Monday, August 17, 2026

ADDISON TIMES MAJOR SPONSOR: STEPHENSON RIFE ATTORNEYS

Floodwaters covered portions of Blue Bear Golf Course in Shelbyville over the weekend after sustained heavy rains. | photos by JOHN WALKER

Attorney Curt Johnson discusses an old metal notary seal that he jokingly calls “an Abraham Lincoln model.” | photo by JACK BOYCE

Editor’s note: The following is part of an occasional Addison Times series in which we ask local professionals to share five meaningful items from their office.

by LUCILLE HAACKER & KRISTIAAN RAWLINGS

An intern must choose her words carefully when interviewing an attorney.

Asked what appealed to him about the profession, local lawyer Curt Johnson immediately caught the wording.

“That was past tense,” he joked. “Appealed.”

A Shelbyville High School graduate, Johnson has practiced law here since 2001, representing individuals and businesses in civil matters ranging from litigation and estates to real estate and business transactions. His work earned him the Indiana State Bar Association’s Outstanding Young Lawyer Award in 2005.

His route to the South Harrison Street law office of Johnson, DePrez, Brant & Eads was considerably less direct.

Johnson attended Wabash College as a National Merit Finalist and graduated with honors as a Spanish major after studying abroad in Valencia, Spain. He later earned law and MBA degrees from Indiana University and accumulated an international résumé, studying or working in Mexico, Panama, Spain, England, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The law degree actually grew out of his interest in international business. After college, Johnson taught English in Saltillo, Mexico, and eventually pursued the joint law and MBA program at Indiana University. Following graduate school, his international work ultimately took him to Kazakhstan with the MBA Enterprise Corps.

Johnson is glad he went. He also refers to it as “God-forsaken Kazakhstan.”

His Russian never became particularly marketable, either.

“Kazakhstan was a bridge too far,” he said.

After his father died while Johnson was overseas, he began reconsidering his future. As the youngest of four children and the one most able to change course, Johnson eventually returned to Shelbyville. Attorneys Peter DePrez and Phil Brown took a chance on him, and his fluency in Spanish gave him an unusual niche at a time when few attorneys outside Indianapolis spoke the language.

Johnson soon discovered that the profession he never intended to enter suited him.

“Once I started, I was like, ‘I’m built for this.’”

Today, his practice includes civil litigation, wills and estates, real estate, business and commercial law and other civil matters. But Johnson has a much simpler explanation for what he does.

“Just help people,” he said. “People come in here, typically have some sort of problem, and we just help them work through it and move on.”

Asked to select five objects that help tell his story, Johnson chose pieces that reflect his family, the community and the long history of the law firm. And one gun that nobody seems able to explain.

Johnson’s first selection isn’t exactly an object. It’s a corner of the office.

For him, it represents one of the defining characteristics of the firm’s practice: its ability to serve Spanish-speaking clients.

Johnson’s connection to the language goes back to his years at SHS and his Spanish mentor, Jerry Rice. He went on to be a Spanish major at Wabash College and continued through his extensive time studying and working abroad. Today, Johnson estimates 20% to 25% of the firm’s clients are Spanish-speaking. Fellow attorney Tyler Brant also speaks Spanish, as do the firm’s staff members.

Johnson views speaking a client’s language as something fundamental. He remembers being in Kazakhstan and imagining how he would feel dealing with authorities while relying on his decidedly imperfect Russian.

Being able to communicate directly, he said, provides comfort and helps ensure nothing is lost in translation.

The corner therefore represents something larger about the firm.

“We serve everybody,” Johnson said. Being able to speak Spanish “just means that we can help more people, frankly.”

photo by JACK BOYCE

A photograph in Johnson’s office shows his oldest son, Jack, at about 4 years old, cautiously touching his first fish with one finger. Beside him is attorney Phil Brown.

The photograph connects two important parts of Johnson’s life. Brown was one of the attorneys who took a chance on Johnson when he returned to Shelbyville.

