ONE Connection | 12 Fascinating Facts About Former Managing Partner Jack Reavis

March 28, 2025 Newsletters

12 Fascinating Facts About Former Managing Partner Jack Reavis

Jack Reavis played the long game. As Managing Partner, he led the Firm for a record 27 years, from 1948 to 1975, and after naming Allen Holmes as his successor, he remained with Jones Day until he passed away in 1984. Years of service: 63.

John Wallace Reavis (pronounced REH-vis) was born in Falls City, Nebraska, on November 13, 1899. He grew up in Nebraska and Washington, D.C., and served briefly in the U.S. Naval Reserve Flying Corps. at the end of World War I. He married Helen Lincoln in 1924, and they had two sons, John and Lincoln. As a young lawyer, he developed the Firm's Tax Practice. As Managing Partner, he instituted the confidential partner compensation system and doubled the Firm's size, with the expansion of the Washington Office and the opening of the Los Angeles Office.

Here are 12 notable facts about a life in the law.

1. He graduated from Cornell Law School when he was 21.

The day after he graduated from law school, 21-year-old Jack Reavis joined what was then Tolles, Hogsett, Ginn & Morley in Cleveland in 1921. When he signed on, he was given No. 13 for a simple reason: He was the Firm's 13thlawyer. It was a volatile, bold-headlines decade: Prohibition, the Roaring '20s, the Stock Market Crash, and the beginnings of the Great Depression.

2. A hot hand helped pay the bills.

His starting salary was $100 a month. "I lived on $100 a month," he later recalled. "That, plus what I made playing poker."

3.Jack's grandfather, father, and brother were all lawyers.

His grandfather, Isham Reavis, was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as a justice on the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court. Jack's dad, C.F. Reavis, was a four-term U.S. Representative from Nebraska. Older brother C.F. "Tat" Reavis preceded Jack at the Firm, but left in the early 1920s to co-found Reavis & McGrath in New York.

4. Hildegarde Dobay, Jack's invaluable secretary, started working for him in the 1920s when she was a teenager and stayed at the Firm for 61 years.

As devastating as the 1929 Stock Market Crash was for the country, the bigger blow to the Firm came in 1933 when more than 4,000 U.S. banks failed.

Hildegarde "Hildy" Dobay* recalled working 16-hour days in March 1933 alongside Jack and (future Managing Partner) Tom Jones at the Union Trust Company while also learning to navigate a cashless economy.

The Firm learned to barter, and every lawyer accepted a 30% reduction in salary. It was during one of those long nights that Hildy admitted to Jack that she was a little frightened of him. "Frightened ofme?" he asked. "Just a boy from Nebraska."

5. He was part of the core group of lawyers—including Frank Ginn, Tom Jones, and Frank Joseph—who helped guide the Firm through the Great Depression.

The boom days of the 1920s led to the dire 1930s. As Jack would later put it, "From the pleasant job of working for clients, helping create their financial empires in the '20s, we spent much of the '30s presiding at their financial funerals." The Firm's three biggest clients all went bankrupt.

6. He became the Firm's third Managing Partner when Tom Jones died after suffering a heart attack in 1948.

On the day after Jones died, Jack called a meeting of the partners. There were some misgivings among the lawyers, according to Albert Borowitz'sJones, Day, Reavis & Pogue: The First Century. They were not questioning his legal talents, but his "apparent lack of patience with his intellectual inferiors, whose numbers were legion." Partner Art Dougan said of that meeting:

"It was more of a shock than a surprise. No one, at least of the younger men, had anticipated Tom's death, and Jack had not been visibly a part of management of the Firm. We knew him as a brilliant tax lawyer, with a mind like a steel trap, a short fuse on his temper, and a sharp tongue."

7.He was a sought-after presence in corporate boardrooms across the country.

At one time or another, Jack served on the boards of 11 NYSE-listed companies, including Midland-Ross, Diamond Shamrock, J&L Steel, TRW, and Westinghouse.

