Richard Wagner Kiefer, a retired founder of a downtown law firm whose clients included the Baltimore area's Boy Scouts organization and Baltimore Presbytery, died Friday of heart failure at St. Agnes HealthCare. He was 89.
Born in Baltimore, he was a longtime resident of Catonsville. He was raised there on Osborne Avenue and attended the nearby Crosby School before graduating from Catonsville High School in 1930. He earned a degree with honors from what was then Western Maryland College, where he was on the boxing squad and later was a trustee.
Mr. Kiefer earned his law degree from Duke University, where he was a classmate of Richard M. Nixon and they became friends.
Mr. Kiefer brought Nixon to his Catonsville home during the July Fourth weekend in 1935, and the pair took in a Washington Senators baseball game that weekend - the first major league game attended by the future president, Mr. Kiefer wrote in a memoir.
He later served as chairman of National Lawyers for Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign.
Mr. Kiefer was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1937, after scoring the highest grade on the bar exam that year. He practiced with the firm of Bartlett, Poe and Claggett until 1956, when he left to start his practice. His firm had several names over the years, finally becoming Hooper, Kiefer, Cornell and O'Ferrall. Mr. Kiefer retired in 1995.
"On the outside he was stern, but he was really quite a compassionate man," said the Rev. Otfried O. Arndt, a retired Lutheran minister and friend.
"Being of German heritage, and having grown up in a Protestant-Presbyterian background, he had set high, demanding moral and ethical standards in regard to conduct and etiquette for himself and others, which at times - and very much to his own disgust - he felt hard to fulfill," Mr. Arndt said. "However, he would then try even harder. He treated me as the son he never had, and I in turn adopted him as the father I never had."
"He was a very bright, thorough and competent attorney," said Ira K. Himmel, a former law partner who worked alongside Mr. Kiefer for 40 years. "He was a good instructor in that he wanted things done his way, which was a good method of guiding you."
Active in Scouting, he led Troop 306 in Catonsville. He was later a board member, vice president and general counsel of the Baltimore Area Council. He was recognized with Scouting's highest awards, including the Silver Beaver, Silver Antelope and Silver Buffalo.
"He invested his time and energies in the Boy Scouts and in Catonsville civic affairs," said D. Lansing Taylor, a former neighbor, Boy Scout and family friend who lives in Pittsburgh. "He was committed to young people and helping them work through their problems."
During World War II, Mr. Kiefer was a lieutenant colonel in the Army and served in the Mediterranean. He received the Legion of Merit medal in 1944 for "exceptionally meritorious conduct." Prince Umberto of Italy - who was later king - awarded him the Royal Crown of Italy commendation.
Mr. Kiefer taught commercial law in the 1960s at what was then Western Maryland College, and in 1967 was elected to its board of trustees. In 1978, he was awarded an honorary degree of doctor of civil law, and in 1985 he was named trustee emeritus. Over his lifetime, Mr. Kiefer was acquainted with six of the eight presidents of what is now McDaniel College.
He was a delegate to the Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1967.
Throughout his life, Mr. Kiefer enjoyed baseball. In his privately printed autobiography, he wrote of seeing Babe Ruth at an exhibition game here: "He turned and looked at the stands, then turned around and pointed his bat at the center field. He hit the first pitch exactly where he pointed, over the fence for a home run."
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today at Catonsville Presbyterian Church, 1400 Frederick Road, where he was formerly president of the trustees.
Mr. Kiefer is survived by his wife of 63 years, the former Susannah Sheridan Cockey; two daughters, Linda Kiefer Sanders of Jamul, Calif., and Josette Kiefer of Heath, Mass.; a sister, Alice Virginia Kiefer Stone of York, Pa.; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.