Pilot lawyer remembered for giving personality

It started out as a calm Sunday in Brookings, Ore., Aug. 28. Locals there said that early morning fog had given way to sunshine by noon. The 6,300 residents of this small timber-industry town, where the Checto River meets the Pacific Ocean approximately 26 miles north of the state border of California, were going about their normal weekend activities when an unusual sound broke the 60-degree temperature and caught their attention.

The local newspaper, the Curry Coastal Pilot, reported that members of the Nazarene Church, while visiting in their parking lot after services, witnessed a small airplane falling from the blue sky. City Manager Gary Millman was having lunch with his family when he heard the sound of a 1999 single engine, four-seat Maule the pilot had just purchased in Portland crash in a ravine near his home and not far from the Brookings Airport.

The pilot, and only person on board the aircraft, 63-year-old Louis St. Martin, was identified to that community simply as a lawyer from Houma.

St. Martin was found unconscious in the wreckage. Suffering from spinal injuries, he was first air-lifted to a hospital in Crescent City, Calif., before being transferred to the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, where he died of undisclosed causes related to the crash last Tuesday morning.

In Houma, more than 2,600 miles away from Brookings, St. Martin is known as an accomplished maritime and industrial personal injury lawyer, pilot and philanthropist.

“Louis was a wild and crazy kid when he was growing up,” St. Martin’s older brother, Michael, said. “But he got serious about life when he was in law school. He had a good litigation practice and was well feared, with good reason, by most of the oil companies and insurers.”

St. Martin, a Houma native, earned his law degree in 1974 from Loyola University. He was an accomplished pilot cleared to fly more than a dozen aircraft ranging from the Beechcraft King Air to Westwind and Citation jets, a variety of float planes and turbine helicopters. In the legal community, the story goes that St. Martin learned to fly helicopters so he could personally go to offshore sites and meet with clients.

St. Martin was a member of the Louisiana Association for Justice. Those who knew him best said that away from the courtroom he could let his tenderness for humanity show.

“The thing he put first was philanthropy,” Michael St. Martin said. “Even when he didn’t have a lot he gave. He contributed heavily to good charities [including] the Bayou Area Children’s Foundation.”

St. Martin offered significant financial support to the Loyola Law School and Loyola University to fund student scholarships and special chairs for professors.

Along with colleagues and acquaintances, St. Martin leaves behind his wife, Linda, and their adult children, Zachary, Josh, Mia and Samantha; stepsons, David Henley and Rob McDougle; and five grandchildren.

A private family funeral was planned for this week.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said it could be up to a year before the exact cause of the crash that claimed Louis St. Martin is determined.

Michael St. Martin said there was nothing uncommon about his brother traveling to distant locations to fly home in a new aircraft.

In his own community, Louis St. Martin could not be identified simply as a lawyer. He himself was uncommon and is being remembered as a pilot lawyer who soared to benefit others in both the court of justice and the square of public benevolence.