At 94, Oregon’s oldest practicing attorney is not done contributing to civic life

Bill Mansfield passed the Oregon State Bar and began his legal career in 1953. He turned 94 earlier this month, and while he describes himself as semi-retired, you’d be hard pressed to find a more active and engaged citizen. He’s an elected member of the Rogue Valley Transportation District board, and serves on the Medford Planning Commission. In 2018 he was recognized by the Center for NonProfit Legal Services with an award for his pro bono work defending civil rights, including free speech and assembly. Throughout his 70 years in the field, Mansfield has advised and represented people on a wide range of issues, from family law to civil rights to probate. He also teaches a class at Southern Oregon University called “Law and Things: How to Avoid Legal Problems.” Mansfield joins us to discuss the changes he’s seen in his long career.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Bill Mansfield passed the Oregon State Bar and began his legal career in 1953. The Medford resident just marked his 94th birthday, and while he describes himself as semi-retired, you would be hard pressed to find a more active or engaged citizen. He is an elected member of the Rogue Valley Transportation District board and serves on the Medford Planning Commission. He teaches a class at Southern Oregon University called “Law and Things: How to Avoid Legal Problems,” and he still dispenses legal advice for free. Bill Mansfield joins us now to talk about 70 years of legal work and civic activism. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Bill Mansfield: Thank you. Thank you, David.

Miller: You were born in Redmond, in Central Oregon in 1929 at the very start of the Great Depression. I imagine that the Depression affected most every aspect of your childhood.

Mansfield: It surely did. We lived in a little backward town, a little village called Redmond, Oregon. It’s bigger now and we were poor and everybody else was poor, but nobody had any problem with it because I didn’t have enough perspective to understand that we were poor.

Miller:  What did being poor mean then?

Mansfield: I’ve estimated that our living standard, while we didn’t ever starve or anything like that, we were never homeless, my estimate is that we lived on about 35% of the standard of living that we now have.

Miller: When did you start working?

Mansfield: Well, actually, when I finished law school and got admitted to the Bar in 1953 I went off to the service. I had a military commitment that I was required to take, so I guess my first job was being in the United States Air Force for two years.

Miller: I guess I was wondering about if you had odd jobs, before that, in your teens, just to help in the family?

Mansfield: Yeah, I started mowing lawns for people when I was about 12 years old and when I was about, I don’t know, 13 or something like that, I worked in a grocery store, stocking shelves, and when I was about 15, I worked in a gas station, pumping gas.

Miller: Do you mind telling the story that you mentioned, it was mentioned in a profile about you in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, a year or two ago, when you were on your first day as a temporary school janitor, when you were 14 or 15.

Mansfield: Yes. I was one of the students, and several of us were hired to do temporary janitor work because the janitor had been fired. And so I was carrying a box of refuse out to dump it in the garbage, and I walked into this room and there were a bunch of papers in a file and they had started burning. And so I immediately rushed out, of course, and we got the fire department over there very quickly and they put out the fire with very little damage.

But a couple of days later, I was pulled out of a high school class, and taken down to City Hall and questioned by an Oregon State police officer, Captain Howard was his name. He said he was head of the arson division. Questioning me was okay, that went on for a while. I told him the whole story, but then it went from questioning to grilling and accusing and all kinds of things. I was 14 years old and it was very, very frightening to me to be grilled like that for two or three hours. I’m still very angry about it.

Miller: Angry enough to remember it well, and remember the man’s name, Captain Howard. What effect did that have on you to be falsely accused of a serious crime?

Mansfield: Well, I suppose it helped me to understand how life goes, that life isn’t perfect for any of us, but it also gave me a feeling about police officers and how important it was to protect citizens against the vagaries of individual police officers. Having said that, of course, I might tell you that I’m friends with a lot of them and I’ve even served on the Medford Police Advisory Committee. But I think police officers are the kind of people that we need to keep under our control. They are our servants, not our masters. There are all kinds of legal rules that keep them in check. And so that’s very important, that we maintain that civilians are more powerful than police officers.

