Thomas Martin Carpenter

August 22, 1933 - December 27, 2012

Local attorney Thomas Carpenter died on December 27, 2012 at his home in Menifee. His family was at his bed side. He had been fighting prostate cancer for over five years. He was seventy-nine.

Thomas was survived by his wife Vicki, and children Tom, John, Lisa (Moser), Drew and Renee (Johnson), and brother, Raymond Carpenter.

Also surviving him were seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Carpenter split his busy days between family, profession and community. As a dad, he did his time on Scout trips, Pop Warner football, ballet recitals, school booster club events and relearning the multiplication tables with each of his kids. He was heard to say that growing up with each of his five children was a unique experience.

Tom quit high school in 1951 to enlist in the Marine Corps. He resumed his education shortly after his return from Korea in 1954, after a fourteen month tour of duty with the 11th Marines, two battle stars on his chest and with three stripes on his sleeve.

He went back to his home town and started his undergraduate education at Loyola University - Chicago. In 1958, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in the humanities. Three years later, he was granted his doctor of law degree.

After seven years of GI Bill and multiple part time jobs, Carpenter decided to find regular employment. He started out as a trust officer in the Trust Department of Pullman Bank and Trust Company, Chicago. A few years later, he parlayed that position into a job with the Trust Department of Security First National Bank, Riverside, California. This put him closer to his mom and dad, Mae and Ray, who by then lived in Redwood City, California.

In 1966, Tom was given a chance to see if he really wouldn't prefer private practice to trust banking. He joined the law firm of Cox, Pendleton and Swan, more recently known as Swan, Carpenter, Wallis and McKenzie.

When he retired in 2006, he said he wasn't sure what he really wanted to do when he grew up.

In the early years with the firm, he split his time between the firm's Hemet and Sun City offices, and the last twenty years resident at the Sun City office.

While back at Pullman Bank, Tom had attended the National Trust School, American Bankers Association, at Northwestern University. He learned estate work from all perspectives in his trust officer days and decided to build on that base of his rest of his career when he decided to join the firm. He limited his practice to estate planning and estate settlement.

A few years after going into private practice, Tom was appointed to the Riverside County Bar Association Legal Aid Society Board, completing his term, as president. He learned a lot about delivering legal services in the real world from fellow LAS Board member Jim Ward (who recently retired as a justice of the California Court of Appeals).

In the mid - "70's, Tom was asked to help organize a committee to draft a set of court rules for the Probate Department of the Riverside Superior Court. He and his co-chairman, Chris Carpenter (no relation) spent two years working on that project. Among other probate luminaries who worked on that committee were Jim Wortz, Spud Rothrock, Art Swarner, Dick Fitzgerald, John Babbage, and Jim Corison. During that time they had worked closely with then retiring Judge Leo Deegan. When completed, they delivered the finished project to the judge then stepping into the probate assignment, Gerald Schulte.

In the mid-"70's, Carpenter was asked to volunteer as a temporary judge in the Probate Department of Riverside Superior Court. He sat pro tem, periodically, in that court for some 30 years, until his retirement from practice.

About that time, Tom began teaching his specialty, estates and trusts, at Citrus Belt Law School in Riverside (now known as The Southern California School of Law). Many of his students went on to distinguished careers both on the bench and in private practice. One morning, when Tom took the bench to hear the LPS Conservatorship Calendar, he looked down at counsel table to see that all four of the attorneys representing the county departments that participated in those proceedings were former students of his.

Shortly after his 70th birthday, as Tom shuffled into Judge Steve Cunnison's court room, with the rest of the attorneys and parties involved with that morning's calendar, the Judge called Tom to step forward. The Judge began by advising Tom that he was the Citee on an Order to Show Cause Petition set to be heard that morning. After an interrogation to determine if grounds existed, the judge issued his order: that all present should rise to sing a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" to Tom in celebration of his 70th birthday. At that point, the President of the Riverside County Bar Association, Mary Daniels, stepped forward to conduct the musical portion of the proceedings. Yes, Mary was a former student of Tom's.

Towards the end of his career, Tom was invited to join the Commission that oversees the State Bar's specialist's certification program in estate planning, trust and probate law. He served as Chair of the Commission his final year.

Tom's partners were alleged to have been heard to wonder, if because of his volunteerism, he was not on loan to the profession and to the community. Across his 48 years of community work, he covered the gamut from the Executive Committee of the old Riverside County Council Boy Scouts of America to more recently the Board of Directors of the Menifee Valley Chamber of Commerce. He served in various leadership capacities with the Menifee (formerly Sun City) Rotary Club, Sun City Concern, and Hospice of the Valleys, Hemet Hospital Foundation, Menifee Valley Hospital Foundation, Healthier Communities Task Force, Valley Health System, and Association of California Hospital Districts.

In recognition of his volunteerism, Tom was awarded the Citizen of the Year Award for 1995 by the Greater Menifee Chamber of Commerce for over 25 years of outstanding service to the community. The presenter of that award was Supervisor Kay Ceniceros.

Other recognitions he received for community volunteer leadership were the Glen Goodwill Leadership Award (Menifee Valley Medical Center Foundation, 1997), Roger Brubaker Leadership Award (Hemet Hospital Foundation, 1998), 2008 Chairman's Award (for outstanding contribution to the community, Menifee Valley Chamber of Commerce), and Business Community Award, 2011 (business community pioneer, City of Menifee).

Between classes and a couple part time jobs, Tom didn't have any time for extracurricular activities when attending college. Nevertheless, he was invited to join the Robert Bellarmine National Honor Society for philosophy students. In his final semester undergraduate, Tom took the comprehensive examinations in Philosophy. He placed in the top three percentile in the national written exam for scholastic philosophy, and a grade of "Honors" in his oral examination. In June of 1958, Tom was granted a Bachelor of Science in the Humanities degree.

Tom was invited to be an associate editor of the law review at the School of Law at Loyola. Two of his articles were published in the Illinois State Bar Journal. He received his Juris Doctor degree in 1961.

When asked, Tom would point to various influences in his life that helped form the person he became. Of course his faith and his family were backbone of his formation. Next he would say that the discipline he learned at such an early age in the Marine Corps had a significant impact on his understanding of loyalty, respect for honor and team participation.

He gave a lot of credit to his Jesuit training at Loyola-Chicago in developing a sense of social justice. He believed that sense of social justice, service to the community above one's own personal interest grew and matured through his association with dedicated community leaders in Rotary International for almost fifty years.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the MSJC Foundation www.msjc.edu/foundationandgiving

or to Hospice of the Valley www.hospiceofthevalleys.org.