OGDEN — Hauling in the shingle after 61 years, George Handy is retiring from the practice of law.
A reception in his honor is planned from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday in the interior courtyard at 2650 Washington Blvd., the building that housed Handy’s office and a number of other law offices.
Refreshments will be served and master of ceremonies Roger Dutson, recently retired 2nd District judge and Handy’s former law partner, is arranging for remarks from local legal luminaries. The gathering is open to the public.
Handy, who turns 89 in August, opened for business in 1949, a time when the 30-odd lawyers in Ogden all had offices in the Eccles Building downtown. The tally today exceeds 300 lawyers by most estimates.
Dutson figures the number may not have been much more than 50 when he opened his practice in 1968. “George had been practicing already for more than 18 years then, and he was always willing to give help and advice to the young lawyers just starting out, like me.”
Handy’s mentoring of fledgling lawyers has continued to this day, likely to survive the Feb. 28 closing of his office. Friends have coaxed him into the computer age, just this week helping him set up a PC in his home.
“Healthwise, he’s pretty remarkable,” said son Steve, a former longtime Layton city councilman. “He’s had a bout of this and that but has worked diligently every day to keep his mind limber.
“He does crossword puzzles, reads voraciously and engages in discussions on a wide array of subjects. I think he’s just gifted intellectually in many respects and the law certainly challenged him.”
“He can still cite hundreds of cases,” Dutson said. “He has an amazing mind.”
Highlights of Handy’s career include serving with Dutson as legal counsel for Melvin Dummar in his bid for $156 million from the estate of Howard Hughes. Dummar swears he found a beaten man who said he was Hughes in the Nevada desert in 1967 and gave him a ride to Las Vegas. Dummar was an heir in a 1972 Hughes will.
Handy to this day believes Dummar was a victim of fraud in the 1978 trial in Las Vegas that ruled the will a fake.
In 2002 Handy was named Utah Lawyer of the Year by the Utah State Bar.
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