Noel L. Robyn

Noel L. Robyn, 97, a retired criminal attorney who enjoyed a second career maintaining trails on Mingus Mountain, died on Wed., March 25 in Cottonwood, Arizona. Mr. Robyn was born on October 21, 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Soldan High School and Washington University. Nearly two decades later, he returned to Washington University School of Law, graduating in 1955 when he was 44 years old. He began his law career as an assistant prosecuting attorney in St. Louis County and then served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the late 1950s under William Webster, who later directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. After spending many years in the private practice of law, Robyn returned to the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney\u0027s office at the end of his career as a special criminal prosecutor. Mr. Robyn retired from practicing law in 1983, at age 72, and followed his brother to Clarkdale, Arizona. As a volunteer with the Prescott National Forest, he adopted a three-mile section of a trail at the top of Mingus Mountain that had become so overgrown with vegetation that hikers and horsemen could no longer use it. After Robyn spent two years clearing that pathway, the Forest Service rewarded him with an additional six miles of overgrown trails. "I\u0027ve opened a new office that\u0027s 8 feet wide and 9 miles long," he told his former colleagues in Missouri. Forest Service officials nicknamed Robyn, a former trial law specialist, the "trail lawyer," and they displayed the frayed gloves and bent shovels and pick axes he accumulated during his 15 years of service. Robyn delighted in hiking his trails after it rained or snowed to investigate the fresh footprintsevidence that deer and coyotes, not just people, benefited from his labor of love. In 2001, when he turned 90, Robyn\u0027s law school classmates honored him at a ceremony in St. Louis. He told the much-younger crowd not to dread getting old: "It just gets better," he said. Survivors include two children, Noel Robyn III of Miami, Florida, and Dorothy Robyn of Washington, D.C.; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife of 59 years, Mary Lee, died in 2000. A memorial service will be held on Thursday, April 9 at 10 a.m., at Cottonwood Village, 201 E. Mingus Ave., in Cottonwood. An online guestbook is available at www.westcottfuneralhome.com