Miller: You were 12 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. What are some of your memories from the war years?

Mansfield: It was a warm Sunday afternoon and it isn’t usually very warm in December in Redmond, Oregon, but it was that day and I was outside with my brother and sister. We were playing at something or other, and a neighbor boy walked over and told us that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. And so of course, we went immediately to the radio and listened  to all of the information about it. It was very, very fearsome.

The big concern in the city of Redmond was that the Japanese were going to bomb Redmond, which of course is kind of silly, because nobody would bother to bomb a 1,500 person little village over in Central Oregon. But that’s what everybody was concerned about.

Miller: And then obviously the US entered the war. What did that mean? And, at that point, [in your] mid-teens. How did it affect your daily life?

Mansfield: Well, it affected our lives in that we couldn’t get the kind of things that we wanted, we wanted to buy a new pair of Levi’s and they didn’t have Levi’s for sale, and it didn’t really cut us down on food, but all kinds of things were rationed. Butter was rationed. Beef was rationed, milk wasn’t, gasoline was rationed. I remember when I worked in the service station they had tickets for four gallons at a time. So I pumped four gallons at a time into people’s cars. So in other words, we were limited in the consumer goods that we could have, although none of us suffered from it.

Miller: You ended up going to the University of Oregon and you were pre-med, at least to start, you were going to be a doctor.  That obviously did not happen. You became a lawyer. So what happened?

Mansfield: I got interested in social science as opposed to the sciences. I liked science. I liked chemistry and physics and biology and all those things, and did well in them. But I decided I liked economics better. So I got interested in social science and when I finished college I decided, well, I needed to get into something that I can make a living at. Law sounded interesting, so I gave it a try and made it.  I didn’t know whether I was gonna make it or not. There were lots of flunk-outs in those days, but I was fortunate enough to get clear through law school and graduate and be admitted to the bar.

Miller: What did law school mean, then? You said there are a lot of flunk-outs, a lot of people who didn’t make it. So, how many people, say, started in the first year with you in law school? And how many graduated with you?

Mansfield: In the class that started, there were 50. The class that ended up, there were 11 or 12 of us, I think. Most of those had either flunked out or went on to some other law school because of grades.

Miller: Wow. I read in that profile I mentioned in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, that one of your first jobs was working in the Oregon Attorney General’s office, where you were focused, among other things, on the legal issues surrounding the construction of I-5, Interstate 5. This was the beginning of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. What were the legal issues that you focused on in the DOJ?

Mansfield: Well, I was, originally, I was an office attorney preparing legal documents, but then I guess I graduated into becoming a trial attorney for the highway. I was an Assistant Attorney General, but I was assigned to work for the Oregon State Highway Commission, it was called then - it’s now called the Department of Transportation, I think, Transportation Commission.

My main job was to go out all over the state and try eminent domain cases, and mostly up and down Interstate 5. My blood is on lots of that. Every time I go on Interstate 5, I think of some of my blood being on some of that right of way. Those cases were difficult because the local people didn’t like the highway coming through their place, and so the local people, oftentimes, really put it to us. The main issue, of course, was how much just compensation the landowner was to be paid for giving up part of his property for right of way.

Miller: And it’s fascinating the language you use. It seems pretty telling that when you travel on I-5 now, and it’s right there, obviously, my guess is that most people listening to us now have driven on or been driven on I-5. You say that there’s blood on your hands. Does that mean that you feel some guilt about the role you played in this state act of taking over land with the purpose of the public good to make a thoroughfare?

Mansfield: No, I feel no guilt at all. I was simply a mechanic that represented the state of Oregon in trying to contend that our suggested price was the proper price. The Oregon Constitution provides, of course, that people are entitled to just compensation and they’re entitled to a jury trial, and my function was to represent the state in presenting the information about what the just compensation should be. And of course, the individual landowner was represented by a private attorney. So we had a good old  jury trial each time. It was part of our American system of due process. I felt no guilt whatsoever.

