From the President, 0418 WYBJ, Vol. 41 No. 2. 10

• Author: Rob C. Jarosh, Hirst Applegate, LLP Cheyenne, Wyoming
• Position: Vol. 41 2 Pg. 10

From the President

Vol. 41 No. 2 Pg. 10

Wyoming Bar Journal

April, 2018

A Man for All Seasons Jim Applegate 1931 - 2016

Rob C. Jarosh, Hirst Applegate, LLP Cheyenne, Wyoming

It was summer 1957. The President of the United States was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Milward Simpson was Wyoming's twenty-third governor. Fred H. Blume was the Chief Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court, and Harry Harnsberger and Glenn Parker were the associate justices.¹ Oliver W Steadman was the President of the Wyoming State Bar, and the license fee was $20.00 for members, $10.00 for new admittees.²

Internationally, the Soviet Union was working feverishly toward the October launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. In the United States, the Little Rock Nine were about to become the first black students to enroll in and attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, a test of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). In Wyoming, Governor Simpson was pressuring legislators to enact laws aimed at racial equality,³ the Wyoming legislature passed emergency legislation for school construction,^[4] and KTWO (Casper) had just become Wyoming's second television station.⁵

Byron Hirst had just concluded his only term as a state senator representing Laramie County. An attorney, Hirst's law practice consisted of a small space on the fourth floor of the Boyd Building, at the intersection of 18^th Street and Carey Avenue in Cheyenne, where he practiced with his only associate attorney, George W Hopper. In the corner of Hopper's office, a young law student poured through statute books and did research for Hirst and Hopper from his desk—a metal typewriter stand. His summer internship was unpaid, although at the end of the summer Hirst rewarded the intern with his very own set of the Wyoming Digest (Hirst paid $125 for the set). And so began the half-century-long legal career of the finest gentleman I ever met, Jim Applegate.

It would be nearly impossible to create a comprehensive list of Wyoming's legal pioneers without leaving someone out. However, just a few of the names that come to mind include Melville Brown, Willis Van Devanter, Ewing T. Kerr, Frank Trelease, Stan Hathaway, Betty Kail, Gerry Spence, and Marilyn Kite. The only one that I knew well on a very personal level, though, was Jim Applegate, having had the honor to work for his firm since 2003...