Download Magazine - Levin College of Law - University of Florida

A Pioneer in
the Field
Baseball player, Boynton Beach mayor, and
Ted Williams’ attorney. What a life.
B Y J A M E S H E L L E G A A R D
When Gene Moore arrived in
Boynton Beach in 1957, it was
a small town of a few thousand
residents on the southeast coast
of Florida. He was 28 years old, a
young lawyer just two years out of
law school, in a place where there
werenʼt a whole lot of lawyers.
“They had nothing down here,” says Moore, who
would go on to serve as attorney and mayor for the city.
When he arrived, there was no municipal water treatment
or a municipal tennis court. There was, however, plenty
of opportunity.
“That was good because we could address those problems
with the need being there,” says Moore (JD 53), now 78.
“We just had to come up with the answers. We would run for
office, get into city government and solve those problems.
Because they were there. Down here everything was open
for us to do it and take the responsibility and pride in doing
it. You were a pioneer because the need was there.”
In retrospect, he would not have done anything differently.
His choice to start a real estate practice proved to be a good one
as South Florida experienced unprecedented growth. Moore
enjoyed having the type of practice over which he could have
total control with little of his time spent in litigation or in the
courtroom. Hard work led to more business, and his practice
steadily broadened well beyond the city limits.
“Itʼs a good network and a good, clean business to be
in,” he says. “You deal with people. Over the years Iʼve dealt
with a lot of people, and itʼs been very rewarding and very
productive.”
Born in Arkansas, Moore moved with his family at an
early age to West Virginia, relocating to South Florida at
age 11 in 1939 when his father, Gene Moore, Jr., took an
advertising job with The Palm Beach Post, a newspaper
young Gene “Buddy” Moore would spend much of his
childhood delivering on his bicycle.
When he graduated from Palm Beach High
School, Moore won the newspaper boy scholarship.
His baseball coach, the legendary Red Whittington
who coached several future college and pro stars at
Pam Beach High, directed Moore toward his alma mater, The
Citadel in Charleston.
“He talked me into going. I didnʼt know what the hell it
was,” recalls Moore. “I didnʼt even know it was a military
school until I got up there.”
Moore arrived in 1946 and found himself competing for
a spot on the sports teams with a lot of veterans who had
recently returned from fighting in World War II. “I made the
Moore at the Citidel in 1950.
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