James Hilty:
CLASS OF 1965
Thomas Jefferson High SchoolClass of 1965
Dallas, TX
James's Story
Life
After graduating in 1965, I went into the naval reserve in 1968. I worked at KNUS-FM in Dallas, and KLIF news in Dallas from 1968 to 1972. It was both fun and strange covering the Texas International Pop Festival in Lewisville for KLIF radio news in 1969. With my KLIF press pass, I got to meet a lot of the acts including Led Zepplin, Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, and Carlos Santana. Santana's band brought alot of their debut album and were going through the crowd and selling them for a dollar each. It was just 2 weeks after Woodstock. I then went to 101.1 KLOL-FM in Houston and worked there on air playing rock & roll records as a DJ until 1979. This was a great radio station. I had so much fun and couldn't believe I was being paid to do it.
And then it was town to town up and down the dial just like WKRP in Cincinnati. Cleveland area, Duluth, Kansas City area, and Miami were just some of the stops. I got divorced along the way.
After weathering a number of new station owners, format changes, unemployment, and weaning myself from the desire to be a gypsy, I went back to college in Ft. Lauderdale for a BS degree. So, I had form...Expand for more
al education in the law and became a certified paralegal, but soon found that it was dead end field for a male at the time.
It was stable work, but remembering the radio experience, and getting restless, I decided to get a job where I couldn't get either fired or laid off. Self employment looked good, so, it was of to law school.
I am now a lawyer in private practice in Michigan. Yes, the gypsy in me hasn't gone away yet. Wait, I know all the lawyer jokes. I represent criminal defendants, and divorce clientele. My last trial was a counterfeiting case, where the Judge directed a verdict of acquittal in front of the jury after the prosecutor rested her case. The dismissal came before I even had to present her side to the jury. I also recently conducted an attempted murder trial and got a jury not guilty verdict on all 4 counts. I'm 10 for 12 in trials in the last couple of years. I have represented a number of high profile clients in the last few years.
Life is good.
I want to thank TJ teachers Betty McLain for pushing me to the limit, and history teacher Jerry M. Winn for sparking my interest in the world around me.
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