Jerome (Jerry) C. Hafter, former officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and senior partner at Phelps Dunbar LLP, died on September 23. He was 71.
Mr. Hafter was a lifetime resident of Greenville, Mississippi. He graduated summa cum laude from Rice University in 1967 and from Oxford University in 1968 as a Marshall Scholar with First Class Honours in the School of Modern History. His thesis on the Legislative History of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 won the Sara Norton Prize as the best thesis on a topic in American history or political science. The son of the former President of the Mississippi State Bar Association, Mr. Hafter received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1972.
After serving as Student Commander of the Yale Army ROTC, he was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 1982, Company D of the 467th won the Itschner Award as the Most Outstanding Engineer Company in the Army Reserve while under Mr. Hafter’s command. He served sixteen years on active duty and in the Army Reserves.
After Law School, in 1972, he served as a law clerk to Judge Charles C. Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In 1974, he joined his late father’s law firm, Lake Tindall LLP, where he spent 27 years.
In 2001 Mr. Hafter joined Phelps Dunbar in its Business Practice Group. He practiced in the areas of corporate law and litigation, contracts, real property, economic development, agribusiness, state and local taxation, intellectual property, bankruptcy and constitutional law. He also served as outside general counsel to Delta and Pine Land Company which provided him with extensive international practice.
Mr. Hafter was also a force in the his community, serving as a member of the Greenville Public School District Board of Trustees from 1988 to 2013, including five terms as President and one term as Director of the Mississippi School Board Association and as President of the Greenville Area Chamber of Commerce.
In 2015, he received the Mississippi Bar’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He was elected to ALI in 1992.