Friends, neighbors and a former law professor offered a portrayal of Andrew Speaker on Thursday that stands in sharp contrast to the picture of a selfish traveler willing to risk the lives of fellow passengers rather than reschedule his wedding.
The man they know, they said, is a dedicated community volunteer, sharp litigator and generally nice guy.
“He is a very talented young man with a lot of promise,” said Kellie Casey Monk, director of advocacy at the University of Georgia Law School, where Speaker graduated. “I think he is outstanding.”
Speaker, 31, who is infected with a drug-resistent form of tuberculosis, was flown Thursday from Atlanta to Denver to be treated at National Jewish Medical and Research Center.
Speaker told his Denver doctors he believes he contracted TB in Asia while he was raising funds for a hospital, Dr. Charles Daley said Thursday.
According to a biography on the website of Speaker’s law firm, the personal-injury lawyer was named junior committee volunteer of the year in 2001 at Shepherd Center hospital in Atlanta. The biography, which lists Speaker’s professional and volunteer work, does not mention any other hospital.
Larry Bowie, spokesman for Shepherd Center, said Speaker was a volunteer between 1998 and 2001. But the hospital doesn’t do fundraising in Asia, he said.
Speaker wrote in an application to become a board member of his condominium association that he was going to Vietnam for five weeks for the Rotary Club to act as an ambassador.
Speaker’s wife, Sarah, is a third-year merit scholar at Atlanta’s Emory University, where she is studying law and was an honor graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
An April 24 Appen Newspapers wedding announcement said the couple would be married in May in Santorini, Greece, and have an extended honeymoon in Europe.
“He’s a great guy. Gregarious,” said Pam Hood, a former neighbor. “He’s a wonderful guy. Just a very, very pleasant man.”
Speaker graduated ninth in his class from Mt. Vernon Christian Academy in Stockbridge, Ga.
A top litigator in his class
According to Speaker’s law-firm biography, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy, but the biography did not indicate he graduated.
It said he earned his undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Georgia and his law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law.
In 2003, he was on a team of law students that won the American Bar Association’s national mock-trial contest.
“It’s very competitive to get on the team,” Monk said. “He was the only second-year student on the team. He was definitely one of the best litigators in his class.”
Monk called Speaker “friendly, engaging, outgoing and well-liked.”
He frequently volunteered to work with law students at the university, Monk said.
“I don’t have all the facts, but I don’t think he would have done anything anyone else wouldn’t have done. I don’t think he would circumvent authority,” Monk said.
Speaker was a summer intern at the Fulton County district attorney’s office in Atlanta in the summer of 2003, District Attorney Paul Howard said in a news release.
He later worked in the Oconee County, Ga., district attorney’s office before he joined his father, Ted Speaker, at the Speaker Law Firm, a private personal-injury and family-law firm in Atlanta, according to his biography.
The Washburn University School of Law says Speaker specializes in cases involving motorcycle, trucking and car accidents as well as wrongful-death cases.
Speaker’s father unsuccessfully ran for a Fulton County Superior Court judgeship in 2004, the same year his son was admitted to the Georgia Bar.
Speaker recently moved from an upscale condominium complex in anticipation of his wedding, former neighbors said.
Staff writer Karen Augé, staff librarian Regina Avila and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
