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Florida Southern names 67^th Honorary Chancellor
Chesterfield Smith of Holland & Knight will be honored Friday

LAKELAND, Fla. (March 20, 2001) - Florida Southern College (FSC) has named Chesterfield Smith as its 67^th Honorary Chancellor. Smith will be honored at convocation Friday morning as part of the college’s 116^th Founders Day festivities.

FSC has awarded the title of Honorary Chancellor since 1934. Several nationally recognized people have been among the recipients, including Walter Cronkite, Bob Hope, Gerald Ford and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Local honorees have included Jack M. Berry, Charles H. Jenkins Sr., J. Lanier Upshaw and Beverly Wolff.

Smith is a founder and principal architect of the law firm of Holland & Knight, LLP, among the United States' largest law firms with offices throughout Florida, and in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York City, Northern Virginia, Providence, Boston and San Francisco.

Smith's fifty-year legal career includes service in many bar organizations and public offices.  He has served as president of the American Bar Association (1973-1974) and of The Florida Bar (1964-1965).  Smith is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the American Bar Foundation.  He served on Governor Lawton Chiles' Commission for Government by the People in 1991 and as Chairman of the Civil Justice Advisory Commission to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida from 1991 to 1993.  In 1965-1968, he chaired the Constitution Revision Commission, which revised and redrafted the Florida Constitution for the first time in over fifty years.  By appointment of Chief Justice Warren Burger, he served as a member of the Federal Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries in 1976.

Smith was awarded the American Bar Association Medal in 1981.  He was the first recipient of the Distinguished Floridian Award from the Florida State Chamber of Commerce and has been designated as a Great Floridian by Florida History Associates, which produced a biographical video highlighting his achievements. 

More recently, Tom Brokaw has included a full chapter on Chesterfield Smith in his best-seller, The Greatest Generation.  Other honors and awards include the Arthur von Briesen Award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the Nelson Poynter Award given by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Learned Hand Award given by the American Jewish Committee, the Tree of Life Award given by the Jewish National Fund, and the Florida Bar Foundation Medal of Honor. 

In October 1999, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law presented Smith with a Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of his remarkable life's work in advancing equal justice for all under law.  In June 2000, the Florida Chamber Foundation created the Chesterfield Smith Public Policy Research Endowment in his honor.

Smith earned his J.D., with honors, in 1948 from the University of Florida College of Law.  He has long been a Trustee of the University of Florida Law Center Association, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and the recipient of multiple honorary degrees and academic recognition by colleges and universities throughout the United States.

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