With this issue, Bar News concludes its series on those members of the bar who have reached their 50-year milestone.  These members were honored at the Annual Meeting at The Balsams on the evening of June 24th.  Their profiles began appearing in the May 20th issue and continued in the June 3rd, and June 17th  issues.  The attorneys responded to questionnaires sent to them by Bar News. (See http://www.nhbar.org/publications/archives/publications-archives.asp for previous articles.)

Kenneth E. Scott considers himself “very fortunate” to have reached this point in his life.  “I am grateful for the support and assistance given to me by the friends and colleagues with whom I was associated while practicing in New Hampshire.”

Attorney Scott was born in Dayton, Ohio and following four years in the U.S. Navy (1945-1949), he attended Wittenberg University.  He received his J.D. degree from Ohio State University College of Law in 1954. 

“My courses at Wittenberg were primarily pre-law and my classmates, family and friends encouraged me to follow through with those studies.”  Scott’s first bar admittance was in 1955 and he joined the New Hampshire Bar in 1970.

Scott was staff attorney at Sanders Associates in Nashua from 1962-1970, dealing mostly with government contracts law.  In 1970, he established his own practice in Wilton.  He cites as his role models, the Hon. Hugh Bownes and Attorney Stanley Brown of Bradford.

When asked about his most memorable achievements, Attorney Scott cited his experience with the Amherst Bank and Trust company in Amherst, NH.  He was its co-founder, director and finally its chairman, until a Manchester banking institution acquired it in 1979.

“I am fully retired,” says Scott, “and after 23 years of Florida’s heat and humidity, I now reside in beautiful Spartanburg, SC.”

Attorney Scott has two sons and two grandchildren.

John W. Barto says he thinks of himself as “a survivor.”   He was born in Washington, D.C. March 1, 1930 and attended public schools there, going on to St. Albans from which he graduated in 1948.  He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1955.

It was at the suggestion of his father that Barto started studying law, but he found that he liked it.  He joined the NH Bar in 1955 and worked at Orr and Reno in Concord for 23 years; among Barto’s role models were Dudley W. Orr and Charles H. Toll, Jr., both

of Orr and Reno and now deceased.

Upon leaving Orr and Reno, Barto founded his own firm, also in Concord, where he has done business for the last 27 years, assisting corporations and business organizations.  “[I’ve done] some litigation in state and federal courts, including appeals to the State Supreme Court and First Circuit; I’ve also handled probate matters, estate planning, real estate transactions, including conservation easements and related issues.”  He is most proud of two successful appeals to the First Circuit—and that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law he wrote and which the NH Legislature passed.  He is also proud of his client relationships, many of which cover a long span of years.

Attorney Barto has been involved in numerous community activities: the Concord United Fund, the Economic Development Advisory Council and the Concord Regional Development Corporation, to name some.  In the Town of Pittsfield, where he lives, he has been a member of the Budget Committee, the Planning Board, the Housing Standards Agency, and other such organizations.  He was a trustee of Concord Hospital from 1972-2004 and for the state, a voting member of the Land Conservation Investment Program during its existence.

Barto is still practicing law, but he is also enjoying his 80+-acre Pittsfield farm, with its woods, fields, gardens, a pond—and lots of wildlife.  He fishes for Atlantic salmon regularly on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick and for land-locked salmon and brook trout with his son and sons-in-law on Rapid River in Maine, where he has had a fishing shack since 1943.

He has been married since 1960 to the former Nancy McInnis and has two daughters, Susan and Sarah, a son John, Jr. and five grandchildren.

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