Richard "Dick" Vernon Barndt

Professor Emeritus Richard Vernon Barndt (Dick) died at home in Austin, Texas on May 18, 2019. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law for more than 30 years. His home was ideally situated for him to stroll through Eastwoods Park and cross one street to the law school. An avid gardener, his yard was a place of beauty. He liked to play handball and tennis, often getting in a game before teaching an early morning class. In his seventies, his orthopedic surgeon said Dick was his first patient to come in for a hip replacement because his tennis game was off. In his later years, Dick loved walking and took pride in his 30,000 steps a day.

He was born in Roosevelt, Utah on January 18, 1931 to Mary Yvonne Allred and Victor Joseph Barndt. He spent his early childhood in Tabiona, Utah with his mother and loving stepfather Prentice Turnbow. He is survived by his sister Evelyn Turnbow Clark of Ogden UT and his five children: Linda Anderson (Jim) St. George UT, Patricia Castelli (David) Provo UT, Barbara Petty (Gary) Ft. Collins CO, RJ Barndt (Ellie) Houston TX, and Luann Snyder (Scott) Elfrida, AZ. Granddad to 18 grandchildren, 47 great grandchildren, and 1 great-great grandchild, he loved the time he spent with the little ones, even if it was sometimes on Facebook. He is also survived by Barndt half-brothers and sisters who grew up in Nevada. He was a good neighbor and a loyal friend.

Dick was a hard worker all his life. As a teen, he dug the basement of his parents’ home--with a hand shovel. Summers he worked at a sawmill on Wolf Creek Pass in the Uinta Mountains of eastern Utah. The sawmill is long gone, but its setting is a place he loved more than any other. During the school year in the Salt Lake Valley, he rode a train from his rural home in Granger to high school in Magna where he was student body president of Cyprus High School. After graduation, he worked construction while saving money to attend college. He married Dorothy Bezzant in 1950, and they had five children by the time he graduated from the University of Utah School of Law in 1960. He moved his family to Ann Arbor to earn a postgraduate degree at the University of Michigan Law School. That was followed by visiting professorships at the University of Montana, Missoula, University of Houston, University of Texas at Austin (summer term), University of Washington in Seattle until he accepted a permanent position at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 1964.

The construction years made him an accomplished handyman. Driving around with his children in the west, he would point out huge oil tanks that he had painted, along with various other job sites where his work was on display. He worked on the powerhouses of Montana’s Hungry Horse Dam that is 15 miles from Glacier National Park and the Garrison Dam holding back the Missouri River to form Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota, as well as other huge projects in the Rocky Mountain west. He once painted the lines on the tarmac of an airport runway while leaning out of a car he was driving. Obviously, there was no OSHA then for worker safety regulations. The stone walls and raised gardens around his home attest to his craftsmanship.

Dick possessed a brilliant and agile mind. One learned to not argue with Dick unless you wanted to lose. He could analyze a problem with perfect logic, arriving at the solution while most people would still be thinking about the question. He very much enjoyed his teaching at the University of Texas, but he took a year’s leave in 1968/69 to teach as a Fulbright Scholar at the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law in Monrovia, Liberia. He wore his African shirts with pride for many years and perfected a dish he called “Liberian Chop” made of shrimp cooked in beer, rice, ham, lime juice, and butter.

Family and friends are invited to stop by at a Memorial Open House at 704 Sparks Avenue, Austin, Texas on Sunday afternoon June 9 from one to four. Dick chose comfort over formality, so please come as you are to enjoy sharing memories of our father, granddad, colleague, friend, and neighbor.