Bryson

White Ked tennis shoes with no shoes laces. That is what Bill Bryson took away from our first meeting.

I must have been 17 years old, working as a slave at Reese, Rice, and Volland P.C., my first toe into the water of corporate life. We had Richie Turner and Satch Carlson as clients. At our office party they had me wear my Chapperrals black unitard with go-go boots and serve cheese and crackers.

I usually wore skirt suits I picked up from Nordstroms, and slipped on the Keds to run up the stairs near the Webster's International Dictionary Blue Toad Hall at 211 H Street to make my way to the Courthouse at Third and K Street. The stairs going up the hill, that is where I first encountered Bryson.

He had grey hair and a well trimmed beard even then. Custom-made cowboy boots and a conspicuiously trendy suit. And a swagger. I loved the swagger. Bryson always had his nose to the air, and it was easy to imagine him running competitively at Stanford.

In hgh school he judged me in debate and gave me perfect speaker points. Somewhere I still have the ballot. I run across it from time to time and laugh. Since mour initial encounter Bryson has been my friend, confidante, mentor, allie, and somedays my hero. He was like the Lone Ranger, no one knew the good deeds he did in the dark of night. He never asked for any acknowledgement, never expected any good will. Bryson did things he wanted to do for his own reasons, usually with a high amusement factor.

He did good things, for he had a good heart. Like everyone, his dark side was as deep as his light side was bright. And there were times that he wandered in darkess. I was never around him during those times, and he never spoke about them to me, but you could always feel the shadows learking behind him.

Bryson lived for the moment that he was in. Spent every dime the moment it came in, traveled well, ate at the best restaurants, enjoyed good company with a glass of wine. He never saved for the old age that never came.

I miss my friend. I miss his deep baritone teasing me on a voice mail message. I miss his smile.


Bill Bryson, prominent attorney, dies
SUICIDE: Friends say they knew of no precipitating cause for his action.
By SHEILA TOOMEY Anchorage Daily News

Published: January 12, 2006
Last Modified: January 13, 2006 at 04:56 AM

One of the state's best known criminal defense attorneys is dead by his own hand. Bill Bryson, 58, was found by friends about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at his West 15th Avenue home, police said. State Medical Examiner Franc Fallico said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Although Bryson had financial and personal troubles over the years, friends said they knew of no precipitating cause for his suicide.

An elegant, even flamboyant figure on the legal scene, Bryson was widely valued as a trial attorney and as a teacher of young lawyers here and nationally.

At the time of his death, he was on the city Parks and Recreation Commission and was passionately committed to building a track-and-field facility for kids in Mountain View, said attorney and longtime friend Nancy Shaw.

Bryson was among a group of young law school graduates who came to Alaska in the early 1970s and stayed to make names for themselves. He arrived in 1972 with a brand new degree from Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California Berkeley, to work in Juneau for Alaska Supreme Court Justice Robert Boochever. His colleagues that year included other future stars: Anchorage defense attorney Phil Weidner, former Superior Court Judge Doug Serdahely and former U.S. Attorney Mike Spaan.

Bryson had a seat at the defense table for many high-profile cases over the past 30 years, representing some of Alaska's more notorious criminal defendants, including as local counsel for Neil Mackay, acquitted of killing Alaska Airlines pilot Robert Pfeil; as co-counsel for Andrew Nelson, convicted of killing former girlfriend Sandra Pogany; and as trial lawyer for Scott Walker, convicted of kidnapping pioneer Mildred Walatka but acquitted of killing her.

He did even more work behind the scenes, negotiating deals for clients who had nothing to gain by taking their case to a jury.

For many years he was on the board of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and usually spent a couple of weeks a year teaching at association workshops back East, Weidner said. Colleagues in the defense bar regularly called on him for help with cases ---- "whenever we had a situation one of us hadn't faced before," said attorney Rex Butler. "He had faced them all."

Bryson was witty and upbeat with a reverberant voice an actor would envy, and perhaps the most expensively dressed lawyer in town, always perfectly turned out in Armani suits and custom-made boots. He was a sports nut who flew regularly to Stanford University, his undergraduate alma mater, for big football games but also for stuff like water polo and girls basketball, said former Anchorage deputy police chief Del Smith, who often went with him.

But life was tough on Bryson. Friends knew he drank too much and had bad financial troubles spanning years. He was put on probation in 1993 for failing to file a tax return by a federal judge who said he needed to stop spending all his time worrying about other people's lives and start taking care of his own. At the time of his death, there were IRS liens against him totaling about $75,000.

He was once censured by the Alaska Supreme Court for not tending to a client properly, and collected a DUI.

"This is a hell of a business," said Butler, a busy local defense attorney. "It has a long history of destroying people. You can't just leave it at the office."

"What Bill did best was stand-up lawyering," Serdahely said. "He was very good in trial, with juries, witnesses. That was where his passions were. ... But like a lot of talented people, he was not good at the mundane stuff, running a law firm, running your own life."

"He was liked and appreciated by all those he touched, from the man in the cell to the judge on the bench," Weidner said. "He cared about people. He tried to help. Inside he understood because he lived it."
Like many of Bryson's friends, Shaw said she was very sad and preferred to remember him enjoying life, as he usually did. She was toying with the idea of organizing an auction of his Armani suits and other no-doubt obsessively tasteful trinkets to raise money for the Mountain View track. "You just know he had a silver shoehorn," she said. "A shaving kit by Gucci ... perfectly matched towels."

Well-known Anchorage attorney found dead
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - by Megan Baldino
Anchorage, Alaska - A well-known Anchorage attorney was found dead yesterday. The Anchorage Police Department says Bill Bryson died yesterday at his home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Bryson was a well known defense attorney in town, representing a variety of clients. Some more notable cases included the murder trial of Anchorage businessman James Lowe, who killed teenager Clyde Thompson after he tried to steal a balloon from Lowe's furniture store in May 1992. Bryson was also the attorney in the murder trial of two Vermont men accused of killing Ketchikan fisherman Rick Zaugg in May 1990.

Long-time friend and former Anchorage Police Department Deputy Chief Del Smith says Bryson was a good defense attorney, a good friend and a sports fan. Smith says Bryson was working hard to get a running track built in Mountain View for local kids, along with other sports improvement projects around town.

Bryson was 58 years old.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/013760.html