By Susan Craighead

Harold Booker’s mother, Alvirita Little, had a dream, a dream that her children would attend school beyond the seventh grade. Perhaps they might use their education to do as she did: Help people. Alvirita Little, now 92 years old, has good reason to be proud.

After a lifetime of service to the Seattle community, this month, Booker will be awarded King County Bar Association’s award for Pro Bono service. “The inspiration for me doing things for others comes from my mother. It’s a family tradition to give to others. You don’t just live in your own little world. There are people out there who need assistance, and it’s your obligation to provide it,” he said.

Booker began to volunteer with the KCBA’s Volunteer Attorneys for People with HIV/AIDS Program after he helped the family of a dear friend who was dying of AIDS. “I ask them to give me people who need complete assistance,” he explained. He provides everything from help getting to the doctor’s office, to assistance with disability benefits, accommodations at work, estate planning and helping the family with the funeral.

“Mr. Booker is a tireless advocate for his clients,” said Alfred McGugin, VAPWA Program Manager. “He doesn’t just take a case, he takes the client.”

But securing disability benefits and estate planning did not exactly fall within Booker’s professional practice areas. Until he retired in 1995, Booker served as a Regional Director in Commercial Aircraft Contracts at the Boeing Company for 19 years, negotiating, executing and administering contracts for the sale of planes in the Middle East and Africa. For the 20 years before that he worked for the company as a chemical engineer.

Negotiating the sale of jets was a long way from the small, segregated town of Spring, Texas, where Booker grew up. African-American children in Spring couldn’t go to high school, so at his mother’s urging Booker traveled 25 miles each way by bus to attend Booker T. Washington High School in Houston. He graduated Valedictorian, and went on to graduate from Wiley College, a black Methodist college in Texas. After his graduation, his mother packed him on to a Greyhound bus for the three day trip to Seattle, where she and his step-father had settled following a military tour of duty in Japan.

Booker earned a masters degree in organic chemistry from the University of Washington and went to work at Boeing. Eventually he came to believe he had learned all there was to learn about chemical engineering in the manufacture of airplanes, so he looked around the company at what else he might want to do. The Commercial Contracts Division caught his eye, so he enrolled in the University of Puget Sound Law School (now Seattle University) at night. Boeing picked up the cost.

But when it came time to enroll in law school, Booker encountered another challenge: His beloved wife passed away, leaving him with eight and ten-year-old boys to raise. Somehow he managed to prepare their lunches for school before he left for work in the morning and make their dinner in the evening before class. It gives him tremendous satisfaction now to know that he proved to be an inspiration for his sons, and for their families. They are now following in the family tradition of volunteerism.

The law degree won Booker a job in Commercial Contracts, but it also gave him the chance to help others in new ways. Before VAPWA, Booker volunteered in the KCBA’s Family Law program. He also served almost 20 years as a Commissioner of the King County Housing Authority, and as Chairman of the Board of the Seattle King County Opportunity Board, and has volunteered with a long list of other organizations.

What Booker gets out of volunteering is “the inner satisfaction of knowing I’ve done something to help others.” The sister of one of his VAPWA clients wrote him a thank you note that still makes him smile. “You have to be very careful, Mr. Booker,” she wrote. “If you keep doing what you’re doing you’re going to give lawyers a good name. n