Stanley H. Reeves ’78

Stan died July 7, 2019, peacefully in his sleep after a valiant fight with cancer.

Stan graduated from Clover Park High School, Princeton, and Harvard Law School. After several years at one of Manhattan’s elite firms, he returned to the Puget Sound area to be closer to his parents and to join a downtown Seattle firm.

Stan became a public defender in Tacoma, where he spent years gleefully tormenting prosecutors with his own brand of brilliance and the self-deprecating humor that made it impossible to dislike him.

In the halls of courthouses all over the state, reassuringly right with the world was the sight of Stan shuffling, head-down with purpose, looking harried in a rumpled shirt and the ever-present smear of jelly on the lapel of his Brooks Brothers suit, rushing to his next hearing for which he was already late. His humility and the heartfelt compliments were sincere, as was his staunch resistance to ceding any intellectual or philosophical point. Personal and engaging at work, he retreated home at night, content with a glass of wine and C-Span.

A confirmed bachelor, Stan left no heirs.