Bill DeMoulin told an interviewer that he thought his friends would describe him as “dull.”
He was wrong.
The longtime lawyer and former district judge, who died Feb. 17, was “one dynamite lawyer” in the words of Chief District Judge Brooke Jackson, who serves Jefferson and Gilpin counties.
DeMoulin died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge. He was 75.
“He was totally professional, civil, courteous, fair, reasonable and a person who never barked at anyone in the courtroom,” Jackson said.
“He was a terrific trial lawyer, very bright and well-prepared,” he said.
DeMoulin defended companies and hospitals against lawsuits for many years, said his wife, Virginia. He was a district judge in Jefferson and Gilpin counties for 10 years, (two years as chief judge) and retired in 1999.
He served as president of both the Denver and Colorado Bar associations (at different times) and won numerous honors, including the William Lee Knous Award from the Law Alumni Board of the University of Colorado College of Law, the highest award the law school gives.
“He was a professional role model” to many lawyers, said attorney Ben Aisenberg, who had faced DeMoulin in two cases. “His ethics were beyond reproach. There was no pretense about Bill.”
William Prospere DeMoulin was born in Denver on March 25, 1933, and graduated from East High School. He married Virginia Bonney on June 22, 1955.
His father died while DeMoulin was still a teenager, and the family was forced to go on welfare, for which he was embarrassed, he told The Colorado Bar, a monthly magazine published by the Colorado Bar Association.
When he applied for law school at the University of Colorado, the dean reluctantly admitted him because during DeMoulin’s first semester at CU, he “flunked every class except gym,” he told The Colorado Lawyer. The CU dean told him, “You’ll never finish law school.”
With the help of the GI Bill and odd jobs at the Ogden Theatre, laying sod at CU and City Park maintenance, he got through college, said his daughter, Dana DeMoulin of Arvada.
Bill DeMoulin had “creative ways” of entertaining his children, his daughter said. She was 7 or 8 and had never been out of state, so her father drove her to Laramie and bought her an ice-cream cone. He took his son David to a Kiss rock concert, which his son loved, “but Dad was less than thrilled. He put cotton in his ears,” she said.
DeMoulin was a founder of the Thursday Night Bar, which provides free legal services to people who can’t pay. He pushed to get equal representation for women on committees at both bar associations and was the first lawyer to invite a female minister to say the invocation at the Denver Bar Association.
He was an inveterate photographer, and to unwind, he retreated to his basement, where he kept his drum set.
In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by three sons, Bill DeMoulin of Golden, Tom DeMoulin of Centennial and David DeMoulin of Arlington, Texas; four grandchildren; and his brother, Raymond H. DeMoulin of Arlington.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
