Eric S. Gould died May 27, 2003, after a long battle with cancer.
The U.S. Dept. of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division lawyer came to the department’s Land Division as an honor graduate on Sept. 14, 1975, after earning his law degree at Willamette University School of Law. Before law school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War era. There he served as an intelligence officer, performing translation services in the defense of the United States. Gould and his family moved to the island of Guam to assist with complex land controversies there. He and his family remained in Guam for approximately eight years, when, in the fall of 1991, he returned to Washington, D.C., and joined the general litigation section (now the natural resources section). Gould is remembered as a dedicated, talented and hard-working career employee with a life-long commitment to public service.
He is survived by his wife and one son.
• • • • •
Jeffrey Lawrence Adatto died July 12, 2004 after a 2½-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was 50.
Adatto received his bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College in 1975 and attended Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College, where he received his J.D. in 1979. He worked in Oregon for a brief time, but spent almost all of his 24-year career practicing in Washington. He was a member of both the Oregon and Washington bars. Adatto was a 20-year veteran of the Washington state attorney general’s office and, for the last 15 years, he was section chief of the Vancouver office, managing a staff of attorneys, paralegals and legal secretaries while carrying a caseload of his own. He was able to work until July of 2003 at the office and continued to work from his home until the end of 2003, providing advice and mentorship to the attorneys who took over his cases.
Adatto practiced primarily in the area of workers’ compensation law, representing the Washington Department of Labor & Industries before the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals and in superior court. His expertise was well known, and his advice and mentorship were sought out by other assistant attorneys general from around Washington. Friends remember him as a wonderful chef, a connoisseur of beer, the owner of a large and wide-ranging music collection and movie buff. (He knew the old black and white movies; not only had seen every Elvis Presley film ever made, he was proud of it; Cary Grant movies were a favorite.)
He is survived by his wife, Lisa, a son and a daughter.
• • • • •
John Hitchcock, known for his legal knowledge, judicial decisiveness, passion for the outdoors and devotion to his family, died Aug. 26, 2004. Hitchcock, 56, served 13 years on the Yamhill County Circuit Court before a recurrence of kidney cancer forced him to hang up his robe on June 30. He was appointed to the bench by Gov. Neil Goldschmidt in 1990.
Hitchcock was known to take a hard-line approach to sex offenders and domestic abusers, making him revered by some and feared by others. The avid mountain climber, scuba diver and pursuer of outdoor adventure moved to Yamhill County in the 1970s, after earning his law degree from the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. He went into private practice with John Pinkstaff in 1978. He also worked as a criminal defense attorney in the 1980s and as the head of legal aid in Yamhill County.
He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Wendy, a son and a daughter.
• • • • •
H. Philip Eder died Sept. 10, 2004, after a long struggle with multiple myeloma.
He was born on June 12, 1927 in Milwaukee, Wis. Orphaned at age 13, he was raised by an aunt in Seattle. He was a three-sport athlete at Seattle’s Broadway High School (football, baseball and swimming). Eder then attended the University of Washington and enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where he was sent to Hawaii, stationed at Pearl Harbor, beginning in 1945. He later moved to Portland, where he married Clarice Leveton in 1949.
Eder was admitted to the Oregon State Bar in 1969 when he was 42, after many years’ success as a grocer and hard-working junk dealer. He attended the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College at night, while working full time to support his wife and his three children. (For many years he also ran a salvage business. He would study until 2 a.m. and then get up early to go out and collect scrap.) Eder’s legal career involved long-term partnerships with Howard Hilson, Benhardt Schmidt and later with Martin Reeves, Gary Kahn, Peggy Hennessy and Kristin Gardiner. He is remembered by his partners and a very loyal clientele for his self-deprecating style, his wonderful sense of humor and his boundless work ethic.
Eder is survived by his wife of 55 years, Clarice; two sons and five grandchildren.
• • • • •
Retired Forest Grove attorney J. Davis Walker died Sept. 18, 2004 at the age of 70. He was born in Detroit, Mich., and grew up in Massachusetts. He studied forestry in college and came west as a young man and worked as a forester. Later he studied law and graduated from the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College.
Walker met his wife, Gwen, at Mount Hood, where he served on the ski patrol. They married in 1961 and moved to Forest Grove in 1968, where he was an attorney with Bump, Young & Walker until his retirement in 1999. His hobbies included sailing, and he made many trips from Portland up the coast of Washington to Barkley Sound on the west side of Vancouver Island, B.C.
He is survived by his wife and one son.