Henry L. Yelverton

Henry Lee Yelverton, Jr. (June 5, 1928 - July 31, 2009), was a judge for thirty-two years of the state district and Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit, based in Lake Charles in Calcasieu Parish in southwestern Louisiana.
Early years and education
Yelverton was born to Henry Lee Yelverton, Sr. (1904-1928), and the former Iona Mae Gates (1911-1992) near Sikes in Winn Parish. His father died at the age of twenty-four, some two months before Yelverton’s birth. After 1930, Mrs. Yelverton married J. K. Roberts, and the couple had two children, Shirley Kay Roberts and Glynn David Roberts, Henry’s half-siblings.
Yelverton was subsequently reared on a small cotton farm in West Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana, where his stepfather was a sharecropper until 1938, when he purchased forty acres of woodland on Macon Ridge near Epps in the northeastern portion of the state. There the couple built a house and farmed.
Yelverton’s high school years coincided with World War II. A teacher encouraged him to study Latin. He became so fascinated with the subject - Julius Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, and Virgil — that in 1949 he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin from Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, as well as a commission in the United States Air Force Reserve. There, their second son, Scott R. Yelverton, was born. While in law school, Yelverton worked for State Senator J.D. DeBlieux of Baton Rouge, whose reputation of honesty and morality in public life Yelverton admired. In his last year of law school, Yelverton received the Allen Barksdale Award for scholastic accomplishments. Upon graduation in 1957, the Yelvertons relocated to Lake Charles where he was affiliated with the firm, Camp, Palmer, Yelverton & Carwile. One of his first tasks there was to process government disaster loans following Hurricane Audrey, which particularly devastated neighboring Cameron Parish.
In 1989, Yelverton persuaded his fellow judges to adopt a new docket for the summary disposition of certain cases, a plan which reduced the backlog by a considerable margin. He was a founding member of the Criminal Bench Book Committee which devised the criminal bench book used in the trial courts. He formerly chaired the Uniform Rules Committee of the Louisiana Appellate Judges Conference. He wrote "Handbook of Louisiana Court of Appeal, Third Circuit, Procedure," a book for the use of young lawyers on the subjects of how to take an appeal and apply to the court's supervisory jurisdiction. He held membership in Eta Sigma Phi honorary classical fraternity and Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. He was a member of the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus Roman Catholic men’s organization, and the Our Lady Queen of Heaven Catholic Church in Lake Charles, where he was also a trustee and a member of the parish council.<ref name=bio/>
Services were held on August 3, 2009, at Our Lady Queen of Heaven Church. Interment was at Consolata Cemetery in Lake Charles. Yelverton was survived by his wife of fifty-six years, Lorraine,<ref nametributes/> all seven children, fifteen grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and two younger half-siblings.<ref nameobit/>

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