Yale Huffman, a well-known Denver attorney for many years, died of heart-lung failure on Oct. 27. He was 93.
Huffman had been a tobacco salesman, a police chief in Virginia, a justice of the peace and a page for a U.S. senator before he became a lawyer.
He was accepted into law school without a bachelor’s degree, said his son, John Huffman of Lake Oswego, Ore.
Yale Huffman served in the Colorado House of Representatives and was assistant U.S. attorney for Colorado, assistant Denver district attorney and law instructor at the University of Denver and Metropolitan State College of Denver.
He had a private practice, doing corporate, defense and family law, his son said.
Huffman is thought to hold the record for sobriety among Colorado members of Alcoholics Anonymous: 57 years.
He did pro bono work for many people he met through AA.
“He was extremely eloquent, had a tremendous intuition about people and was a dapper dresser,” said Dr. Michael Sarche, who was Huffman’s cardiologist and longtime friend.
When heart surgery was suggested, Huffman called his wife, cardiologist, surgeon and internist together for a conference before making a decision. “No one ever asked for that before,” Sarche said.
After the surgery, Huffman wrote a poem to Sarche and often took his doctors out to lunch on the anniversary of the operation.
Huffman loved poetry classics and memorized long portions of poems, said his daughter, Martha Jane Kreager Cline of Carlisle, Pa.
He often wrote poems to family members on birthdays and anniversaries.
“I was in awe of the breadth and depth of his intellectual prowess,” his daughter said.
On many Christmases, he took his family with him to deliver food they had made for people at downtown shelters.
In the last few years, Huffman endured macular degeneration and other health problems, “but he put up with those infirmities with more dignity and grace than anyone I ever knew,” said Denver lawyer and friend Dan Lynch.
Yale Huffman was born in Lincoln, Neb., on April 6, 1916, and was reared in Broken Bow, Neb. After finishing high school at 16, he went to Washington, D.C., where he got his law-enforcement jobs. He later worked as a salesman for American Tobacco Co., sold postage meters, and was a cowboy in Wyoming and Colorado. He loved to ride and taught his kids to ride and sing cowboy songs.
He married Jane Kreager on April 4, 1936. She died in 2004.
In addition to his son and daughter, he is survived by five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Inside.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