“Phil Brown was a great mentor to me, a super human being,” Johnson said.

But the picture also represents the way Johnson’s family and professional lives have overlapped. He and his wife Amy have five children - Jack, Ella, Lilly, Molly and Sam - and he has spent years outside the office coaching wrestling, soccer, football, basketball and baseball.

Johnson said the relationships within the firm have similarly extended beyond work.

“Everybody that works in this office, we’re all on a team,” he said.

photo by JACK BOYCE

An old wooden jury chair helped unlock the history of the law firm. The chair came from the courthouse, although Johnson isn’t certain exactly when. After Brown died, Johnson noticed that the changing names of the law firm had been written on it.

That sent him researching. Following successive partnerships and generations of Shelby County attorneys, Johnson was able to trace the firm’s lineage directly to at least the 1850s. He believes it may extend even farther.

“We just run out of resources,” Johnson said.

Then there is the gun. It has been in the office longer than Johnson. That is essentially everything he knows about it. The firearm sits in a storage area without an accompanying explanation of where it came from or why it was left behind.

Johnson has theories. Maybe it was involved in a family-law matter. Or perhaps its history is considerably more interesting. Johnson called it “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

“Is this a gun from an estate? Is this a murder weapon?” he wondered.

He has no idea.

More than two decades into his legal career, the case remains unsolved.

photo by JACK BOYCE

The firm’s office still contains something increasingly uncommon in modern law firms: a traditional law library.

Some of its books date to before 1900. The room also contains artifacts from an earlier era of practicing law, including an old metal notary seal.

The library fits particularly well in a building steeped in legal history. The structure was reportedly the first in Shelby County built specifically as a law office. Its windows were originally frosted because, at the time, simply being seen visiting an attorney could carry a stigma.

The office also retains pieces of an old intercom system and its original attorney-paralegal arrangement. Attorneys once dictated from private offices while staff members worked in adjoining spaces. Most of the obsolete equipment has disappeared, but one area has intentionally been left largely untouched as a sort of time capsule.

The law library itself looks almost exactly like what someone might imagine when picturing an old-fashioned attorney’s office.

And, no, Johnson has not read all those books.

“Did you read all those books?” he said, anticipating the question. “Nope.”

For Johnson, the books’ value, like the jury chair, old notary seal and other remnants throughout the building, connects today’s practice to generations of Shelbyville attorneys who came before it.

ADDISON TIMES MAJOR SPONSOR: FULL CANOPY REAL ESTATE

• Indiana education officials released 2026 SAT results last week, with 51.9% of students statewide meeting the reading and writing benchmark, down 2.6 percentage points from last year, while 25.6% met the math benchmark, nearly unchanged from 25.4% last year. Locally, Morristown Jr.-Sr. High School had 15 of 46 students, or 32.6%, meet both the evidence-based reading and writing and math benchmarks, followed by Triton Central High School at 31.3% (36 of 115), Shelbyville High School at 24.8% (60 of 242), Southwestern High School at 23.1% (6 of 26) and Waldron Jr.-Sr. High School at 12.5% (6 of 48). The results reflect students in the graduation cohort of 2027 who took the SAT during Indiana’s state administration.

• HOOSIER NEWS: Gov. Mike Braun said President Donald Trump has assured him Indiana’s request for federal disaster assistance will be approved, potentially providing $5 million for response efforts following severe storms and flooding that have killed five people and displaced hundreds. More than 11 inches of rain fell in some areas, pushing the White River to record levels, prompting hundreds of evacuations and rescues and leaving about 160,000 customers without power statewide as of Saturday. State agencies, the Indiana National Guard and local emergency crews remain mobilized. (IBJ)

ADDISON TIMES MAJOR SPONSOR: MAJOR HEALTH PARTNERS

Local headlines reported on or around this date in Shelby County history. Selections are curated by The Addison Times from Shelby County Public Library Genealogy Department materials. | edited by HANNAH BAKER | compiled by MYRON RAWLINGS

2016: The Indiana Department of Natural Resources approved a conservation easement for a planned bicycle and pedestrian trailhead in Shelbyville. The 1.3-acre site near the Big Blue River at Boggstown Road and North Harrison Street was expected to serve as a gateway to a roughly four-mile trail connecting Blue River Memorial Park, Kennedy Park and Sunset Park, with portions running along the Little Blue and Big Blue rivers. Mayor Tom DeBaun said groundbreaking for the trailhead facility was expected that fall.

