Thirty years!
Our newsletter (and the rest of our website, for that matter) is focused on providing information. We reason that if we give our readers information they’ll see that the legal questions we deal with are complicated, and that we know a thing or two. Maybe we can help with their elder-law related legal problems.
Plus, we genuinely like to explain difficult concepts in understandable language. So we’ve never focused on self-promotion.
Pardon us while we side-step and engage in a little of that self-promotion. Today (July 28, 2024) happens to be our thirtieth anniversary. That is, Fleming and Curti, PLC, has been around for three decades — as of today. We’re thirty years old!
We go way back
Fleming & Curti, PLC, founders Robert Fleming (that would be me!) and Tom Curti first met in 1973 — more than fifty years ago. There were about 150 new students in the entering law school class at the University of Arizona that year. Tom and I were two of the dozen (or so) out-of-state students in that group, and so we were thrown together immediately. We became fast friends.
Tom came to Arizona from Wisconsin. He has occasionally admitted that his decision to move to Arizona was in large part motivated by the 1967-1971 television series The High Chapparral. If you are of a certain age, you might recall the western soap opera about the Cannon clan — Big John, Billy, Buck and the beautiful Victoria (played by the late Linda Cristal). He later acknowledged that he sort-of thought Linda must live in the Tucson area, and maybe he’d even meet her one day.
Though he never did meet Linda Cristal, he did meet Lois. Because we introduced them. They got married, raised three sons and now have three granddaughters. But I get ahead of myself.
I came to Arizona from Montana by way of Utah. I didn’t meet my wife in Tucson, because she had been my high school sweetheart back in Utah. We married just before coming to Tucson, and so were the old married couple at the law school. We’re still probably the only couple from our law school years that have been together for fifty years. But I still remember Tom’s anniversary gift for us when we made it to ten years. It’s supposed to be aluminum, so he gave us a can of Coors. If you’re wondering, the anniversary gift for thirty years is supposed to be pearls.
We’re older than we look
As Tom and I graduated from law school, we followed similar career paths. Almost immediately, I joined my first law partner, the late Ed Vincent (I miss him every day) in the firm called Vincent & Fleming. In 1977 Tom joined us and the firm changed to Vincent, Fleming & Curti. Within another year we were joined by Jim Gjurgevich (since retired), and we were Vincent, Fleming, Curti & Gjurgevich.
So Tom and I were partners in a series of other firms for about three years before we dissolved the firm and went our separate ways. I became a City Magistrate in Tucson, and then the Pima County Public Fiduciary. Tom stayed as a solo practitioner, but with his office always within six blocks of my various offices.
In 1991 Tom and I decided we needed to share office space. We searched (mostly Tom searched) until we found an ideal property at 330 N. Granada Ave. We bought it, waited for the tenant to move out (The Tucson Weekly was a great tenant for a year) and then moved in — but not (yet) as partners. Tom and I shared space for two years before forming Fleming & Curti, PLC. So, you see, Fleming & Curti, PLC is actually about 35 years old. Or so.
Things change
Tom retired in 2019. He helped us move into our new space in February, 2020, but he didn’t join us. Since then he’s been a regular presence — sometimes corporeal and sometimes inspirational — but he’s enjoying that retirement. Especially since each of his sons has provided a granddaughter for he and Lois to pamper and play with.
We immediately missed our old, comfortable, friendly and homey office space. But our new space was much more airy and spacious. Particularly as a little thing called the COVID pandemic arrived even before we could set up an open house to welcome people to our new space. In hindsight, dealing with staggered shifts, room filters, disinfectants and workspace cleaning would have been much more complicated if we hadn’t moved.
As Tom retired and we planned to move, Elizabeth Friman became a partner at Fleming & Curti, PLC. She brought a new and welcome energy to a mature practice, and continues to navigate the anticipated transition of the practice in the future. She was a lucky match — she perfectly fits Tom’s (and my) notions of ethics, professional approach to clients and others and dealing with staff and other professionals. And she has built her own favorable reputation with our cheers and support, but on her own — she’s far from a mere factotum, and always has been.
So, thirty years?
Yeah. Fleming & Curti, PLC, has been around for thirty years. A lot has changed. A lot has stayed consistent. And the future looks exciting. We can hardly wait to see what happens over the next thirty years. By then I might have retired completely (I will be over 100) and even Elizabeth might have had to make succession plans (she’ll be — well, she’ll be about the age I am now). But I predict some variant of Fleming & Curti, PLC, will still be around.
Thanks for bearing with me for this self-indulgent newsletter. I promise we’ll get back to dealing with other people’s legal issues next week. And, incidentally, that will be about the twenty-seventh anniversary of this newsletter — depending on how you count it. We began our newsletter as a one-page weekly fax in 1997 — when we were three years old and the internet was, well, not yet a thing at all.
–Robert B. Fleming (not Bob, not Rob, nor even just Robert Fleming — but that’s another old story, which I’ll share with you if you just ask)
3 Responses
Always appreciate reading your notes & especially appreciate being a client as someone who “listens”. Do indeed hope you keep it up.
Please tell us the story on the name.
Officially, I am “John Paul Parks,” although I will respond to “John” in casual conversation. I started using all three names when I was in the Ninth Grade. When I was an undergraduate at Stetson University (DeLand), a professor encouraged me to continue. He said, “with three one-syllable names, you need all the oomph you can get.”
There is also an interesting family story about how I acquired the names “John” and “Paul,” which I will be happy to share if asked.
My birth name: Robert Bruce Fleming. Not a nod to Robert the Bruce — my mother just thought Bruce fit well with Robert. She liked it so much, in fact, that I went by “Bruce” until I was 21, recently married and on my way to enter law school.
I always hated “Bruce” growing up. In the 60s, particularly, it was a regular punchline on late-night television and suggestive comedy shows. In the 1968 Dodge Dart that took us to Arizona to go to law school (pulling the largest U-Haul trailer that could be fitted to it), I turned to my new bride (of three months) and said:
“I just realized that we’re going to meet a bunch of new people and we’ll know no one there. If I tell them all that my name is “Robert” they’ll believe me and call me that. So I’ll really only have to change one person.”
She sat thoughtfully for a few minutes, and then (as we drove into Page, Arizona) she said:
“OK. I know you’ve always hated your name, and so I’ll go along with it. But here are my conditions: no “Bob” or “Rob” or other nicknames. And your signature has to always be Robert B. Fleming.”
I made my own peace with “Bruce” shortly thereafter, and when Johnny Carson retired he had already been told to stop using the name (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58KSUA174oI). So at this point I’m pretty much okay with any sobriquet — but I have a fifty-one-year-old promise to uphold.
Robert B. Fleming