With help from his family, William D. "Bill" Hooper Jr. cleaned out his law office on North Main Street in Bel Air on Saturday afternoon and scraped his name off the front door.
Hooper, 76, said he is retiring from active law practice after nearly 53 years.
Notable in the local legal community for his even-keeled, outgoing personality, his wit and his knowledge of the law, Hooper has handled criminal, personal injury, family law, auto accident, drunk driving and real estate cases and many others during his five decades in practice.
He served as Harford County's first county attorney under home rule government from 1973 to 1976, a raucous time in local politics. He got the job, it was said at the time, because he had no political allegiances or ties to the local bar, but was a go-getter, who knew the law well and possessed street smarts.
As county attorney, he helped charter government through an oftentimes difficult first two years. He has said he is proud of the path he blazed for the other lawyers who followed him as the county government's top legal advisor.
His is also the story of how Harford County grew in the 1960s and 1970s.
A native of Northwest Baltimore, who grew up near Pimlico Race Course, Hooper attended the University of Maryland College Park and the University of Baltimore, receiving his law degree from UB in 1963. He soon began practicing law near the courthouse in downtown Baltimore in a building long since converted into apartments.
Like many young couples, Hooper and his wife, Mary Lou, settled in Harford County in the '60s, starting out in the then relatively new community of Joppatowne. They moved to Fallston's Rochelle Meadows neighborhood when it was being developed in the '70s. Bill Hooper said they recently downsized, moving to Fallston Commons behind the Walmart.
Hooper gradually brought his law practice to Harford County during the late '60s and early '70s, eventually buying a former residential property on North Main Street and expanding the dwelling on it into an office building.
Hooper and his wife, joined by their son and daughter-in-law, Brian and Francie Hooper, and their daughter, Taylor, packed chairs and books and other odds and ends into a couple of vehicles. Bill and Mary Lou Hooper also have daughters and six other grandchildren. They all live around the Baltimore metro area, "so we're very lucky," Mary Lou Hooper said.
Although he took down his shingle on Saturday, Hooper says there is one case he won't let go of: The $100 million illegal taking suit he filed against the Harford County government on behalf of Maryland Reclamation Associates in February 2013 that is still wending its way through the courts.
The local company has been involved in a series of tortuous legal actions against the county since it was denied permission to develop a rubble landfill off Gravel Hill Road near Webster Village in the early 1990s. Hooper has been their lawyer throughout.