Harold ("Hank") Chamberlain died on 4/22/23. Hank's obituary is here. From the obituary regarding his tenure at DOJ Tax:
[After graduating from University of Arkansas Law School], Hank went straight to work for the Internal Revenue Service in the Office of the Chief Counsel as a trial attorney followed by a couple of years at the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
My database shows that Hank was a trial attorney in the Refund 2 Section from 1961 to 1963.
After leaving DOJ Tax in 1963, he moved to Houston and set up a law practice that ultimately became now Chamberlain Hrdlicka, here, in Houston, expanding to several other cities.
When I was with the firm in the late 1970s for a 1.5 year period, the firm was named Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White & Waters, with all of the then-named partners being DOJ Tax Division alumni, all from Refund 2 I believe. Over the years, several other DOJ Tax Division lawyers worked there. Hank left the Chamberlain Hrdlicka firm sometime that I don't now recall and continued his practice virtually until his death either as a sole practitioner or in association with another firm.
Hank contacted me in the last few years to start up some discussion, particularly to engage me on topics from my Federal Tax Crimes and Federal Tax Procedure Blogs. It was good to re-connect with him.
Hank used to have several exuberant expressions as he wandered around visiting every lawyer in the firm every morning. I will repeat some of them I recall, putting them in quotes which might not be fully accurate, but do give the sense of what I recall.
One was that, after he had accomplished something noteworthy for the firm: "That's not bad for a one-eyed guy from Dumas Arkansas." (As best I recall, he had lost one of his eyes in a scuffle sometime before he left Dumas.)
Another Hank saying: "Give me 15 minutes' notice and I will give an hour talk on any tax subject." I don't know that anyone every tested him on the short notice thing, but I do recall he could give exuberant talks which often were fuzzy or imprecise in the details, but they seemed to work with the audiences for the occasions.
Still another Hank saying: "I had the firm move to a floor where we were the last stop on an elevator bank. That way I could introduce myself to the others in the elevator, shake hands, and hand them my business card. I got a lot of business that way."
