Lewis Straughn Nippard Jr., a retired attorney who worked on the early zoning of Columbia and helped guide the growth of Howard County, died of multiple organ failure June 25 at Somerford Place. He was 87 and lived in Ellicott City.
Born in Baltimore and raised on Wickham Road and in Lansdowne, he was the son of Lewis S. Nippard, a meat cutter and Bugle laundry manager, and Mary Virginia White Nippard. He was a 1948 Catonsville High School graduate and earned a bachelor's and law degree at the University of Baltimore.
He enlisted in the Army and served at its Caribbean Military Police School at Fort Amador in Panama. He worked in military counterintelligence. He initially left the service as a lieutenant and returned to serve in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He retired as a major nearly 40 years ago.
While in a Catonsville record shop, he met his future wife, Shirley C. Grimes. Her father, Oscar Grimes, was the Baltimore County police chief.
"He delivered telegrams for Western Union and came into the record store. His office was next door," said his daughter, E. Josephine Nippard of Silver Spring.
Mr. Nippard was a Baltimore County Police Department patrolman from 1953 to 1954 and was later a parole officer for the state's Department of Parole and Probation.
He practiced criminal and civil law beginning in 1956. He was an assistant state's attorney for Howard County until 1958.
"He was sworn in to the bar in the morning and tried his first case in the afternoon," said his daughter.
In 1961, Mr. Nippard was appointed by the Circuit Court in Howard County to defend Robert Bruce Westcoat, a weightlifter named "Mr. Maryland" who was accused of shooting to death a Howard County police officer, Randolph "Randy" Brightwell. Westcoat had also robbed and killed a Howard County gas station worker, Charles Gallion.
"Here was my father, a former police officer himself, and named by the court to defend a man accused of killing a police officer. He saved the man from the death penalty," said his daughter, an attorney who worked alongside her father.
Mr. Nippard became active in Republican politics and ran unsuccessfully for Howard County state's attorney. He worked extensively in Howard County zoning.
"I came to appreciate Lew when I was an associate at Semmes, Bowen and Semmes," said Judge Lynne A. Battaglia, who sits on the Maryland Court of Appeals and is a former U.S. attorney for Maryland. "He came off a country lawyer but he was really savvy and had a tremendous acumen. He was a true advocate for his clients."
Mr. Nippard was counsel to the Board of County Commissioners of Howard County from 1962 to 1966. At this time, he reviewed the early plans for the new town of Columbia.
A 1965 Baltimore Sun article about the issue described Mr. Nippard, who reviewed the request for special new town zoning for Columbia, as "the most important political power in the local, all-Republican administration."
Mr. Nippard guided Howard County officials, who were initially caught off guard about the creation of Columbia, to approve a zoning package. Several years later, while in private legal practice, he represented Howard Research and Development Corp., the arm of the Rouse Co. that developed Columbia.
"Lew was a hands-on, can-do lawyer," said Mathias J. "Matt" DeVito, former Rouse Co. chief executive officer. "If you wanted to know anything about Howard County, you called Lew."
He was a founding partner of Sybert, Sybert and Nippard and practiced in Ellicott City.
"Lew Nippard was a man who was certain in his beliefs. He had a very high self-esteem and he deserved it. He was a good lawyer and had an innate sense of what was appropriate in legal ethics," said former Chief Judge James N. Vaughan of the District Court of Maryland. "He was decent and hard-working."
He was a member of the Maryland Bar Association's Grievance Committee, which helped set up the Attorney Grievance Commission. He belonged to numerous professional organizations and was a past president of the Howard County Bar Association.
Mr. Nippard participated in barbershop singing competitions.
His wife of 65 years died May 19. The couple spent their final days together at Somerford Place in Columbia.
Services will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center, 10431 Twin Rivers Road in Columbia.
In addition to his daughter, survivors include a son, Brian T. Nippard of Catonsville; a brother, R. Edgar Nippard of Catonsville; and a sister, Mary L. Loats of Mount Airy.