Verdie Lafayette Pitman (1892-1980)

                                                               From the Texas Bar Journal, February 1981.     

   Longtime Texas attorney Verdie Lafayette Pitman was featured on the Strangest Names In American Political History Facebook page back on January 12, 2017, and nearly three years after first highlighting his name, he becomes the most recent addition to the site. A former County Attorney for Anderson County, Texas in the mid-1940s, Pitman was born in Texas on August 10, 1892, the son of Henry Thomas and Sarah Anne (Vawter) Pitman. 
  Pitman attended schools local to the Cushing, Texas area and would later enroll at the Lon Morris College. Further studies were obtained at the Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and in April 1919 married to Margurite Vickers (1900-1983), to who he was wed for over sixty years. The couple would have two children, Charles Lafayette (1921-1975) and Billie Sue. Of these children, Charles Lafayette Pitman followed in his father's stead and became a lawyer, serving as city attorney for LaPorte, Texas.
  During the period following WWI Pitman followed a teaching career in Sabine County, Texas before turning his attention to law studies. He earned a law degree from the University of Texas in 1932 and shortly thereafter established his practice in the city of Palestine. In 1944 Pitman was appointed as County Attorney for Anderson County, Texas in the wake of the resignation of Franklin C. Williams, who had joined the U.S. Navy. He would serve in this capacity until 1945 and later returned to private practice in Palestine.
  Pitman continued in his law practice until his retirement in 1972 and had earlier been elected as president of the Anderson County Bar Association in May 1962. An active Mason and lay minister in the local Methodist Church, Pitman died in Palestine, aged 87, on July 7, 1980. He was survived by his wife Margurite and both were later interred at the Palestine City Cemetery.