For the Central Arkansas Library System and KUAR, I’m Mark Christ with an Encyclopedia of Arkansas Minute.
A Chicot County native would become a college basketball star and a federal judge. Franklin Burgess was more in Eudora in 1935. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force he entered Gonzaga University in Washington State in 1958.
Playing on the basketball team, he led the nation in scoring in the 1960-61 season with more than thirty-two points per game. His number was retired after he graduated. After a brief professional career he earned a law degree from Gonzaga. He entered private practice with Jack Tanner in 1969, a partnership that lasted until Tanner’s appointment to the U.S. District Court.
In 1980 he became regional counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Seattle and was named a U.S. magistrate a year later. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated him as U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Washington to replace his old partner. He served in that role from 1994 to 2005, when he took senior status. Burgess died in 2010.
To learn more, visit Encyclopedia of Arkansas.net.