Jack was ill at ease unless he was sitting in a boardroom with a group of people who were just as powerful, bright, and aggressive as he was.

— Pat McCartan

8. Jack traded big boardrooms for big game.

While in the Midwest, Jack was an avid duck hunter. But he also embarked on several more elaborate expeditions to Africa. Starting in the late '40s, he traveled to Kenya five times to hunt lions, water buffalo, antelopes, and gazelles. During one safari, when Jack was riding in a long caravan of trucks, a plane flew overhead and dropped a package with a message. It read, "Jack, come home. We need you – Chappie**."

9. He worked to help ease racial tensions in Cleveland in the 1960s.

In 1964, following riots in some inner-city neighborhoods and the death of a reverend during a civil rights protest, Jack, then chairman of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, created and chaired the Interracial Business Men's Committee. It brought together white business executives and the city's Black leaders to address inequities in housing, education, and employment.

"There seemed to be a consensus going around that Jack Reavis was the only one who could bring everyone together," former Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes later recalled. "During the time I was mayor, he was the most important person from the standpoint of getting cooperation from the businesses and industries in the area. Not only did they trust Jack Reavis as a lawyer, but they trusted his judgment as to how deeply they should become involved in civic affairs."

10. Jack welcomed Jones Day's first woman to the partnership in 1970.

WhenNaoma Stewart was hired as an associate in 1960, she was the Firm's first and only female lawyer. Toward the end of that decade, Dick Pogue (another future Managing Partner) and other lawyers thought she should be elevated to partner. Dick worked hard to convince Jack, who resisted. Eventually, he relented. Dick Pogue later recalled, "It was a very extraordinary act in those days. Of course, today, it seems utterly absurd that we would have any problem with the decision. Jack's initial reluctance should not be counted against him, because he had the ability to move with the times."

Naoma later remembered that after she was led into his office and Jack started his welcome-to-the-partnership speech, she was so shocked she asked him to repeat what he had said. "He repeated it, and I thought I was going to cry. I thought, whatever you do, don't cry in front of Jack Reavis. So I just said, 'Thank you,' and shook hands, and then I went back to my office and cried." (Click this link to hear Naoma recounting that day, in an audio recording she made in 2009.)

11. Reluctantly, he gave the green light to the creation of the Partnership Committee.

It's safe to say that Jack was not thrilled with creating committees that might undermine his power. When he was preparing to anoint Allen Holmes as his successor, there were concerns by some partners that Allen, while an excellent lawyer, would benefit from the input of his seasoned colleagues when running the Firm.

As Pat McCartan (a future Managing Partner) recalled in an interview in the early '90s, Jack was quite reluctant but eventually consented to the committee. Pat described the two Firm leaders this way:

"Allen was brilliant and could hold his own on any subject. Jack, by contrast, was ill at ease unless he was sitting in a boardroom with a group of people who were just as powerful, bright, and aggressive as he was. … Jack was like a solid oak planted in the ground; you knew which way he was growing and what to expect next."

12.He was a frequent flier (mostly on corporate jets).

In the video clip below, Jack describes an especially hectic week when he attended six directors' meetings in six cities in six days. (Click here if the video does not load on your device.)

Click here to watch Jack's entire address on YouTube.

Jack's summation of that whirlwind week serves as a fitting epitaph to his six decades at Jones Day: "That's the sort of intellectual challenge that makes the practice of law in a Firm like ours really a great pleasure."

—Written by Clint O'Connor

*Dobay's, the cafe in the Cleveland Office, is named in Hildegarde's honor.

**Chappie was H. Chapman Rose, the partner who, among other accomplishments, convinced Firm leaders to open a Washington Office in 1946.

Sources:Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue: The First Century, by Albert Borowitz; Jack Reavis's speech to Jones Day's summer associates, 1983;The Cleveland Plain Dealer;The New York Times,The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History; The Cleveland Foundation; www.ancestory.familysearch.org; Jones Day archive

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