Born: Thursday, October 1st, 1885
Died: Wednesday, October 21st, 1964
Birthplace: Mount Ayr, Iowa
Religion: Presbyterian
Career: Deputy and Chief Prosecutor (1913-1914; 1919-1920)
Superior Court (1921-1924)
Served: Monday, January 12th, 1925 to Friday, November 30th, 1928
Political Party: Republican
William David Askren, son of William Wirt and Nettie Eleanor (Lawhead) Askren, was born in southern Iowa only a few miles from the Missouri border. He attended public schools in the small farming community of Mount Ayr until the age of fourteen when the family went to Oklahoma. In 1902 Askren moved to Tacoma. His first employment there was as a hotel bellhop; later he clerked in a pawn shop. In the evenings and during spare time Askren studied the law. In 1908 the future jurist took the bar exam and was admitted to practice in Washington at the age of twenty-three. After five years in private practice Askren was appointed deputy prosecuting attorney for Pierce County, serving until 1915. After another stint of private practice he successfully campaigned for Pierce County Prosecutor, defeating his opponent by more than 2,000 votes. Fears of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) insurrection focused attention on prosecutors, and in 1920, following the Centralia massacre, he prosecuted thirty-six members of the IWW under a new anti-syndicalism law. The jury found all guilty of “publishing and circulating seditious literature” and of “criminal syndicalism.”In April 1920 Askren received considerable attention when Mrs. Julia Smith, whom he had recently prosecuted, shot him. She drove to Askren’s home in an automobile owned by an attorney for whom she worked. Attired in men’s clothes, she shot the judge point-blank as he opened his door. The bullet narrowly missed his heart, but he remained near death for weeks. He recovered completely, however, and in September voters elected him to the Pierce County Superior Court. He benefitted both from the publicity surrounding the shooting and from his success as a prosecutor.
In 1922 William H. Pemberton, Whatcom County Superior Court Judge, unseated incumbent Chester Hovey for a two-year term on the high bench. He had strong backing from both farm and labor organizations. Pemberton’s plans to seek a full term in 1924 caused concern among the state bar leaders who considered him to represent the extreme left. At their urging, William Askren filed for the supreme court and narrowly defeated Pemberton after a hard and bitter campaign. It was the first time the state bar association publicly endorsed a supreme court candidate.
“Billy” Askren served only three years of his full term on the supreme court, resigning December 1, 1928 to return to private practice. In explaining his resignation the judge announced:
It has been a pleasure to serve the people of the state, and I have enjoyed to the full the association with my colleagues on the bench. Mrs. Askren and I regret to leave Olympia, but both our daughters are attending the University of Washington and we feel that it will add to the happiness of the family if we all live in the same city.
The judge joined the new law firm of Allen, Froude, Hilen, and Askren in Seattle. Four years later he formed a new partnership with noted attorney John E. Ryan. In the meantime, Askren’s daughter Marian graduated from the University of Washington School of Law and passed the bar exam in 1931.
Askren became active in bar association and civic affairs in Seattle. In 1938 the mayor appointed him to the city library board, and reappointed him in 1940, 1945, and 1950. Problems in the Seattle police department in 1943 prompted Mayor Art Devin to select Askren as part of a three-man police advisory council to investigate the situation. Askren remained active in Republican party affairs as well, campaigning frequently for Republican candidates. While playing golf at the Seattle Golfand Country Club in November 1964, Judge Askren collapsed and died.
Askren married Bessie Frances Caldwell of Tacoma in 1907. They had two daughters, Kathryn Marie and Marian Eleanor. Judge Askren received a divorce in 1939 when the court declared Bessie incurably insane. In February 1940 he married Margaret Unger Hubbard, the ceremony performed in the temple of justice, in the chambers of Askren’s former colleague, Justice John F. Main. The judge was active in Phi Delta Phi, the Masons, Elks, Rainier Club, and the Seattle Golf Club. He was an accomplished amateur magician, a member of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians, the Society of American Magicians, and the Seattle Magic Ring, which he served as president.
In addition to his long tenure as a trustee of the Seattle Public Library, he was a charter member of the American Heritage Foundation, the Seattle Foundation, and twice a member of the Governor’s Safety Conference.
Judge Matthew W. Hill recalled William Askren’s years as judge and attorney on occasion of the court’s memorial services in 1965:
His keen power of analysis; his capacity for clear logical thinking; his talent for terse, lucid and exact expression; his continued ability to function notwithstanding the exacting, continuous and ever urgent nature of the work; his understanding cooperation with the other judges; and his sound knowledge of fundamental legal principles were some of the qualities which contributed to his notable success on both the Superior and the Supreme Court.
His patience sometimes wore a bit thin, when it seemed to him that counsel was wasting the court’s time on peripheral issues, and his infrequent questions from the bench were usually calculated to bring the errant advocate back to a consideration of decisive issues.
Although his record on both the trial and appellate bench was outstanding, the lure of advocacy brought him back to the legal arena where for 36 years he actively and successfully engaged in the practice of his profession.
In 1935, I had the privilege of assisting him in a minor role in the preparation of his brief in one of our landmark cases in labor law: Safeway Stores, Inc. v. Retail Clerks Union Local 148. I could not help but be impressed with his thoroughness, his exactness, and his ability to condense three pages of my discussion to a single paragraph; nor shall I ever forget his closing comment in the oral argument of that case, when the Chief Justice admonished him that he had used all of his time- he, with that characteristic smile said, “Your Honor, time goes a lot faster down here than it does up there.” Which may well be the explanation of why he left the bench- he wanted to be where the time went faster.
Selected References
C. W. Taylor, Eminent Judges and Lawyers of the Northwest (1954), p. 118; W. P. Bonney, History of Pierce County, Washington, vol. 2 (1927), pp. 729-730; Seattle Times, 14 Oct. 1924; and memorial services, Washington Reports, vol. 65, 2d (1965), pp. xxi-xxvii.
The preceding biography is from Charles Sheldon's The Washington High Bench: A Biographical History of the State Supreme Court, 1889-1991, © 1992 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University. Reprinted here with permission and licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by The Temple of Justice Project.