2006: Retired Col. Stanley Roy Spreckelmeyer, a longtime Indiana Army National Guard officer and former commander, was laid to rest with full military honors at Forest Hill Cemetery. More than 100 soldiers from the Indiana National Guard Ceremonial Unit participated in the procession for Spreckelmeyer, 63, who served in the Guard for more than 30 years. Shelby County Commissioner Doug Warnecke, who served with Spreckelmeyer, called his death “a real loss to the community of Shelbyville and to the retired military community,” while fellow retired Army major Rev. Robb Barlow remembered him as a mentor and a man respected by everyone.

1996: Curl Up-N-Due captured the Shelby County Girls Softball League 8-10 title with a 10-2 record. Team members were Brianne Matney, Allison Willis, Deanna Hensley, Stephanie Gahimer, Brittany Theobald, Amber Mohr, Mallory Burgess, Christy Sammons, Natalie Babbitt, Brittney Leming, Jennifer Wheeler, Alison Guidi and Lauren Clawson. Coaches were John Burgess and Tracy Sammons, and Carol Burgess was a sponsor.

1986: Julie Harvey was named Bears of Blue River Festival Queen. Harvey, a senior at Southwestern High School, also won the Judges Award. Holly Collins, a senior at Shelbyville High School, was first runner-up and Miss Congeniality.

1976: Larry Riggs and Ted Bush won the low net and low gross titles, respectively, in the Morristown Lions Club golf tourney at Hoosier Links. Other top scorers were Roger Carlton, George Hanson, Jay Keffaber, Phil Stout, Richard Boring, Kenny Nugent, Wilbur Hardin, Jim Skinner, Phil Talbert, Bill Carlton and Larry Scott.

Martin Schulz, 453 W. Washington St., received an appreciation plaque from Rev. William Clayton, pastor of the First United Methodist Church, where the choir room was dedicated in Schulz’s honor. He had been a choir director and organist at the church for 30 years.

1966: The Eagles Lodge team won the recent Junior League baseball tourney. Team members were Greg Alvis, John Crow, Jerry Kirby, Doug Adams, Terry Moore, Gary Talbert, Joe Rutherford, Kenny Suiter, Dan Muth, Jim Leffler, Harry Harrabee, Tim Thompson, Eddie Mohr, Tom Norwell, Bill Horner and Walt Loy. Carroll Talbert was the manager, and George Phares the coach.

1956: An organization day would be held Aug. 31 for incoming Shelbyville High School freshmen, Principal James Sharp announced. Malcolm Clay, high school director of guidance, was in charge of the activities.

1946: Camp Atterbury officials announced that 54 buildings, including lighting systems, transformers and furnaces, would be sold to area bidders as part of closing down parts of the facility following the war.

1936: Plans moved forward to bring electric service to rural Shelby County, with construction expected to begin within 30 days. An initial $112,500 allotment would fund lines beginning north of Shelbyville and extending through northeastern and western portions of the county, while the full county project was estimated at $443,000. Officials said approximately 4,182 Shelby County families would gain electric service once the project was completed.

1926: City officials considered regulations for a proposed “jitney” bus service that would carry passengers along certain city streets several times a day for a 5-cent fare. The City Council planned to model its ordinance after one used in Connersville, including a $50 license fee for six months of operation. City officials also began preparing the following year’s budget, with department heads asked to submit spending estimates as the council considered maintaining the existing city tax rate of $1.04 per $100 of taxable property.

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