Anyone fortunate to have known James A. "Jim" Wade will agree that he loved the law; he relished the good fight, especially one that to most would appear unwinnable; and he lived his belief that highest calling for a lawyer was to be a gun for hire, or even better, court appointment.

His passing at age 86, after 61 years in the practice of law, is indeed the end of an era. For at least a couple of decades lawyers have been lamenting the loss of the trial. Jim was the epitome of the trial lawyer, master of his domain when in court. He was zealous and unrelenting, not to the point of being dogged, but tenacious like no other. To watch him at his work was to marvel of how he was thinking so many moves ahead, far beyond what some of the brightest lawyers could follow at times.