© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
(Feb. 23) – Rodney D. Moore always had an adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit. He had a newspaper route at age 8. He was a member of a Dallas hot rod club called the Horny Mooses before he was old enough to drive.
A visionary business lawyer who started and built one of the most influential law firms (Moore & Peterson) in Dallas history, he represented the state’s most important life insurance companies and pioneered techniques used in financing and structuring consolidations in the life insurance industry.
Most importantly, he was a great dad. He had a huge, caring heart and a soft spot for those less fortunate. I’ve tried my best to live up to the standards he set in his work ethic and integrity.
My dad passed away on Feb. 12 at his home in Dallas. He was 73.
Although his life journey was too short, he did it his way. Through the building of that firm and his practice of law, he had a strong influence and tremendous impact on a lot of people.
I am honored to have his name.
Rodney D. Moore had a very humble childhood. He grew up in a small house in the Dallas suburb of Pleasant Grove, where he shared a bedroom with three sisters. He had to start working when he was eight. His first job was delivering newspapers. He used his father’s truck, which he had to have back at the house by 7 a.m. so his dad, whom everyone knew as Papaw, could use it to go to his work.
One morning, dad was driving his route and saw a horse feeding on the side of the road. He parked the truck, caught the horse and finished his paper route on horseback. The problem was, he rode the horse home and put it in the backyard rather than going back for the truck.
Papaw was not real happy when he got up and found he had no truck to drive to work.
In high school, before he was old enough to get a driver’s license, dad was a hot rod rebel with many causes other than school. He was the youngest member ever of the Dallas hot rod club called the Horny Mooses Dallas.
Dad graduated from W.W. Samuel High School with many ideas, but none involved college. His mother, who is known as Mamaw, had other ideas. She drove him to Arlington State College and enrolled him. He graduated in 1963 with honors in economics. He married his high school sweetheart and my mom, Danah.
Papaw was working at Western Union and regularly delivered telegrams to the dean’s office at the SMU School of Law.
My dad got a full scholarship to attend SMU’s law school. He was convinced Papaw talked the dean into giving him a scholarship. He was Notes and Comments Editor of the Journal of Air Law and Commerce, graduated first in his class and had the second highest score on the state bar examination that year. One of my earliest memories is going to the SMU law school graduation in 1966. I was four years old and my father was graduating.
Dad went to work for Newman Pickering with his law school classmate and good friend, Ed Peterson.
In 1972, he started his own law firm. Moore & Peterson was born. Three years later, dad was across the table from a young attorney named Tom Roberts, who was then a third-year associate with Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts, which was a Wall Street law firm.
Dad was impressed with Tom and recruited him to move to Dallas. I still remember Tom coming to our house for dinner the night he came into town on the recruiting trip. He slept on the pullout sofa. Times and budgets were just different back then. Tom jokingly recalls he is not sure if he would have joined the firm if he had known the partners borrowed the money to buy his plane ticket from New York.
I was somewhat of a Moore & Peterson rug rat during the 1970s. I spent Saturdays at the office with dad enjoying the unlimited cokes, office supplies and copy machine selfies, as well as going downtown during the week and having lunch with him—sometimes at the Dallas Club. I grew up admiring him and wanting to be an attorney just like him.
Moore & Peterson grew to 85 lawyers and was one of the leading firms in Dallas. As a result of dad’s dedication to his clients and his creativity and judgment, he served as a trusted advisor to many prominent corporate leaders and entrepreneurs in a variety of industries both in Dallas and across the country. He was nationally known for pioneering the techniques used in financing and structuring consolidations in the life insurance industry.
Dad tried his best to talk me out of being an attorney. He said it was a hard way to make a living and you were always at your client’s beck and call.
Even so, I graduated from Washington & Lee University School of Law in 1987 and started practicing law. In 1989, dad semi-retired to South Padre Island to pursue his love of fishing, but continued to practice law part-time as counsel to Winstead, Sechrest & Minick.
He also served as a financial advisor to various life insurance companies as well as a director and an audit committee member of Western National Insurance Company (NYSE) from its initial public offering until it was acquired by American General Corporation. He was president of Bankers Multiple Line Insurance Company and its subsidiaries. In 1993 he became an arbitrator specializing in various types of complex proceedings between companies in the life insurance industry.
Although I always loved and respected my dad, it was during this time when he was juggling these activities in South Padre – even as I was learning how to practice law and simultaneously start a family – that I came to appreciate even more how special he was.
Having dad’s name elicited comments from many folks I ran into during my professional activities about how much they respected him. I became more aware of how unselfish and caring he was. He made sure his father had a new truck and tractor. He took old men and young boys fishing in the bay and helped them when they needed help. And he loved doting on and spoiling his grandkids.
But I also got to spend time with him during this period. We would sit in the garage working on fishing reels and getting them ready for the next day. We would sit in the kitchen at 5 a.m. drinking coffee and getting ready to go out on the boat. We spent long days on the boat taking turns poling down spoil banks looking for big fish. And we would just talk about how I was doing.
Dad always wanted to know how he could help me. He probably never fully realized how much he already had, as I was just trying my best to live up to the standards he had set. Plus, he taught me how to fish.
My parents returned to Dallas in 2009 to be closer to and enjoy their children and grandchildren, whom they loved dearly.
Although Moore & Peterson eventually disbanded, many attorneys who came out of that firm had very prominent careers. As one of my close attorney friends told me, it is like a coaching tree. Look at who the attorneys became after Moore & Peterson: judges, heads of international law practices, some of the most well-respected attorneys in their field and others who went on to very successful business ventures.
They are good people. I suppose that is because dad viewed the partnership as more than just a convenient legal structure. He wanted the best lawyers but also good people he was proud to have as partners.
Ed Peterson became a cornerstone at Winstead. Tom Roberts served as global head of the corporate practice at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, which hired me in 2011. I am now co-head of Weil’s Dallas office thanks to the opportunity Tom was instrumental in jumpstarting.
Dad was just a very special and unique person. It is amazing to me how many people I come in contact with who knew him and comment to me how much they respected him. Dad commanded attention and respect from those around him – not because he sought it out or demanded it, but just because of how he conducted himself. I have always tried my best to live up to the standards he set in his work ethic and integrity.
Tom Roberts summed it up best.
“Rodney Moore practiced law at the same time as, and was a member of, a small group of very independent, incredibly talented lawyers in Dallas who stood way out from the crowd and who all had a tremendous influence on all the other lawyers in Dallas,” Roberts said. “They were each, in their own way, also wonderful characters.
“These people not only had a disproportionate impact on the law and the business of law, they had an impact on the entire Dallas community and beyond,” he said. “This group consisted of, among others, Judge Irving Goldberg, Jack Hauer, Jerry Buckmeyer, Vester Hughes, Bob Strauss and from the younger generation John Johnson, Mike Boone and Rodney Moore. They were all part of what made Dallas really take off in the last quarter of the 1900s.
“It was an incredible time and these were incredible people.”
A memorial service for my father will be held at Watermark Community Church, 7540 LBJ Freeway, Dallas, TX 75251, on Feb. 26 at 3:00 p.m.
Donations may be made in memory of Rodney D. Moore to the Wounded Warrior Project, 4899 Belfort Rd., Suite 300, Jacksonville, FL 32256 or www.woundedwarriorproject.org; or to the Harold and Annette Simmons Comprehensive Center for Research and Treatment in Brain and Neurological Disorders, P.O. Box 910888, Dallas, TX 75391-0888 or www.utsouthwestern.edu.
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