From modest beginnings in Springfield, Wayne Budd has risen to the very pinnacle of the African-American hierarchy in this town. The resume, in part: first black US attorney for Massachusetts, New England president for Bell Atlantic, general counsel for John Hancock Financial Services, and now a partner at Goodwin Procter. Ask Budd how he got there, and he doesn't hesitate at all: "David Nelson was my guy."
Nelson was himself the first black man appointed to the federal bench in Boston. He was best known for presiding over the long trials of Boston mobsters Gennaro, Francesco, and Donato Angiulo in 1985 and 1986. Budd, though, remembers Nelson as the man who changed his life and many others like him.
"I wasn't from here, and he opened doors, one after another, to me," says Budd, now 66.
Budd was from Springfield. Nelson, seven years older, was from Boston. But they came from the same place, really. Nelson's father operated the valet shop in the old Somerset Hotel and was a union business agent; his mother was a domestic worker. Budd's father was a Springfield cop; his mother worked in a factory. Both Nelson and Budd went to Boston College.
It was Nelson who got Budd his first big client, Boston Edison. "It was somewhat unusual to send work to an African-American lawyer at the time," says Budd. "David Nelson convinced them I would be a good person to do it, and it was a staple of my practice."
Nelson invited Budd to teach a class with him at Boston University School of Law and got him a teaching job at Boston College Law School, where Budd spent 15 years. Nelson promoted Budd for a spot on BC's board, the key to one of the great power networks in Boston. And on and on.
"What you learn, and I am trying to do it myself, is that you give back," says Budd. "You don't pull up the ladder once you reach the plateau. I take that role very, very seriously and that was inspired by watching David Nelson. He took me under his wing, and it wasn't just me. He has done that to many, many people in the city and beyond. He wanted me to be successful."
Nelson died in 1998 at the age of 64 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. But he has hardly been forgotten. One fitting reminder of the man: the Judge David S. Nelson Fellows, a summer program that assigns high school students to a federal judge to give them an inside look at how the justice system works. Budd is a mentor and regular speaker at the fellowship, which is open to students from Boston and Springfield, something that would certainly have pleased David Nelson.
