William Young Frick

A memorial service for William Youngs Frick will be held June 21 in Kirksville, Mo., at Trinity Episcopal Church at 1 p.m. Mr. Frick was an attorney in northeast Missouri for more than 50 years. He died March 12 at age 81 in Houston, Texas, where he had lived since 2006. Bill was born September 5, 1926, in the living quarters of the Lafayette County Jail in Lexington, Mo., to Creigh Fulkerson Frick, who was the county sheriff at the time, and Zayda Dillon Mills Frick. Bill's schooling included a one-room schoolhouse near Dover and the Lexington public schools, where he was president of his senior class in 1944. After graduation Bill joined the U.S. Navy at age 17 and married Dorothy Neer, with whom he had two daughters and a son. At 18, Bill served in the Pacific aboard the U.S. Destroyer Brush when it led history's first surface attack inside Tokyo Bay on July 22, 1945. After the war Bill attended Westminster College in Fulton where he was a champion debater before his graduation in 1949. Bill considered graduate work in English to become a professor but decided instead to attend the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia. That decision led him to five decades in a job and a profession that he loved – attorney and counselor at law. Bill was admitted to The Missouri Bar in 1952 and began the private practice of law with Senator Ray Mabee in Unionville. Residing there for more than a decade, Bill also served as Putnam County prosecuting attorney and city attorney as well as juvenile officer for Putnam and several other counties. He later served as prosecuting attorney in Schuyler County. In 1964 Bill and his family moved to Kirksville where he joined his brother Vance in private practice. He continued practice in Kirksville for most of the next 40 years, with a brief stint in practice in Kansas City in the late 1960s. During his years in Kirksville, other attorneys in the area elected Bill to serve several terms on The Missouri Bar Board of Governors. Beginning in the mid- 1980s and the 1990s he also worked as a trust officer and in-house legal counsel for Bank Midwest in northern Missouri. In January 2003, due in part to his wife Betty's failing health, Bill retired from the practice of law. Bill often recalled his idyllic youth spent roaming the hills, fields and creeks near his home with his brother. From those days into adulthood, they spent many hours together bird hunting and sharing that passion with Vance's son, Chris. Daughters, granddaughters and great-grandchildren learned to fish at Bill's side. From his earliest days to his last, one of Bill's greatest loves was the written and spoken word. He read constantly, with an Oxford unabridged dictionary close by. The late Judge Frank Cottey of Lancaster, Mo., credited Bill with the largest working vocabulary of any person he ever knew. At an event marking Bill retirement from private practice, Judge Steve Willcox, also of Lancaster, presented Bill with an award, declaring him "Master of the King's English." Among Bill's other prominent interests and skills were gourmet and home cooking, gardening, barbequing and sourdough bread baking. He had the gift of good storytelling and appreciated it in others. He is predeceased by his parents, his brother Vance Ragland Frick, and his infant son David Preston Frick. His wife of more than 40 years, Betty, of Novinger died about a month after Bill. Bill leaves his daughter Patricia Jennings and her husband Rick of Houston, Texas, his daughter Theresa Levings and her husband Darryl of Kansas City, four granddaughters: Christine Kenda and her husband Bill, Stephanie Knight and her husband Walker, Leslie Levings and Kerry Levings; eight great grandchildren, Ashley, Mele, Chase, Alec, Kelsie, Kyla, Elissa, and Coleton, born February 12, 2008, whom Bill first saw two days before he died. Bill also leaves a stepson, Robert M. Watkins III of Annapolis, Maryland, two stepdaughters, Barbara Crofford of Los Angeles, Calif., and Nancy Best of Phoenix, Ariz., his brother's wife, Carolyn, of Kirksville, and his niece and nephew, Karen and Christopher Frick. Contributions in memory of Bill may be made to City Union Mission, 1100 E. 11th St., Kansas City, MO 64106; Legal Aid of Western Missouri, 1125 Grand Blvd., Suite 1900, Kansas City, MO 64106 or the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Mid-America Chapter, 6811 W. 63rd St., Cloverleaf Bldg 1, Suite 202, Shawnee Mission, KS 66202.