I felt sorry sometimes that people had to have part of their land taken, but I didn’t make those determinations. Engineers decided where the highway was gonna go.

Miller: That makes sense as you’re describing it. So that was one of your first jobs working for the state. And then you went, am I right, into private practice?

Mansfield: No, I came to Medford, Oregon from there, and became Medford City Attorney for three years. And thereafter, I resigned from that job and became a private practitioner. I set up my own law practice and I’ve been in that law practice ever since, even though it’s very diminished now. I’m not out looking for business. I’m just kind of taking care of things as they come to me.

Miller: What kinds of legal issues did you focus on over the course of those many decades of private practice?

Mansfield: I was a general practitioner. I did contracts for people, land sale contracts, land transactions. I did some divorce. I didn’t like it. I did some estate planning, wills and trusts and those kinds of things. And sometimes I did some personal injury work,  persons that were injured due to the negligence of another party. I did a lot of trial work and on those kinds of cases I was a general practitioner. Basically, I was a family practitioner, whatever happened in the family, they contacted me to take care of it.

Miller: You said you don’t seek out work now. But the implication I suppose is that sometimes work seeks you out. So people are still calling you up, your clients, or would-be clients?

Mansfield: Yeah. I take care of a few old clients that were good to me during my, I call them my starving years. When you first start a law practice, nothing comes in. You’re starving for a while. And I still have a lot of good feeling about them and I take care of them when necessary, but I do get a lot of calls from people I don’t even know, who are asking about this, that, or the other thing. And I try to help them over the phone. I don’t go into court for them anymore, even though I’m still licensed to do so, because of my age. But I do try to point them in the right direction by telling them what it’s about and how to handle it and giving them advice. Sometimes I even give them appointments and we meet and I try to help them, give advice on how to handle a case or how to handle a certain transaction. It’s somewhat satisfying to know that there is some help for people.

One of the problems is that hiring lawyers is a very frustrating business because the price that lawyers charge for their services is so high that most people, even middle-income people, can’t afford to pay for it. I’m aware that in criminal law, of course, people always get free defense, but I’m talking about civil cases now. On civil matters, there is no free lawyer. So a lot of people have to handle their own cases. I sometimes help people, kind of guide them through their case and give them clues on how to handle it.

Miller: And it’s that sense of this economic imbalance – that’s why you do all of this now pro bono, all of it for free?

Mansfield: Well, part of it is to help them, but part of it is to help me. One of the things that an old person needs to do is to stay young, and one of the ways to stay young is to help people. It’s a selfish business as well as a selfless business.

Miller: The way you’re describing, it doesn’t sound particularly selfish, even if you’re, as you say, that being helpful for others can also help you. That does not seem selfish to me.

Mansfield: Oh, well, in any event, it’s important for me to stay as active as I can. So that’s one of the reasons I do it. The other reason is that I think, don’t we all get a little bit of pleasure when we help someone?

Miller: Is it also fair to say that you would get bored if you weren’t engaging your mind in this way,  if you didn’t continue to do what you’ve done for seven decades?

Mansfield: Oh, yes. I think it would be very debilitating to just sit at home and watch television all the time. I have a lady friend that lives across town from me, but she doesn’t want me around her house all the time. I don’t blame her. So, yes, it occupies some of my time. That’s another thing that it does for me personally.

Miller: Yeah, but as I mentioned in my intro, there are other things that are keeping you very active, civically, including this elected position in the Rogue Valley Transportation District Board. What does that work entail?

Mansfield: It mostly involves policy issues. We have a superb staff, who are much brighter than board members are about how to run a transportation district. But they come to us for final decisions. We decide on budget matters and we decide basic policy matters, using the recommendations of the staff, of course. We hardly ever disagree with staff because they’re so much smarter than we are. But that’s what we do. We are the policy-making board for the Rogue Valley Transportation District.

