lacy Russel (Al) was born in West Virginia, but when he was only four his father died and he moved to Jacksonville, Florida with his mother, who later remarried (to Frank E. Jennings). After attending Phillips Andover Academy, he attended and graduated from Yale University Phi Beta Kappa in 1923 and then toured Europe with a college friend that summer in an army surplus motorcycle with a sidecar. The motorcycle was an Indian, which the boys bought in France and alternated riding in the sidecar. That fall, he began his legal education at Yale Law School, obtaining his LL.B degree with high honors in 1926. This record and his family background brought an offer from a Cincinnati law firm with a number of Yale alumni, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, which he joined that year, becoming a partner in 1934. He was the sixth partner in the firm.

Al Russel was 6’2” tall and carried about 170 pounds on a sparse, angular frame. His slightly reddish hair was combed straight back, and by his early 40’s had thinned to invisibility over the center of his head - a fact with which he was quite comfortable. When reading, he wore gold-rimmed glasses. He liked racquet sports, playing tennis when the season permitted, often with members of his family and badminton regularly throughout the year with a group of friends, which included among others, the Steve Starr’s, the Starr Fords, and the Carl Swishers. He was an enthusiastic horseman and for a long time belonged to the cavalry division of the Ohio National Guard. He had a wry sense of humor and his friends recall him as a lovable, winning man with a gentle southern drawl.

As a lawyer, Al was a most careful draftsman, doing initial drafts in longhand, and if there was any question in his or a client’s or a fiduciary’s mind as to the meaning of a phrase or word in any document he had written, he would study it, worry over it and, if he believed it appropriate, add as much as another full paragraph to ensure that the interpretation of the language would be clear and would reflect the meaning that was intended. He was an expert in trust and probate law and in income, gift and estate taxes affecting them and the provisions of trusts and other documents he prepared without benefit of computers, word processing machines or other labor saving devices. In his time, he was the recognized authority in the State of Ohio in the probate, wills and trust fields.

Al and his wife and daughters lived in Hyde Park on a pie shaped lot nearly at the end of Country Club Place. The architect of his home was Marshall Martin, a family friend. Al Russel died of a heart attack at the young age of 50 on Labor Day, 1952 after a day of caving in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. He was a man of the highest ethics, a hard worker, and a sound thinker. He was passionate about accuracy and thoroughness."

Excerpted from “A Memoir” written by his colleague Alan R. Vogeler and delivered to the Cincinnati Literary Club. In his remarks, Vogeler said in remembering Russel, “I lost a mentor and a friend I will never forget.”