AT 92, LAWYER FROM CAPE GIRARDEAU STILL BUSY AT HIS LAW FIRM IN TEXAS

Harold M. LaFont, 92, dreamed of being a lawyer as a child and has worked continuously since high school, both contributing factors to his being the oldest practicing lawyer in Texas.

LaFont is in Cape Girardeau this week visiting his niece Nancy Nussbaum Robinson and her husband, Van. He's also visiting sites familiar to him from going to high school here -- he graduated in 1924 -- and growing up in Catron.

"I have no plans on retiring any time soon," said LaFont, who has been practicing law since moving to Plainview, Texas, in 1930. In fact, he's anxious to get back to his daily schedule when his vacation here ends.

That schedule includes rising at 4:30 each morning. He uses the early morning hours to read and take care of household chores, which he has been doing since his wife of 63 years, Jane, died last year.

He's at the offices of his law firm, LaFont, Tunnell, Formby, LaFont and Hamilton, at 8 a.m. and usually works until 4 p.m.

"I can't hear well enough to go to court any more," he said, adding that he leaves the courtroom duties to his son William H. LaFont, who is the second LaFont in the law firm title. His other child is a daughter, Gail Huey, a Latin professor in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The elder LaFont stays busy at the office preparing contracts and wills, handling probated estates and dispensing legal advice.

"I've worked all my life," LaFont said. "I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't go in every day."

His first paying job was at Dad Clifton's Confectionery, which was at the present location of Howard's at Broadway and Pacific. The LaFont family had moved to Cape Girardeau from Catron so the children could go to high school.

"There was no high school or much of anything else in Catron," LaFont said of the tiny town south of Sikeston.

It was when he was in high school that LaFont began telling everyone he was going to be a lawyer, he said.

"I didn't know how I was going to do it," he said, noting that his family didn't have much money. "But I had met a lot of lawyers when I was a boy, and my dad (Judge Lafayette LaFont) was a county judge. I was impressed by them."

Another attorney who impressed LaFont when he was a high school student was Rush H. Limbaugh, who would live to be the oldest practicing attorney in the nation. The late Limbaugh was LaFont's Sunday school teacher at Centenary Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau.

"He was a good speaker, good at mingling with people, and everybody liked him," LaFont said of Limbaugh.

LaFont worked his way through the University of Missouri at Columbia, earning the money to go to college by teaching in a one-room school near Catron.

"I thought I'd have about 30 students, but on the first day 90 children showed up," LaFont said. "They came out of the woods like flies."

He wanted to quit, he said, but his father insisted that since he signed a contract he had to stick it out.

After graduating from the University of Missouri, LaFont was ready for law school.

"A friend said he was going to law school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He asked if I wanted to go, too, and I said why not?" LaFont said.

He sold Fuller brushes his first year of law school. Then LaFont got a job teaching history, English and civics at Woodward School for Boys. The teacher-student ratio wasn't as bad as that one-room school so he stayed there until he had his law degree.

He set up practice in Plainview in 1930. Three years later he began what would become a three-decade stint in government service. In 1933, he was elected county judge, where he served for eight years, then he served eight years as district attorney, four years as a state representative and 10 years as a district judge.

He resigned after he had a heart attack but has continued to practice law.

He said the most interesting case he's been involved with was when he was a district attorney in the 1940s and prosecuted an East Texas doctor accused of attempting to murder a West Texas doctor. The East Texas doctor was convicted of luring his victim out to a lonely stretch of West Texas highway and ambushing him. But the East Texas doctor was from a wealthy family that fought to keep him out of prison, even, it was suspected, by bribing a member of the board of pardons, LaFont said.

After the man was sent to prison, the West Texas doctor was killed by a hired gunman, who LaFont suspected was hired by the East Texas doctor's family. The hired killer was convicted of the killing three times, but each conviction was overturned.

"It was very frustrating because we knew he was guilty," LaFont said.

To LaFont's relief, the killer was eventually killed by another hired killer.

"I was glad to hear about his death," LaFont said. "He was just a bad man."

LaFont's work as an attorney now is much less exciting than in his days as a district attorney and courtroom lawyer, but he plans to keep after it, through he just shrugs off the notion that someday he could be the nation's oldest practicing attorney as Limbaugh was.

"I'm not surprised I'm still practicing law," he said, noting he loves his work and will continue his practice as long as possible. "I'm just surprised I've lived this long."