March 2003 - #8. YANKEE JUSTICE: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF VERMONT LAW.

Vermont Bar Journal

2003.

March 2003 - #8.

YANKEE JUSTICE: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF VERMONT LAW

Vermont Bar Journal - March 2003

YANKEE JUSTICE: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF VERMONT LAW

Clifton Parker - Lawyer By Happenstance

Born in 1906, Clifton Parker grew up in Wolcott with childhood memories of the impact of World War I on people's lives. Like most families in Wolcott, his worked on farms and sawmills. "Lawyering" was something he never considered doing. He thought of going to Norwich and becoming an engineer. Lean economic times changed that dream. His father was seriously injured in a sawmill accident. To earn a modest living for the family, Clifton's father became Wolcott's first mail carrier, covering the hilly route in horse and wagon.

"During World War I, we always raised a pig or two, a couple of hens and two cows - there was no milkman back then," Parker recalls. "We made butter and sold it for seventy cents a pound. During my early days my principal activity was developing and running an extended paper route of weekly and daily papers."

After the age of 12, when he entered Hardwick Academy, he boarded on farms in the area to earn money for his high school tuition. "When I graduated in 1923, I still had $300 in debts to pay off and Norwich tuition of $800 wasn't available. The fortunate thing was that we had an excellent commercial teacher at the Academy and somewhere along I picked up the idea that if a man could do shorthand and typing it couldn't help but be very beneficial. I had a solid two years of bookkeeping and elementary accounting, Gregg shorthand and typing. With that background you could sit in a courtroom and take the testimony, and type it up."

Parker was on his way to a profession far from his original intent. He was hired for his stenographic skills by Melvin Morse of Hardwick, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, who also served in France during World War I and had been badly gassed. He had returned to reopen his Hardwick law office. "I also did work for Judge Earl Davis, Deane Davis's father, who had a series of short trials and contested hearings on the allowance of wills. I went in and acted as reporter for the court."

Shortly after Parker joined Morse, a fire destroyed several buildings in Hardwick. As a result, Morse and Wilder Dutton, an elderly attorney, formed a firm, located on the second floor of a department store, where Justice William Taylor had his office. The three men combined libraries and Parker became "stenographer, law clerk and particularly janitor of the three offices. It was at the time I registered to study the law and I found myself the captive student body of His Honor William Taylor, who had also had a career in education. Mr. Morse and Mr. Dutton both said they couldn't see any reason why I shouldn't study law; it wouldn't do any harm. And so I did, and I got quite a tutoring."

At the time of the flood of '27, Parker was employed on a brief project by Lester Bill of St. Johnsbury, an engineer for Twin State Gas. He then was hired by St. Johnsbury attorney James Campbell. He was admitted to the Bar in October of 1932, staying with Campbell's firm until he opened his own law office in Morrisville in 1934.

The following year State's Attorney Benjamin Hulburd had a severe recurrence of undulent fever and asked his friend Parker if he would take on his work while he recuperated. "Though I did the work I was never appointed Deputy State 's Attorney. I was appointed what the governor called 'special counsel' with a magnificent salary of $16.66 a week and a lot of experience." Subsequently, he was then elected State's Attorney, starting his term in 1937.

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