By Stephen Anderson

In the spring of 1964, while Jack C. Carey was fulfilling requirements for his baccalaureate at Westminster College, ground was being broken there for the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library.

It was at the Fulton, Mo., school that the British prime minister gave his famous “iron curtain” speech on March 5, 1946. Harry S Truman, who had been president at the time, turned the first shovel of earth at the April 19, 1964, dedication.

Carey, a Belleville trial attorney who will become Illinois State Bar Association president on June 27, went on to get a master’s degree from Southern Illinois University and graduate in 1974 from the St. Louis University School of Law.

Seemingly endowed with Churchillian leadership qualities, Carey was elected to his first of several terms on the ISBA Assembly in 1981.

Then he served back-to-back terms as president of the East St. Louis Bar Association in 1985-86 and of the St. Clair County Bar Association in 1986-87.

After seven years on the Assembly, and terming off, Carey was again elected in 1990. Ten years later, he was elected to the Board of Governors, serving as ISBA treasurer in 2002-03.

Carey was chair of the Task Force on Unauthorized Practice of Law and a member of the Illinois Bar Foundation board when he was elected ISBA third vice president in 2005 without opposition.

He had represented the ISBA in a key 2003 unauthorized practice of law settlement with a company that prepared legal documents for a real estate closing but failed to record them properly.

Members of the firm were permanently enjoined from providing legal services, practicing law or appearing as attorneys in legal matters.

“When people buy protection from a non-lawyer who didn’t understand the complexity of a situation, it is more than an individual’s legal rights which are forfeited,” Carey said when the decision was announced.

“The broader concern, and rightfully so, is the loss of faith by all citizens in our entire system of justice,” he added. That effort earned him a Board of Governors Award in 2004.

A Charter Fellow of the Illinois Bar Foundation, Carey has served on the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation board for several years. He also is a board member of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.

Elected to the board of Signal Hill School District 181 in 1984, Carey was president from 1986 to 1997. He served on the Signal Hill Fire Protection District from 1975 to 1986.