Edmon Rinehart

Mr. Edmon Loftin Rinehart, 93, a noted Montgomery lawyer, descendant of an early Alabama family, and former prisoner of war, died Tuesday, June 11, 2013, in a local hospital after a brief illness.

Mr. Rinehart was born in New York City in 1920 and spent his boyhood in Indianapolis, Ind. He completed his secondary education at Andover Academy in Massachusetts before graduating from Princeton in 1942. He then became a field artillery officer in the 10th Field Artillery Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, fighting in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. In January 1944, assigned to the Rangers as part of a night assault mission to break out of the Anzio beachhead, he was captured and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp, Oflag 64, in Szubin, Poland. After the war, Mr. Rinehart attended and graduated from Harvard Law School. During the Korean War, he returned to Army active duty, serving in Germany with the first U.S. Army units to be dispatched under NATO to protect from Warsaw Pact aggression, and he remained in the Army Reserve for 30 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

He moved to Montgomery in 1955 to become an assistant attorney general working with his friend and former Army colleague, newly elected Alabama Attorney General John Patterson. In 1958 he represented Alabama before the U.S. Supreme Court in the very important First Amendment case, NAACP v. Alabama. He went on to serve as Gov. Patterson's Commissioner of Insurance for three years before joining the Birmingham law firm Deramus & Johnson. Several years later he and Gov. Patterson formed a law partnership and practiced together for over 20 years. In retirement Mr. Rinehart was active in the English-Speaking Union, serving as its president for several years.

His great-great grandfather, Thomas Bibb, of Amherst, Va., was one of the earliest settlers and landowners in the Huntsville area and a cousin of the first governor, William Wyatt Bibb. His great grandfather, Dr. William Durham Lyles, was the surgeon-general of the First Corps of the Army of Mississippi under Bishop General Leonidas Polk and senior medical officer at the Battle of Shiloh. Dr. Lyles also served in the Alabama and Mississippi legislatures and was briefly in the news business as owner of the Pickensville Register, an early Alabama newspaper.

His wife of 60 years, Barbara Lutz Rinehart, and his brother, Robert Lyle Rinehart, also of Montgomery, predeceased him. He is survived by his children, Robert Bruce Rinehart (Fairlie) of Montgomery and Christine Rinehart Taft ((John) of Washington, D.C.; and four grandchildren: Robert Loftin Rinehart and James Fairlie Rinehart of Montgomery, and Elizabeth Young Jordan and Stephen Alexander Rinehart Taft of Washington D.C.

Visitation will be at St. John's Episcopal Church at 1 p.m. on Saturday. The funeral service will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at St. John's. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, any donations be made to Saint John's Episcopal Church where Mr. Rinehart was a long time communicant.

Pallbearers will include former Governor John M. Patterson, David Pope of Atlanta, Colonel Albert L. Patterson, United States Army Retired of Huntsville, Major General Will Hill Tankersley, United States Army Retired of Montgomery, Arthur Nead of New Orleans, William H. McLemore of Montgomery, Richard Amberg of Montgomery, Edward Woodson of Montgomery and Judge Sibley Reynolds of Clanton.