St. Louis Attorney Robert O. Hetlage dies after a battle with cancer

St. Louis attorney Robert O. Hetlage died Monday, July 17, at his home after a battle with cancer. He was 75.

The legal community was lucky to have Bob Hetlage, said Robert J. Tomaso, managing partner of Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, in a statement. Unlike most of us, Bob's contributions were not limited to our local market, as he made his mark nationally, serving the American Bar Association as chair of both its Real Estate and Ethics sections. Bob was a role model not only to the attorneys in our law firm, but to the entire profession. We have lost an excellent lawyer and dear friend.

Hetlage was the last attorney to serve as chair of Peper, Martin, Jensen, Maichel & Hetlage before it merged with Blackwell Sanders in 1998.

Hetlage was born on Jan. 9, 1931, in St. Louis. He was a 1952 graduate of Washington University and a 1954 graduate of Washington University School of Law, where he served as managing editor of the Washington University Law Review. He earned his LL.M. from George Washington University in 1957.

After finishing law school, Hetlage served as a first lieutenant, Office of the Judge Advocate General, International Affairs Division, Department of the Army from 1955 to 1958. He joined his brother Richard A. Hetlage in the firm Hetlage & Hetlage as a partner in 1958, and in 1966 the firm merged to become Peper, Martin, Jensen, Maichel & Hetlage, where he was chairman from 1994 to 1997. The firm merged in 1998 to form Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, and Hetlage has practiced since that time as of counsel with that firm.

Blackwell Sanders partner Ron Schowalter was a summer associate at Peper Martin in 1971 when he met Hetlage. Throughout the years, Hetlage has been Schowalter's mentor, adviser and friend.

Whenever I needed legal help for personal reasons, I went to Bob, he said. Whenever I wanted personal advice, I went to Bob. Whenever I wanted professional guidance, I went to Bob. He was sort of the moral compass of our firm.

Hetlage served the bar as chair of the American Bar Association Ethics Committee and had a big hand in writing the ethics code of the ABA, according to his former partner, Warren Maichel, who called him Mr. Ethics for the bar.

He was strong in his profession and even stronger in his ethics, said Lynn Whaley Vogel, president of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis.

In all of my years of bar activity, that's particularly where he's been a mentor and an invaluable resource personally. And BAMSL owes him a great deal for all of his years of dedication, she said.

Missouri Bar President Douglas Copeland said, His contributions throughout his career to The Missouri Bar, the ABA and other causes was truly exemplary. We need models to show us how to act as lawyers, and Bob was just such a model. He was a true gentleman. He will be missed by his profession.

Hopefully, his passing will inspire others to step forward on the path he traveled during his lifetime.

Hetlage was finishing his two-year term as president of the American Bar Foundation when he died. His term would have ended in August. During the 1976-1977 bar year, he served as president of The Missouri Bar, and in 1967-1968, he was president of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis.

Doreen Dodson knew Hetlage from his service to both The Missouri Bar and to the ABA. Most recently the two lawyers worked together on ways to increase the membership of Missouri lawyers into The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. Dodson is state chair for Missouri of The Fellows, a post for which Hetlage nominated her.

He put in enormous amounts of volunteer time to bar activities, not for his personal aggrandizement but for issues that he truly cared about - supporting lawyers, advancing the cause of justice - and was just dedicated to those issues, said Dodson.

Hetlage still devoted energy to special projects for the ABA, including projects on ABA governance and attorney-client privilege, she said. He's worked on all kinds of issues that are of concern to lawyers but also to the organized bar and then to justice in its largest sense, she said.

Robert Nelson, director of the American Bar Foundation, said Hetlage provided great service to the foundation and its research activity.

One of his contributions was to ensure that the research projects that were approved by the foundation both were academically rigorous but also served the purpose of improving the justice system, said Nelson.

Hetlage served as president or chair of many national bar associations. As president of the American Bar Foundation, he also served on the Board of the American Bar Endowment and was liaison to the Council of the American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education. In addition, Hetlage served as president of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers and the Anglo-American Real Property Institute as well as chair of the ABA Section of Real Property, Probate and Trust Law and chair of the ABA Ethics Committee.