Law Vibe

From Local Source:

To relate the life story of Walter Seward is a self-described impossibility.

Why?

It’s 110 years long.

A West Orange resident for 45 years, Seward will soon celebrate his 110th birthday. Born in 1896, he has lived through an entire century plus some. He’s seen 19 presidents enter and leave office. He’s traveled on horse-drawn carriages and passenger jets. No wonder it’s difficult to get an answer to the request of a simple synopsis of his life.

That’s not to say that Seward is incapable of recollection. He’s in amazing health for a man who was alive long before the birth of modern medicine. And he remembers the important times.

He remembers surveying and mapping every street, house, and tree in Vineland after his father died in an automobile accident and the job was left unfinished.

He remembers delivering newspapers from New Brunswick to Manhattan while attending Rutgers University — then an all men’s school — back when it took a man-made delivery rather than a simple mouse click to turn local news national. A Class of 1917 graduate, Seward retained a life-long relationship with his alma mater. To this day, he has missed only a handful of class reunions, although he has long been the only one from his class to attend.

Seward even re-established the tradition of chapel services at Rutgers, opening an on-campus chapel in 1966 that the university eventually adopted and that now attracts large crowds during each reunion.

He remembers practicing real estate law after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1924 — he is now the oldest living graduate — and he remembers loving it so much he continued to practice on a part-time basis as he neared 100.

He lovingly recalls the day he met his late wife, Florence “Betty” Gardner — at Highland Avenue Congregational Church in Orange at age 60 — when the two of them were the only ones who showed up for services during a blizzard that he said left snow “as high as a table-top.”

“We were the only people who came,” he said. “They didn’t even open the church. I made plans for us to go out to dinner and she didn’t turn me down.”

He remembers marrying Betty, a Florida woman 22 years his junior who would later become a West Orange High School biology teacher and long-time substitute. He remembers with joy the birth of his two children and two grandchildren and with great sadness Betty’s death six years ago.

Yes, that summary leaves out large chunks of time — two decades here, another three there — but when you’ve had 110 years of experiences, the small ones are dwarfed by the big ones. However, even the smallest details of Seward’s life are worth noting.

He had a normal childhood. The son of a consulting engineer and a schoolteacher in Great Lakes region of New York, he moved to Vineland as a teenager. His first car was a Model T that he had to back up hills because the clutch slipped.

He was a remarkable student. He attended Rutgers on a scholarship after skipping a few years of high school and at 5 feet nothing, he played football on Rutgers’ practice squad. He worked through college but managed to graduate with honors, which fueled his entry into Harvard Law School.

Seward found his law school years to be a challenge. Classes were a tremendous amount of work, and with waiting tables to cover room and board, there wasn’t much time for anything else. But soon after Seward secured his LL.B., things got tougher. He had moved to Newark and was employed at Fidelity Union Title & Mortgage Guarantee Co. when the stock market crashed in 1929. “I had that job until things got so terribly bad, they had to fire everybody,” said Seward. “I had to pick up jobs now and then as best I could.” In the midst of the Depression, when one in four was unemployed, he found work at a classmate’s firm in New York City. In 1937, he returned to New Jersey, where he practiced law into his 90s.

And he still is a devoted member of the community. For many years he sang in the choir at the church where he met his wife. He was a member of a hiking club in the Appalachians and he took a West Orange Cub Scout troop hiking and camping when his son was growing up. He and his wife effectively ran the troop until after his son graduated high school. He still attends church to this day, though at a new parish — First Presbyterian Church in Orange .

That parish hosted Seward’s birthday party on Sunday. A throng of family and friends celebrated Seward’s remarkable life. It was the 110th time.