Present for the dedication ceremony are (left to right) Graham Matherne, Jean Matherne, Buddy Avery, Jo Matherne Meschendorf, and interim Law Dean John Sobieski.

College of Law honors late Judge L. Kirby Matherne during naming ceremony April 18

The naming honors the late L. Kirby Matherne, a 1948 graduate of the UT College of Law whose distinguished career including serving as a Judge of the Tennessee Court of Appeals. He died in 2000 at age 80.

Judge Matherne graduated from Crockett Mills High School in West Tennessee and attended the University of Tennessee, Martin. He received B.S. and LLB degrees from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he served on the editorial staff of the Tennessee Law Review and was a member of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. His wife, Betty Graham Matherne, also received her master’s degree from UT-Knoxville in Home Economics.

A prominent attorney in Brownsville, Tenn., Judge Matherne was appointed to the Western Section of the Tennessee Court of Appeals by the late Governor Buford Ellington in 1968 and served as Presiding Judge of the Western Section from 1978 until his retirement in 1982. While Presiding Judge, he coordinated the construction of the Tennessee Supreme Court Building in Jackson.

Matherne was awarded the Distinguished Service Award in 1973 by the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association and received Service Awards from the Tennessee Judicial Conference and the Tennessee Young Lawyers Conference. An active Democrat all his life, he served as a delegate to the 1953 Tennessee Constitutional Convention.

Judge Matherne served 45 months in the U. S. Army Air Corps during World War II, 18 months of which was in the China-Burma-India theatre. He was company commander of the Brownsville Tennessee National Guard for 13 years and was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. He served as West Tennessee Commander of the American Legion and was awarded a National Legion Award for having the highest percentage increase in membership in America.

He was a member of the Haywood County, Madison County, Shelby County, Tennessee and American Bar Associations; a member and past president of the Brownsville Rotary Club; and a past president of the Brownsville Jaycees, which awarded him the Key Man and Distinguished Service Awards.

Judge Matherne also served as Executive Director of the Brownsville Housing Authority and was honored by that agency when Kirby Place in Brownsville was named for him in the mid-1980s. He was vice president of the West Tennessee Area Council, Boy Scouts of America, and served as chairman of the Haywood County Board of Education during the mid-1960s.

Judge Matherne was a member of First United Methodist Church, Brownsville, where he was a former Sunday school teacher, and member of the Administrative Board for many years.

Judge Matherne was married for 56 years to Betty Graham Matherne, a Sullivan County, Tenn., native. They had three daughters, Jean Matherne Avery and Jo Matherne Meschendorf of Brownsville, Tenn., and Debra Matherne Jones of Randolph, N.J., all of whom graduated from UT-Knoxville; and two sons, Louis K. Matherne, Jr. of Richmond, Va., and Graham Matherne of Nashville. They also had six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.