Pike County Missouri Obituaries - William L. Hungate

Obituary from The Hannibal Courier Post,
Hannibal, MO
Web posted June 25, 2007:

William L. Hungate
St. Louis County Dec. 14, 1922 - June 22, 2007

BOWLING GREEN - Former Federal Judge and 9th District Congressman, William L. Hungate, 84, of St. Louis County, died Friday, June 22, at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis County.

Visitation will be from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, June 25, at the Mudd-Veach Funeral Home in Bowling Green. A private graveside service will be held.

A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 30, at Salem in Ladue Methodist Church, 1200 S. Lindbergh Blvd., St. Louis.

Memorials may be made to the Champ Clark Honey Shuck Foundation Inc. or to the Salvation Army, in care of Mudd-Veach Funeral Home, 606 W. Main, Bowling Green, MO 63334.

Hungate was born Dec. 14, 1922, in Benton, Ill., to Leonard Wathen and Maude Williams Hungate. In 1929, his family moved to Bowling Green. He graduated from Bowling Green High School in 1940, attended Central College in Fayette, and received an A.B. degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, 1943. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1948 with an L.L.B.

He married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Nell Wilson of Cyrene, on April 13, 1944, in Lebanon, Pa. She survives.

Other survivors include one son, David Hungate and fiancée, April Barrows of Fairview, Tenn.; one daughter, Katie Hungate Wood and husband, Branson, of Hannibal; and four grandchildren, Noah Hungate of Murfreesboro, Tenn., Matthew Hungate of Hendersonville, Tenn., Allison Wood Leaheey and husband, Neal, of Providence, R.I., and Bennett Wood and wife, Karen, of Edwardsville, Ill.

Hungate was a member of what Tom Brokaw has called, "the greatest generation." Immediately after college, he was inducted into the U.S. Army where he was selected for an elite training group, due to his language aptitude. This unit was created by Congress to help in the reconstruction of Europe after the war. But in 1944, when the war was going badly for the Allied Forces, General George Marshall abolished the unit with the stroke of a pen on a weekend when the Congress was out of session. Soldiers from the unit were assigned to the infantry, even though the army was desperately short of qualified translators. Few of the men originally assigned to this unit survived the war. The mortality rate was said to have been over 60 percent. Of Hungate's 12-man rifle squad five were killed, five wounded and one survived having his helmet shot off. He survived unharmed. In writing of this experience he said, "It makes you determined not to betray those whose sacrifices made our lives and our children's laughter possible."

He served in the United States Army, 1943-1946, as a combat infantryman, private first class, 95th Infantry Division, European Theater. He received a Bronze Star, Combat Infantry Badge and three Battle Stars. After the war he attended Harvard Law School on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1948.

Hungate practiced law in Troy from 1948 to 1969 and served as Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney from 1951 to 1955. In 1956, he was an American Bar Foundation Researcher on the Administration of Criminal Justice in the United States. He practiced law in the firm of Hungate and Grewach 1956 -1969, and served as Special Assistant Attorney General 1958-1964.

Elected to Congress from Missouri's 9th District in 1964, he served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon Impeachment, handling Article II (Abuse of Powers.) He chaired the Judiciary Subcommittee during the first documented appearance of sitting president before a congressional committee, when President Gerald Ford testified to explain his pardon of Richard M. Nixon.

After retiring from Congress in 1977, he practiced law as a partner in the law firm of Thompson-Mitchell (now Thompson-Coburn) in St. Louis, until his appointment as a U.S. Federal District Judge in 1979.

In December 1980, he was assigned to preside over the continuing landmark St. Louis School Desegregation case. He oversaw the settlement of the case by the establishment of the Voluntary Inter District Desegregation Plan.

After retiring from the federal bench in 1992, he wrote two humorous books and compiled a book of his war letters. At the time of his death he was completing a book about the school desegregation case.

Throughout his life Hungate was a musician. He played clarinet, saxophone, piano and accordion. He worked his way through college playing in dance bands, and continued playing regularly in bands until the mid 1950's. He also composed and performed many humorous song parodies throughout his life.

He was a member of Salem in Ladue, Methodist Church, in St. Louis County, a charter member of the Troy Kiwanis and former Lieutenant Governor of Kiwanis International, a Mason, and a member of numerous legal organizations.