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Donald W. Griffis, ’95, passed away on October 3, 2022 at the age of eighty. Don attended the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he played football for four years and was on the unbeaten, untied 1963 team that was subsequently inducted into the Se- wanee Football Hall of Fame. Graduating Phi Beta Kap- pa in 1964, Don went on to law school at the Univer- sity of Texas. Upon graduation, he was commissioned in the United States Marine Corps and was assigned to the legal office at Force Logistics Command in Vietnam. He volunteered to serve as the Commanding Officer for the camp’s Provisional Rifle Company, assigned to pro- vide security and defense for the base. Don was awarded the Bronze Star, the Combat Action Ribbon and the Vietnamese Cross of Galantry. When Don was dis- charged in 1969, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Joe Estes in Dallas for a year and then returned to San An- gelo to practice law with his father as a trial lawyer. Don tried cases throughout West Texas, from El Paso to Fort Stockton, Del Rio, Midland, Odessa, and from Abilene to Dallas/Fort Worth. He retired from the practice of law in 2018. Don was known for the yellow convertible Karmann Ghia he owned from 1973 through 2019, in which he and his bride, Prissy, drove to Acapulco, Mexi- co for their honeymoon. Don ran thirty-five marathons, numerous half-marathons, and regularly could be seen walking his golden retrievers in the neighborhood. If you ever had a question about the Civil War or World War II, Don had the answer. He was an avid reader of military history, and his love for history extended
to the military artifacts he collected that would make any museum jeal- ous. Don also published his memoirs from the Vietnam War in his book “Eagle Days.” Don is survived by his wife, Priscilla Chase Griffis, four children and seven grandchildren.
Hon. David Warner Hagen, ’82, died in his Reno home on September 28, 2022 surrounded by his family and the ashes of a dog he detested four days shy of his ninety-first birthday. Born in Camden, Arkansas, his family soon moved to Lakehurst, N.J., where David and his siblings bore first-hand witness to the crash of the Hindenburg.
As the airship crashed to the earth in a spectacular fireball, five-year-old David reportedly asked his mother “can we do that again?” David joined the Air Force at age seven- teen, serving during the Korean War and attaining the rank of Staff Sargent. The skinniest and youngest in his unit, he was forced to carry the receiver group of the .50 caliber machine gun as a practical joke. He got his re- venge after he was assigned to be the driver of base-to- base jeep transports, beginning a seven-decade tradition of being the worst driver in either hemisphere. After ser- vice, he attended the University of Wisconsin and the University of San Francisco School of Law, graduating in 1959. In 1993, he was appointed to serve as a Federal Dis- trict Court Judge by President Clinton. After retirement from the bench, he practiced mediation and arbitration until near the end of his life. He was active in the Reno Little Theater, winning a national amateur theater com- petition in 1973, and was an accomplished ocean racer, being one of first Americans invited to sail the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race in Australia. Judge Hagen enjoyed making up songs to entertain his children, tripping over the family basset hound he despised, and mocking local auto dealership commercials. Judge Hagen is survived by his wife of forty-two years, Peggy, his five children and seven grandchildren.
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