Irvin Meyers

Irv was born on August 10, 1932 in McClusky, North Dakota. He was raised in the frigid plains of Towner, North Dakota with his seven sisters and brothers, Lucille, Marcella, Pearl, Marion, George, Donald, and Franklin. His father, Louis Meyers, was a World War I veteran, an amputee, and the one-armed sheriff of Towner. His mother, Margaret Fitzgerald Meyers, succeeded her husband to become the first female sheriff in North Dakota, and was dubbed the “Petticoat Sherriff.”

Irv loved all sports growing up, and played baseball, basketball and six-man football at Towner High School. At one point he, Donald and Franklin played first, second and third base. Following high school he entered North Dakota State University, playing football his freshman year, obtaining a degree in political science, and completing training in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He also met his future wife, Joann Grimes, also a student at NDSU.

Upon graduating in 1952 he entered the U.S. Air Force, and while stationed in Panama City, Florida, became the first in his squadron to solo. He was then stationed in Tokyo during the Korean War until his discharge in 1957, attaining the rank of Captain. He described his primary duties in Tokyo as “shooting buzzards off of runways,” and serving in the JAG Corps. He later said the lack of due process he experienced representing military personnel sparked his interest in law. While stationed in Japan, he married Joann, with whom he would be married for sixty-six years until her passing in 2022. They had three children, Steve, Jeff, and Amy.

After his discharge, Irv entered law school at the University of Florida, graduating in 1961. After working for three years at the law firm, McGuire, Vorhees and Wells, he started a law firm with Thomas Mooney, who would be his law partner and dear friend for the next forty years. Irv and Tom established a plaintiffs’ personal injury and workers’ compensation firm, and were known throughout Florida for their tenacious advocacy and compassion for their clients. Irv was known throughout the legal community as someone who not only was completely trustworthy, but also as a mentor to younger attorneys, including many of the young attorneys who opposed him. Irv and Tom added partners, including George Adler, Bill McCabe and David Hammond, whom Irv also loved and respected deeply. In 1987 Steve graduated from law school from the University of Florida and joined the firm, and later both Jeff and Amy also completed law school at UF.

Irv and Joann committed their lives to their family. Irv coached his children’s teams in youth football, basketball and baseball, and attended virtually every one of their games, gymnastic meets, track meets, and soccer matches until they graduated from college. For almost a decade he was the football announcer for the Lyman High School Greyhounds, with Joann at his side as the spotter. Irv was home virtually every evening for dinner with his family, and loved to engage family discussions on sports, politics, and social justice, for which he would prepare by reading the New York Times cover-to-cover every weekend. And somehow during these discussions he would almost subtly convey a lesson about empathy or gratefulness.

Irv also loved spending weekends with his family at their lake house in Citrus County, which he bought in 1969. He and his family spent countless hours there water skiing on wooden Cypress Garden skis, fishing for bass but almost always catching gar, and making one dollar bets at the stock car races at the Citrus County speedway. In the mid-eighties he also started a tradition of the family spending the Christmas holidays skiing in Lake Tahoe, where he skied until he was seventy-seven years old. He and Joann were also die-hard Florida Gator football fans, and for decades they attended every home game and most away games, often traveling with friends in their old custom Chevy van. Irv also fancied himself as a skilled practical joker. He particularly loved calling relatives, disguising his voice, and convincing them he was on his way to their homes to start installing their aluminum siding, or in one case, convincing his sister-in-law in North Dakota that he was on his way to her house to deliver the five hundred pounds of potatoes she had ordered.

Irv loved to travel. He and Joann traveled to Beijing, where he played ping pong with elementary school kids, later to Hong Kong, where he jumped onto the back of a pickup truck to join protesters during the Tiananmen Square incident, and to Mongolia, where he and Jeff rode horses and camels, and crossed rivers in jeeps. He and Joann went to Moscow and Morrocco, and he loved Prague, Budapest and Istanbul. His favorite part was meeting locals, and upon returning home would remind his kids that people were mostly the same all over. While in their sixties, Irv and Joann went fishing in Alaska, and Irv did solo trips of whitewater rafting in Colorado, and a three-week horseback trek in the southwestern states, after which he proclaimed himself “a real cowboy.”

Irv enjoyed mentoring Steve as a lawyer and advocating for clients together for over twenty years. He was very proud of Jeff, who has had an exciting legal career with the United States Aid to International Development, living overseas in Lithuania, Hungary, Ukraine, Jordan, and now Kenya. And he certainly was proud of his not-so-secret favorite child, Amy, who for over a decade was general counsel for the University of Florida, and is now UF’s deputy athletic director.

Irv Meyers was an empathetic and compassionate man. He could always find the good in people, and told them. He loathed injustice and cruelty. He always did his best. He will always be in our hearts.

Irv is survived by his brother, Donald Meyers; his children Amy Meyers Hass, Jeffrey Meyers and Steven Meyers; Amy’s children, Taylor and Carson, and Jeff’s wife and children, Krisztina Meyers, Balazs and Tamas.

The family will receive friends from 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at Baldwin Fairchild Funeral Home, 90 Weathersfield Avenue, Altamonte Springs, Florida 32714. The celebration of life service will start at 2:00 pm with a reception to follow at the funeral home.