12/10/2020
Thank you to alumni brother and famous criminal defense attorney Dee Wampler (Theta-Sigma 586) for coming to Drury to give our chapter a fascinating and insightful presentation on “How to Stay out of Trouble,” hosted by Dee, as well as his law-partner Joe Passanise and Attorney-at-Law Taylon Sumners.
Long before Dee Wampler was initiated into Lambda Chi Alpha on May 30 of 1959, Dee was introduced to lawyers and law in the Woodruff and Lander’s buildings in Springfield when he was 4 years old. He used to ride the elevators and play with toys on the floor of his father’s office and listen to how he interacted with clients.
After graduating from law school, he then started practicing law with his father in 1965, but his father did civil work and he wanted to do criminal law. His father encouraged him to venture on in this path.
“He said, ‘you have to like what you do. If you like what you do in work, it’s not work,’” Wampler recalls. Soon after, Dee was elected Prosecuting Attorney for Greene County. But before the days of defending high-profile murder suspects and Mafiosi like John Gotti, Dee was flown to Washington, D.C., to meet his idol, United States FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
In 1973, Dee became a criminal defense attorney, and at 80 years old, he happily still works seven days a week at his law office in Springfield.
We are very proud of Dee’s successes in life and we are fortunate to have had the chance to talk with him about all the fascinating things relating to criminal law, as well as hearing many of his stories from his time in the chapter.
Thank you brother Dee!
