| Oregon State Bar Bulletin — APRIL 2007 |
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OSB member Grant Edward Tanner has died.
Tanner, born Jan. 5, 1948, in Kingsburg, Calif., was raised in Corte Madera, Calif., and graduated from San Rafael Military Academy in 1965. He received his bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from California State University, Sonoma, in 1969 and his master’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, Davis, in 1972. He later returned to get his law degree from the University of California, Davis, graduating in 1977.
Upon graduation from law school, Tanner worked for the California Public Utilities Commission as the commissioner’s assistant, until moving to Portland in 1980. He then joined and became partner in Lindsay, Hart, Neil and Weigler. In 1990, he accepted a position at Davis Wright Tremaine, serving as partner and chair of the energy department until 2001. In 2001, with an entrepreneurial spirit, he began his own practice. He also served as president and attorney of UWinsys, LLC, an international company designing and manufacturing technologically advanced wind turbines for the first time in the United States.
During his law career, Tanner was selected for inclusion in the 1993-94 edition of The Best Lawyers in America for his work in public utility law. He was also selected by Martindale-Hubbell Lawyer Profile as one of the 100 best lawyers in the United States practicing energy and regulatory law in 1999.
Survivors include his wife of 19 years,
Terry Forbes-Tanner, his parents, a brother, a daughter,
a son and three stepchildren.
Omar Halvorson died Feb. 12, 2007. He had been ill for the past two years and died of pneumonia.
Born June 14, 1922, in Silverton, Halvorson grew up in Oregon and Montana, finishing high school at Silverton High School in 1940. He spent a year at Mount Angel College prior to joining the Army Air Corps. During his military service, he was selected for an accelerated course of study in engineering at Stanford University. He also served as a radio mechanic in the 156th AACS on Ascension Island in the Atlantic during part of the war. After his discharge from the service he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Portland in 1948. Halvorson studied law at Willamette University and graduated third in his class in 1951; while in law school, he was on law review and was a member of the law fraternity Phi Delta Phi.
He began his career as an attorney in 1951 at Beddingfield & Grant in Coos Bay, filling in for an attorney who was called up to service in Korea. He spent five years as an assistant attorney general with the Oregon Tax Commission. The next five years he practiced law in Portland at King, Miller, Anderson, Nash & Yerke. In 1962, he went to work at the Department of the Interior as an assistant regional solicitor, leaving in 1976. He spent the remainder of his career with the Department of Energy, Bonneville Power Administration, as an assistant general counsel and deputy general counsel. He received many awards at work, including the Administrator’s Distinguished Service Award, the BPA/DOE Career Service Award and nominee for Professional Employee of the Year. He retired in January 1986.
He spent free time with his family, camping, hiking and enjoying the outdoors in any way possible. He was an active volunteer in a wide variety of organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America, Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, St. Stephens Parish and School, St Vincent de Paul Society, Providence Child Center, University of Portland Presidential Advisory Committee and numerous other organizations. His volunteer work resulted in several awards; among those he was most proud of were the Boy Scouts of America Silver Beaver Award, the St. George Award for service in the Roman Catholic Church, the Blue Star Award from the Campfire Girls, the Girl Scout Letter of Commendation and the Thomas C. Oddo Award for outstanding community service from the University of Portland in 2003.
He also volunteered to help his extended family, helping with tax work or legal problems, teaching children, advising new parents and married couples, building projects, repairing plumbing, teaching, showing and helping.
He is survived by his wife of 57 years,
Clara, and their nine children and 11
grandchildren.
Jeannette Thatcher Marshall, Medford’s first female attorney, died Feb. 18, 2007, at age 85 of multiple ailments.
Born in 1921 in Portland, Marshall moved to Talent with her family at age 6. She graduated from Medford High School in 1938 andthen attended Southern Oregon College of Education, now Southern Oregon University, for two years.
At the time the main options for a woman were a teacher or a nurse. Her grandfather, Charles Fischer, who was a justice of the peace in Peoria, Ill., sparked Marshall’s interest in law when she was a student in junior high.
While studying law at the University of Oregon, one of her professors tried to discourage her from the profession, suggesting that she consider a degree in home economics instead, her daughter told the Medford Mail-Tribune. The dean intervened on her behalf. Shortly before her graduation ceremony in August 1943, she was one of three women in the state to pass the Oregon bar exam. After graduating with the highest grade point average in her class, Marshall practiced law in association with attorney George M. Roberts.
In 1945, she went to the University of Minnesota to earn a master’s degree in jurisprudence. She then opened her first law practice in Medford in 1946, specializing in mining claims and appeals. She also helped to found the area’s first air ambulance service, Mercy Flights Inc., in 1949. She served on the nonprofit agency’s board from 1949 until her death. She married Harry Marshall Sr. in 1953. The couple opened a joint law-real estate office in Medford in 1959. Her husband died in 1991.
Coming from a musical family and a flute player, she played in the Southern Oregon Symphonic Band until 2004. She also authored a book in 1999, Jaguars, Fish and Microscopes, a biography of her brother, zoologist Vernon E. Thatcher. Over the years, her diverse interests included bear hunting and collecting butterflies.
She is survived by a son, a daughter
and two brothers.
Marshall Canning Hjelte died Feb. 9, 2007, at the age of 82.
Hjelte was born Jan. 23, 1925, and raised in Hawaii, and as a 16-year-old boy he witnessed the attack at Pearl Harbor. His mother and two siblings left Hawaii in 1942, being forcefully evacuated because his father was called into active duty in the Navy.
Hjelte graduated from Stanford University in 1947 and from the University of Colorado Law School in June 1950. While in law school he met his future wife, Alice, who was in the nursing school, and they were married in Boulder, Colo., in 1948. Both graduated in 1950. Marshall took the bar exam in Oregon and in 1951 set up a private practice of law in St. Helens, where he remained for about 13 years.
An increasing involvement in the Methodist Church led to a career change in 1963, when he learned of a need for an administrator at Willamette View Manor, a large retirement community south of Portland. His legal background helped him save this home from possible foreclosure.
After the home was out of jeopardy and running smoothly, he was persuaded to work with the Methodist Board of Hospitals and Homes in Evanston, Ill., in 1967. During the years that followed, he traveled around the country evaluating various retirement homes and advising on ways to cope with problem situations. He was also credited with turning around another church-related retirement center in Des Moines, Wash., where he was administrator for four years.
He returned to private practice first in Milwaukie and later in Woodburn for several years. In 1978, he was again persuaded to return to retirement community administration and became the executive director of the Kenney Presbyterian Home in West Seattle, where he remained until 1983. Assignments in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Seattle followed. After an 11-year stay in Seattle, he retired in 1995 and spent his retirement years in Bothell, Wash., where his interests included bridge, golf and church activities.
Survivors include his wife, their three children and seven grandchildren.