A favored anecdote told of Columbus lawyer Richard Hagler recalled the towering, impeccably dressed attorney back home in Buena Vista, Georgia, bagging groceries at the family store.
The store the townsfolk called Haglers was the family business, and Richard and his siblings grew up working there with their parents. Later, when the son became a standout lawyer in the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit that includes Buena Vista, where Marion County has a courthouse square, he would stop by the store to talk, and bag some goods for people who’d known him since he was a kid.
That was among the tales told Wednesday at the funeral for the 70-year-old who after serving as a local prosecutor in 1983 started the law firm now called Hagler, Jackson and Walters, where partners passing through over the years have gone on to form their own practices, or to serve as judges.
The Walters is for Amy Walters, a county magistrate. The Jackson is for Stacey Jackson, now the judicial circuit’s district attorney.
Hagler hired him in 2008, when Jackson, who like Hagler started as an assistant district attorney, left the prosecutor’s office during a leadership change. He returned when the governor appointed him DA earlier this year.
Jackson in a Ledger-Enquirer interview recalled Hagler’s taking him on: “He saw something in me that would be good in the private sector.” Jackson became one of Columbus’ most successful criminal defense attorneys.
He said he learned from Hagler’s example, recalling “how great he was at dealing with clients handling delicate situations.”
Hagler put equal effort into every case, whether the client was prominent or not, Jackson said.
“He treated every client the same, and worked just as hard on the cases no matter what segment of the community they were from,” Jackson said, adding Hagler knew how to “help good people get out of bad situations.”
The thought of Hagler back at the family checkout in his tailored suit seems a good fit, he said: “That was just his kind of character.”
‘Wonderful negotiator’
At the funeral that packed Columbus’ First Baptist Church, Pastor Jimmy Elder said Hagler reached a career peak where he could “cherry pick” clients for the most promising outcomes, but he was drawn to young clients with troubled families.
“He was a wonderful negotiator, and he helped them navigate the troubled waters of life,” Elder said.
He said Hagler and his wife Tasca occasionally would meet someone who thanked Hagler for his representation, and she would be surprised, saying he’d never mentioned it.
“Tasca, they pay me to keep my mouth shut,” he said.
Chuck Hasty of Grace Presbyterian Church said Hagler was known for “a raucous laugh and a wicked sense of humor,” and he was a “staunch egalitarian.”
“It could be said that Richard Hagler used every club in the bag,” said Hasty.
Hagler also was an avid golfer, and world traveler, who relished the adventures a former grocery clerk could afford.
He played the famed St. Andrews course in Scotland. Along with the Bible, Hasty quoted the movie “Braveheart,” where playing Scottish hero William Wallace, Mel Gibson says, “Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”
When Hagler was diagnosed with the aggressive form of leukemia that took his life last week, he told the doctor: “Give it to me straight. I want to know,” Hasty said.
“You will be dead in two years,” she replied.
Hagler didn’t have to alter course, Hasty said: “He just kept on living and loving.”
He said Hagler once dined with friends in a five-star restaurant with a view of the New York skyline, and turned to his companions and said:
“Who would ever have imagined that a country boy from Buena Vista would wind up here?”