Miller: And as I mentioned, you’re also a member of the Medford Planning Commission. How would you describe your political philosophy?

Mansfield: Well, my policies are mostly liberal except financially I’m very conservative. And I believe in the things that the Oregon Legislature is trying to do now. I live in a very conservative area, so there are a lot of people that disagree. In fact, I’m probably a minority member of our system. But I think it’s important that both sides be heard and that’s what I do. Sometimes it’s kind of fun being out there alone. You’re trying to lead but everybody’s in front of you.

Miller: I suppose you’re used to being a lone voice at this point.

Mansfield: Yeah. It’s not embarrassing to be in the minority.  I’m in the minority. Much of the time, I’m with everybody else. We’re all together. But on these issues that are important, philosophical issues, we differ and I think it’s a very healthy thing. We have interesting, civilized debates and discussions. That’s what’s fun about it, is having these debates and discussions and differences of opinion, and the majority wins, and very often I’m on the losing side and that’s not disturbing to me. It doesn’t change my view any. It’s part of life. Life is a debate and when we participate in it, we are the better for it. We don’t always have to win.

Miller: Well, let’s turn to some of the other things that make life worth living. You were involved at  the start of the Britt Music Festival in 1963. How did that come about?

Mansfield: I was in the city attorney’s office and the city recorder, whose name I now forget, contacted me and knew that I was interested in classical music and he said, ‘Some of us are getting together to try to put together a local music festival. Would you like to be involved, and particularly, would you like to prepare the corporate documents for this nonprofit?’

So, yes, I certainly would. And I did prepare the corporate documents, but more importantly, I worked as a worker bee out there that summer, cleaning up the grounds out at Jacksonville. The grounds had been ignored for many years and more like a garbage dump. And so we got our trucks and lawn mowers and we were not a boardroom board. We were a ‘take our shirts off and work out in the heat’ kind of board, cleaning up this area, so that we could put on an outdoor music festival.

Miller: After that physical labor, what was it like when the concerts started?

Mansfield: It was wonderful. In our home, we kept one of the players, ‘Uncle Dave,’ he was called. The kids loved him, he played the viola and he came every year, and we just loved having Uncle Dave come and we loved going to the musical concerts. My oldest son who was, I think, four or five years old at the time, ended up being a very good classical pianist, by the way, with a degree in music. But we introduced him to music at that time. And it took. He has since told me how important our inculcation of music and classical music into his mind was, and we very much appreciate that.

So it was a wonderful fun time and it was a family time and we just loved it. We loved August, because August was the time for the classical music part of the Britt Festival.

Miller: You’ve done a ton professionally and civically, as we’ve just been talking about. What are you most proud of?

Mansfield: Oh, I don’t think we need to be proud of anything.  I’m just pleased that I’m as old as I am and healthy, and I’ve had a very fortunate life. I’m one of those fortunate people that got the grace of heaven or something. I don’t know why but I’m just pleased that life has been so good to me. I don’t think it’s any matter of pride. When I see the homeless people down the street, I know that there but for the grace of God, go I. I could have been just one of them. So I’m just, I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. I wish everyone were as lucky. I wish our society were such that we could take better care of those people.

Miller: What gives you joy these days?

Mansfield: Gives me joy? Well, my family. I have three sons and two of them live in Portland and one of them lives in San Francisco. And we get together every Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. We get together for the weekend and eat lots of turkey and I do the carving and then we all listen to the Oregon Ducks play Oregon State the next day and we have a great time and then we come home. These are the delightful things. We forget about our intra-family differences that we sometimes have and we have great times together.

Miller: Bill Mansfield, it was a pleasure talking with you. Thanks very much for giving us some of your time.

Mansfield: Thank you for interviewing me. It was fun.

Miller: It’s Bill Mansfield who’s practiced law in Oregon for 70 years.

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