IN 2002, THE NEW Hampshire Bar Foundation will celebrate 25 years of strengthening justice in New Hampshire. The Bar Foundation was founded in 1977 and has awarded grants totaling more than $13 million in the last 25 years.

The Bar Foundation is planning to celebrate its silver anniversary in many ways throughout the year, including through the annual Fellows Reception in the winter, a special retrospective annual report, and at the annual dinner in the Spring. This year the Bar Foundation has announced that it is establishing a new category of giving in honor of Jack B. Middleton: the Jack B. Middleton Fellows. Members of the Bar and the public who contribute $1,000 or more annually will be recognized as Jack B. Middleton Fellows, and a reception in honor of Middleton and the Foundation's donors will be held in conjunction with the Bar Association's Mid-Year Membership Meeting in January 2002, at which Middleton Fellows will be specially recognized.

Jack Middleton's influence on the course of New Hampshire Bar Foundation history cannot be overstated. Although Middleton was not one of the original incorporators of the Foundation in 1977, by 1978 Middleton was elected to the Foundation's board and took the reigns of the first Bar Foundation building campaign to purchase 18 Centre Street for the Bar Association. Middleton also led the campaign to buy the current Bar Center at 112 Pleasant Street.

In the early eighties, through his ABA activities Middleton heard about an innovative program being proposed by the then Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Hon. Arthur England. Middleton brought the concept of Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) to New Hampshire and so persuasively argued for the creation of the program before the New Hampshire Supreme Court that New Hampshire became the second state in the country to launch an IOLTA program. IOLTA now accounts for more than 90 percent of the Bar Foundation's total revenue.

Middleton held the office of chair of the Board of Directors of the New Hampshire Bar Foundation from 1983 to 1990, serving in this position far longer than anyone in the history of the organization. Middleton also served as president of the National Conference of Bar Foundations in 1989-1990 - an organization representing bar foundations throughout the country affiliated with the American Bar Association. He has also served as trustee of the National Association of IOLTA Programs.

Bar Foundation leaders will be contacting members of the Bar to invite them to honor Middleton and the Bar Foundation's 25^th Anniversary by becoming Middleton Fellows. Look for more details about the Foundation's 25^th Anniversary events in coming issues of Bar News.

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