As hard as it is for me to believe, I was born on this very day, which was a Thursday, February 21, 1935. That was the year when the average cost of a new house was $3,450.00, a new car $625.00 and a gallon of gas $.10. On January 8th of that year, Elvis Presley was born and on January 11th Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. On February 13thBruno Hauptmann was convicted and…
The hero of this story is a dog named Blue who is a Queensland Heeler breed and the family pet. Blue’s best friend is Victoria Bensch, a three year old who lives in Cordes Lakes, Arizona. Cordes Lakes is about thirty miles East of Prescott, in North Arizona high country. Early Thursday, Victoria was bouncing on a trampoline at her in home in a rural part of Cordes Lakes that borders on state land. Blue, who had been her companion from birth and was always…
HARWOOD ALEXANDER "BILL" BANNISTER (1914 – 2010) Harwood Alexander Bannister, 95, passed away peacefully on February 9, 2010 in Burlington, Washington. Mr. Bannister was born in Brock, Saskatchewan Canada on August 31, 1914 to Samuel Townsend Bannister and Sara McCosh Bannister. Two weeks prior to Mr. Bannister's birth his cousin Billy died in infancy. Young cousins believed the newborn Harwood to be the reincarnation of Billy. Thus, the name Bill Bannister followed him through life. As a young child, his…
Gerry and I have donated the proceeds of the sale of this DVD to the Washington State Administration of Justice (formerly the Washington State Trial Lawyer's Association) and the Spence Trial College.
Harwood "Bill Bannister died Tuesday February 9th. He was 95 years old and my former law partner as well as my mentor. Bill had been in a major Seattle law firm and he and his attorney wife Nancy, decided to move to Skagit County. He ran for county prosecutor in 1948 and always said how thankful he was that he lost the race because it gave him free publicity and he wouldn’t have liked the job had he won. He…
The Player by Philip Seib is a book about Christy Mathewson (1880 – 1925) who is regarded as baseball’s first superstar. This turn of the century player was among the initial group of five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. The others were Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson. He played over ninety years ago but there are sports historians who still write about him. They called him "Big Six (six feet tall…
Peter J. Daly is a Catholic priest, in Prince Frederick, Maryland who recently wrote about what he had learned after twenty four years of being a priest in the Catholic Northwest Progress newspaper http:www.seattlearch.org Here is part of what he had to say about what he had learned: "I’ve learned to be more accepting of people.I take them as God sends them. We are all works in progress. This insight has made me more compassionate. Twenty five years ago I…
The 1948 presidential election is considered by most historians as one of the greatest upsets in American presidential history. Harry Truman defeated the highly favored Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey. The surprise victory happened after Harry started a 31,000 mile train trip across the country in an effort to defeat the clear front runner Dewey. Truman delivered hundreds of "off the cuff" talks to crowds along the trip. He was often greeted with cries of "Give ‘em hell, Harry" after…
Alison Kairis is my grand daughter who is in her second year at Gonzaga University. She is an outstanding athlete, a great student and an outstanding human being. You can take it from me as a very unbiased and objective source of information. So, you'll understand and forgive my adding the following to this blog….. AREA RESIDENT NAMED TO PRESIDENT’S LIST AT GONZAGA UNIVERSITY Alison L. Kairis, a Sophomore from Bellevue, WA, was among the 987 undergraduate students named…
How should Americans and, in particular, lawyers, react to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Alito shaking his head and clearly mouthing the words "It’s not true" during the State of the Union Address by the President of the United States? It happened when the President said "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests….." Suppose you and I were in the…
