James Parton III

Longtime Mill Valley resident and highly respected Bay Area attorney James Parton III passed away peacefully from ocular melanoma at his home on June 4, 2023. He was 71 years old.

Born in New York City to James Parton II - founder and publisher of American Heritage Magazine - and Jane Bourne Parton, the family relocated to Westport, CT where Jim spent his early years. His mother died of breast cancer a month before his 11th birthday in 1962. His father spent the rest of his life "searching for Jane," finding contentment in marriage to Ruth Dawkins.

In 1965, Jim began studies at his father's alma mater, the Loomis School (today the Loomis Chaffee School) in Windsor, CT. There he excelled at getting into trouble, lacrosse and ice hockey, making many lifelong friends. Happy summers were spent at Pine Island Camp in Belgrade, ME. After graduation he attended Uppingham School in Rutland, England, then a traditional all-boys boarding school founded in the 16th Century. He returned to the US and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor's degree cum laude in 1973 with a double major in history and literature.

After graduating, Jim moved to Washington DC in time for Agnew's resignation, the Saturday Night Massacre and all that followed. There, Jim met Diane King, a divorcee with two boys, ages six and nine. They moved across the country so he could attend law school and married in 1976.

In 1980, Diane passed away from primary pulmonary hypertension, leaving Jim to raise her boys, who he adopted in 1981. His elder son, Philip King Parton, graduated from Loomis Chaffee and went on to become a respected architectural designer. He died of lung cancer in 2011. Jim remained close to his former mother-in-law, Dr. Anne Mills King, until her death in 2019.

In 1982, Jim hired Maureen Ann Brown, a second-year law student at the University of San Francisco School of Law as his law clerk. They settled in Mill Valley and wed in 1985. Together they explored the joys of hiking and mountain biking. They enjoyed traveling, journeying to Europe and New Zealand. After five years, they expanded the family to include two children, Jane and Nate.

Jim enrolled at the University of San Francisco School of Law, graduating in 1977 with a J.D. awarded cum laude. Following graduation, he joined the firm Lynch & Loofbourrow (ultimately Lynch, Gilardi & Grummer) where he started as an associate, achieved partnership status in 1983, and practiced for 25 years.

In 2008, Jim formed the law firm of Parton & Sell in San Rafael, CA with Jim Sell, a partner from the Lynch firm. They were soon joined by Ralph Rhoades to become Parton, Sell, Rhoades. Jim specialized in employment law, product liability and commercial litigation and was honored as a "Super Lawyer." He was a member of the California, the Northern and Eastern Districts of California and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar Associations. A member of the Defense Research Institute, Jim was also program chair of the 2008 Employment Law Committee seminar. He retired from the practice of law in June 2016.

Jim was dedicated to outdoor recreation and the arts. He served on the Mill Valley Parks and Recreation Commission, including one year as chair, and on the boards of Antenna Theater, Chris Hardman's experimental theater group, and of the Acoustic Vortex, a storied house-concert series in Larkspur, CA. The pinnacle of Jim's community service was at his "happy place;" the West Point Inn atop Mount Tamalpais. The Inn became the focus of Jim's volunteer work with his nomination to the board of directors. Jim's goal was to assure that the West Point Inn Association, a nonprofit formed to operate and maintain the Inn, would be around for another century offering escape, solace and lodging to visitors to the magnificent mountain. To do this, Jim established a Fundraising Committee and urged the West Point Inn board and members to begin ongoing, professional fundraising campaigns and outreach.

In retirement, Jim vigorously pursued the things he loved best: travel, gardening, hiking, family history and genealogy, and photography. Jim loved a good, rousing political discussion with strong opinions formed consulting a wide variety of sources. While waiting for Maureen to retire as an aide to four southern Marin County Supervisors over the previous 28 years, he managed to slip off to Spain twice, compelled by the shockingly low costs of airline tickets.

At his 50th Loomis Reunion, asked for a piece of advice to new Loomis Chaffee graduates, Jim wrote, "Stay active and healthy. Find a physical fitness regimen that works for you and stay with it. Forty years from now you will be glad you did. Remember that health is the crown that only the sick see."

In his early fifties Jim was diagnosed with prostate cancer and successfully treated. At the start of the Coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, Jim learned he had ocular melanoma with a genetic marker revealing it as terminal and without effective treatment.

Undeterred, Jim enrolled in an experimental immunotherapy drug trial at the University of California, San Francisco but the cancer progressed, metastasizing to his liver. Upon learning the FDA had approved the first-ever drug for treatment of uveal melanoma, Jim became Stanford University Medical Center's first patient to receive Tebentafusp; but it too failed to halt the disease. Yet almost to the end he remained active, upbeat and devoted to seeing friends.

Jim was widely admired by clients for his honesty, integrity and clear advice, always to the client's benefit. After careful analysis, he often advised settlement as it would save time, money and spare clients the stress of living through lengthy, combative litigation. Friends also relied on Jim for his intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, insight, kindness and warmth. In his last years with this rare disease, Jim put it all out there on Facebook so that others might see for themselves how he sat face to face and knee to knee with his own death and dying. It was not always easy to see but his hope was for others to know that they too could find their own strength amidst challenge and decline.

In addition to his first wife Diane and son Phillip Jim's brother Dana predeceased him, in 1991. Survivors include his wife, Maureen Brown Parton, his son from his first marriage, Christopher of Forest Knolls, and two children from his second marriage, Jane and Nathaniel, both of Oakland. In addition, he leaves his sister Sara Parton Pelgrift and her husband James Pelgrift of Danbury, CT and their three children, Samuel, Elisa (Robert Hamilton Wallace, Jr.) and Daniel, and an infant grandniece, Elinor Marie Wallace. Maureen's family survivors include her siblings Clement R. Brown, III (Barbara Brown), Kathleen Brown (John Cullather), Jeannie Brown, Lisa Lizzo (Tom Lizzo), John Brown (Joann Brown) and several nieces and nephews.

Fernwood Cemetery and Mortuary is handling the arrangements. The family requests in lieu of flowers that donations be made to the organizations that Jim loved most: The West Point Inn Association, The Loomis Chaffee School, or Pine Island Camp.

Jim lived life fully with honesty, integrity and a sense of fun. He didn't believe in sugar coating or hiding the bracing truths of life behind soft, nondescript, feel-good language. He chronicled his experience participating in experimental drug studies and ultimately the dying process with clear, brute-force language. Near the end, in the ICU, Jim said, "Dying is crappy'' and "I don't want to live like this." Jim was clear he wanted to die, to die at home. And, that he did.