Village Treasure: Eason Balch

An apocryphal story: Two young lawyers are having lunch when the conversation turns to the oldest partner in the firm. One lawyer says, “I sure hope I look as good as John when I’m ninety.” The other lawyer says, “You don’t look that good, now!”

They could easily have been talking about attorney Eason Balch of Mountain Brook. Balch’s own life, he says, has not been remarkable enough for anybody to interview him about it. Other people differ, and so we all get to decide.

Balch grew up in Madison, Alabama, with a population of about 500. His family’s farm was a “working” one, so he learned early to chop cotton, milk cows, and help raise and kill hogs to put food on the family’s table. His last three years in high school, he also worked at a Madison drug store.

Balch left for Tuscaloosa in 1936, and when he graduated from the University of Alabama’s School of Commerce in 1940, he weighed only 111 pounds. He’d been in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) at the university, but when he went into the Army, he was considered “too skinny” to attend OTC. He chose to go in as a private, but his education and work ethic quickly came to the attention of Army brass and the weight restriction was waived.

Eason Balch soon entered OCS and became a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. It was at OCS in Virginia that Eason met his future wife Betsy Brock. Balch entered active duty in November of 1941, a month before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Instead of making Balch a foot soldier during that crisis, the Army utilized his organizational skills to help maintain and manage the tools needed to help win the war. He would help organize, and later command, units that maintained jeeps, ambulances, trucks, command cars, and ordnance – the large artillery weapons used on the front lines.

During the early years of WWII, Balch worked at military installations in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. At a post in Saint Augustine, he befriended an Army doctor in his new unit. When the doctor’s wife learned that Balch was romancing Betsy, she invited her down from Richmond for a visit, and the courtship blossomed further.

The two began making plans to marry. But Balch, ever the gentleman, would not tie the knot until he met with Betsy’s father to get permission to marry her. “I guess it was providence, but the Army moved my outfit back to Fort Bragg, N.C. and Richmond, Va, nearer to Betsy’s home in Richmond, Virginia,” Balch says. They were married in the spring of 1943.

Balch continued his training in automotive, small arms, and larger ordnance. Then, the Army transferred him to Camp Pickett, about an hour south of Richmond. With that move, he received a promotion to captain.

Then, Balch’s unit shipped out for Europe, landing in La Havre, France, near the site of the historic Normandy invasion. Balch soon got a close-up look at the material requirements of war.

When the German soldiers were forced to flee further north, they left a state- of-the-art Daimler-Benz truck factory in their wake. Balch’s military unit, working with old-time German craftsmen, soon had the plant back in operation. “The Daimler- Benz officials saw the writing on the wall, and knew the war would soon be over,” Balch recalls.

In 1945, the Army ordered Balch’s unit to the Pacific to support the war effort against Japan. But then, the U.S. dropped “Little Boy”, the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the war ended before Balch’s unit arrived.

Once out of the Army, Balch wasted no time getting into law school. He first tried the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, but couldn’t find housing, so he headed back to Virginia where Betsy’s family lived. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1948 but still couldn’t find work that paid a decent wage. By that time, Eason and Betsy had two children and he needed a good job.

Fortunately, the dean of the Virginia law school had connections in Alabama, and learned that a firm in Birmingham was hiring. He recommended Balch for the position.

He and Betsy came to Birmingham for the interview with Martin, Turner, and McWhorter. “Logan Martin went to West Point,” Balch said with a smile, “and he ran the law firm like it was a military unit. All he wanted to talk about was my military experience.”

Martin asked Balch if he and Betsy would join him for lunch and they agreed. Balch was offered a position and moved his family to Mountain Brook. “I was so broke I couldn’t afford a house,” he says, “but we found an apartment near Dexter Avenue.”

Balch became the eleventh lawyer at Martin, Turner, and McWhorter, one of the oldest firms in the state. Some years later, the name of the firm was shortened to Balch & Bingham. “The name got so long that the receptionist couldn’t get it all out.