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Bar News - July 25, 2003 'Tutt' Bell has Tales to Tell, Books to Write By: Erika Cohen The Keene Sentinel Editor’s note: The following article was published in the April 12, 2003 issue of The Keene Sentinel and is reprinted with permission. RECLINING IN A chair with his arms across his chest, Ernest L. "Tutt" Bell recalled the day in 1974 when because of him it became illegal to bring a gun into a New Hampshire courtroom. "You can imagine I was real popular with the law-enforcement community after that," said Bell, now 76. The gun was on the hip of a police officer in full uniform, who was prosecuting a case in Keene District Court. Bell, whose client was the one charged with drunken driving, objected, saying the police officer’s equipment was likely to intimidate witnesses. The case went all the way to the NH Supreme Court, and Bell won. After that, police had to check their guns at the door before entering any court in New Hampshire. "The cops thought I was terrible," he said. "I got growled at all over the state, but I didn’t care. The courts are supposed to be neutral." More than most lawyers, Bell reveled in the scrap, the fight, the argument. He didn’t worry about offending anyone; his love was the law. He tells stories about his cases with a grin, sometimes a chortle. He’s proud of what he did in 50 years as a lawyer. Bell’s gun case didn’t stay won. Rules have changed since that decision, and guns can again be seen under certain circumstances in court. Laughing, he recalled a 1979 case in which he represented The Sentinel. One of its reporters had been locked out of a proceeding in Cheshire County Superior Court. Bell headed quickly to court, and interrupted the hearing. The judge, the late John W. King, let him in and listened to his right-to-know argument. "Fine, Mr. Bell, the press may stay," the judge told him. "They may write their article. However, if the article is offensive or improper, you will be held in contempt." Bell nodded, thanked the judge, and promptly took the case to the state Supreme Court, where he won. The court, Bell said, found King’s words inappropriate. Bell, who retired from law practice last January, spun his stories in his study, a plaque on his desk honoring his years as a lawyer, his bookshelves jammed and a rolling three-tiered cart laden with large binders, including catalogued records of the 1,000 World War II books he owns. Consigned to a back room were more books, old court cases, newspaper clippings about his daughter – a research scientist and pilot – and books and books of slides he has shot during travels with his family. All in the family Bell’s father was a lawyer, too, and when he joined his father’s practice in 1952 – after earning his law degree from the University of Michigan – New Hampshire had 600 lawyers. Now, he says, it has about 4,000. Pulling a telephone directory from his desk drawer, he flipped to the Yellow Pages section on lawyers. "Look at all these,"’ he said, his voice rising. "The lawyers are the biggest advertisers in the phone book. When I became a lawyer, [if] you put a boldface listing in the telephone book, you were brought before the [disciplinary] committee.’’ Bell decided on the law partly because his father was a lawyer, and partly because of the lawyers he worked with as a civilian in the U.S. Special Forces intelligence branch during World War II. He was president of both the NH Bar Association [serving 1978-79] and the Cheshire County Bar Association. He often donated his legal services, part of the old-time ethic lawyers followed. In the early 1990s, he helped the Boy Scouts buy back a summer camp in Gilmanton Iron Works near Laconia that he had attended as a boy – back when it was called Camp Manning. It was sold in 1946 to other interests. The Boy Scouts opened the camp again for the summer in 2000; it is called Camp Bell. The careful critic Still, he has bones to pick with the court system. Starting with paperwork. Years ago, lawyers could start a case by filing a couple of documents. Now, it’s like signing up for a home mortgage, he says. Bell wonders if the paperwork gets in the way of justice. Even more pressing, Bell says, is money. The Legislature is shortchanging the courts, he believes, and the state’s residents are starting to feel the effects – in delayed hearings, in court logjams and now in shrinking programs. Already, the Cheshire County Superior Court holds no jury trials for three months of the year. Gov. Craig Benson’s budget would allow a 3 percent increase in the court budget, Bell says, but that’s not enough to recover from budget cuts of the past. "You’ve got to be able to have jury trials,"’ Bell said. `"You’ve got to have good computer systems. You’ve got to be able to serve the public and you can’t serve the public without modern conveniences."’ Fellow Keene attorney John C. Norton worked with Bell for 22 years and called him "an old-school attorney"’ who handled all areas of the law and who was also involved in the community. He said Bell had a reputation for being tough. "Whenever anybody found out that Tutt was on the other side, there was usually a groan," Norton said. World War II secrets After graduating from Vermont Academy, a college prep school in Saxtons River, Vt., in 1944, Bell headed to Washington, D.C., to work for the U.S. Special Forces as a junior clerk. Bell’s father, grandfather and uncle had all served in military. Bell tried to sign up numerous times, but never passed the physical exam. Instead, with the help of his father, he went to work in Washington. As a "lowly clerk,"’ he worked on the top-secret "Ultra" project. At a British intelligence station in Bletchley, England, people worked around the clock intercepting German messages created by the Enigma machine and decoding them. Bell received this top-secret decoded information in Washington and packaged it so that it could be sent to Roosevelt and others. Intelligence officers were also intercepting and decoding Japanese messages. While he was only a clerk, Bell was able to be quite involved, including spending a six-month stint in England at the Bletchley intelligence center, where he researched and wrote about this secret European history of the war. Bell worked on this top-secret project from 1944 to 1946, but he was unable to tell anyone, including his wife, of its existence until 1974. In 1974, author F.W. Winterbotham wrote a book about the program, revealing the secret to the world. After the existence of the program was made public, Bell unsuccessfully sued the federal government to get documents related to the project. The suit failed, but the information was eventually released. Seven or eight years ago, Bell traveled to the National Archives, now in Washington D.C., to photocopy the documents. It took a week or two to copy all the information. A wheeled cart next to his desks contains 12 thick binders from that trip. He is working on reducing these binders into a concise book about the Ultra program. Bell already has a publisher. He plans to write about the secret European history of the war, the Ultra program and the Enigma machine, the messages the allies retrieved from the Enigma machine and analysis of the messages. While this project is a fascination to him, he stresses that "this is not my real life. It was something I never thought I’d be able to talk about. My real life is being a lawyer." While he can and will talk about the once top-secret Ultra project, the origin of his nickname, "Tutt,"’ will remain a secret. All he would say was that it came from a family member. Time to write and relax Bell said one reason he retired at a late age was because he didn’t want to sit around and watch television. And he doesn’t. In addition to his project on the European secret history, he also has two other projects. One is a history of aviation in the Keene area and the second will bring together all the records of the Cheshire Kennel Club, an organization founded by his parents about 60 years ago. His parents raised boxers and cocker spaniels. Bell has also taken time to travel, another hobby of his. Bell and his second wife, Sally, returned recently from a 2 1/2 -week trip to Chile, where they traveled with a guide from the southern tip of the country northward. He married Sally in 1989 a year after his first wife, Margaret, died. Sally’s husband, who had also died, had been a close friend of Bell’s. Bell, Sally and her first husband all met as teenagers and have kept in touch over the years. Sally was the daughter of the headmaster at Vermont Academy, then a private boys’ school. Sally said the marriage seemed to flow naturally from their friendship. She called Bell "intelligent, kind-hearted and always interesting," adding that the two agree on most things. And they are both, she said, very opinionated. Bell has three grown children: David, 50; Robin, 45; and Rosanne, 39. He also has a younger brother, John, 71, and four grandchildren ranging in age from grade school to high school. In addition to his three projects, his family and his travels, Bell is also chair of Keene’s Airport Advisory Committee and is on the board of directors at Connecticut River Bank.
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