Willard Hatch, 88, bankruptcy lawyer

A half-century career as a highly respected bankruptcy lawyer in Seattle wasn't enough for Willard Hatch. Even into his 80s, following his retirement in 2001 and until his health began to decline, he made weekly trips downtown from his Northeast Seattle home to offer free advice to entrepreneurs hoping to succeed in business.

Once a week, he'd ride an express bus downtown to offer his counsel as a Small Business Administration SCORE (Service Corps Of Retired Executives) program volunteer. On other days, he might lend a helping hand in the Seattle office of the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, a nonprofit statewide social-service agency where his only daughter, Susan Eastgard, of Seattle, is the executive director.

He'd stuff envelopes, or vacuum, or help in any way he could, she said. "He wanted to be productive. He always wanted to be contributing. He didn't see value in just sitting around."

Mr. Hatch, 88, whom a young protégé described as the dean of the bankruptcy bar, died June 7 at his home.

"He's left a large group of loyal protégés he introduced the law to, and helped them understand," said his youngest son, Walter Hatch, a former Seattle Times newspaper reporter and now political-science professor at a private liberal-arts college in Waterville, Maine. "He was a no-nonsense guy who supported progressive causes, social services and the arts."

Walter Hatch says his dad loved to argue, especially about politics. "He was a bit blunt, to put it nicely."

The civil-rights and peace movements of the 1960s transformed his dad into "a liberal gadfly who was, by the 1980s, boisterously bucking the conservative tide."

Mr. Hatch established his private law practice in Seattle in the late 1940s, after undergraduate studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.; a Navy stint on a destroyer-escort in the Pacific during World War II; and graduation from Columbia University's law school in 1948.

His firm, for a time known as Hatch & Leslie, became the largest in the Northwest to specialize in bankruptcy law, his son said. The practice later was acquired by one of the most prestigious firms in the city, Foster Pepper & Shefelman.

"He was an incredible influence on my life," said John Hickman, Pierce County Superior Court judge, of Tacoma, who first became acquainted with Mr. Hatch in his own youth in the late 1960s. Mr. Hatch was an adult leader to a youth group at Seattle's University Congregational Church.

Mr. Hatch helped him prepare for his law-school admissions test after encouraging him to become an attorney, gave him a job as a legal intern during law school and helped him get established at a law practice in Tacoma after he passed the state bar.

"It was incredible how he interceded in my life at key moments," Hickman said. "I now know that was his way of mentoring me."

Al Willert, a Phoenix lawyer who once worked in Seattle under Mr. Hatch, characterized him as the patriarch who brought along countless young lawyers who are the main bankruptcy lawyers across the city now. "All the people who worked for him were fiercely loyal to him because he was such a generous, caring individual," he said.

Besides his son and daughter, Mr. Hatch is survived by sons Will Hatch, a Tacoma lawyer, and Tom Hatch, a Minneapolis lawyer; eight grandchildren; and a sister, Connie Brown, of Florida. Mr. Hatch's wife of 59 years, Virginia "Ginger" Hatch, died in 2002.

A memorial will be held at 11 a.m. June 21 at downtown Seattle's Plymouth Congregational Church, 1217 Sixth Ave. One of the speakers will be the Rev. David Royer, former associate minister at University Congregational Church. The Hatch family suggests remembrances in his name be sent to the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, 444 N.E. Ravenna Blvd., Suite 401, Seattle, WA 98115.