50Year Honorees
Your 2020 Class of DBA Fifty-Year Honorees Year
By David C. Greer Esq. DBA Editorial Board Bieser Greer & Landis LLP dcg@biesergreer.com 937.250.7773
Neil F. Freund
Freund, Freeze & Arnold A Legal Professional Association
I
Lawrence W. Henke III.
Jonas J. Gruenberg
Judge Michael R. Merz
John H. Rion
Coolidge Wall Co., LPA
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III.
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ion
Jr.
US District Court
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Rion Rion & Rion, LPA, Inc.
t has been a tradition for many years to hold an annual luncheon at which we honor those members who have practiced for half a century in their profession. In this Covid-19 year of 2020 that tradition has by virtual necessity been modified to a collection of written reflections. It may take several issues of Bar Briefs to present our honorees in this new format, but we hope the change will provide a positive way of presenting and preserving our annual honorees. If you are reading this article as a first-year member of the Dayton Bar Association, take a moment to reflect on what you are encountering. Here are distinguished lawyers who began their practice in 1970. In that year they were part of a group who heard lawyers who had started their practices in 1920. Those 1920 lawyers had an opportunity to meet and hear from lawyers who had started their practice in 1870. Those 1870 lawyers had the opportunity to meet and hear from lawyers who had begun their practices in 1820. In 1820 Joseph H. Crane, who became Dayton’s first lawyer in 1804, was still alive. By reading the comments of the Class of 2020 you are suddenly finding yourselves in contact with every lawyer who has practiced in this community during its 224-year history. In 1970 what is now known as the Stratacache Tower (formerly the Winters Tower, then the Kettering Tower) was constructed. James McGee became Dayton’s first African-American mayor. Walter H. Rice became a judge on the Dayton Municipal Court. Arthur Beerman who in his career had provided a continuing feast of litigation for Dayton attorneys, died. Four people were killed at Kent State University while protesting against the Vietnam War. A dispute between Art Thomas and the Dayton School Board became the prelude to the Dayton desegregation litigation which would consume ten years and two trips to the United States Supreme Court. Francis Canny, who had been a Dayton lawyer since 1913 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio from 1922 to 1940, died. Here is the first installment of the recollections of Dayton attorneys who started their practice here in 1970. continued on page 19
A. M. Segreti Jr. Montgomery County Common Pleas Court
18
Dayton Bar Briefs October 2020
David A. Saphire
937.222.7902
