Biography

George Manley Joseph was born in Idaho in 1930. He grew up in Boise, then, at age 16, he attended Menlo School in Atherton, California, for one year. He returned to Boise and finished his studies at Boise Junior College (now Boise State University), where he earned a GED equivalent and credit for one year of college. He continued his college career at the University of San Francisco, but soon transferred to Reed College. In 1950, while at Reed, he suffered a recurrence of the polio he had contracted as a child; he underwent extensive treatment at the Idaho Elks Convalescent Home, and was able to return to Reed a year later. In 1951, he and Elizabeth Kalisher were married; they divorced only a few years later. He graduated from Reed in 1952, and went on to study law at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1954. While at the university, he met Elizabeth Starr, and they were married in 1953; they later had five children. Joseph returned to Oregon, where he passed the bar in 1955 and began working as a law clerk for Oregon Supreme Court Justice George Rossman. After deciding that a career in law wasn’t for him, he instead taught law at Ohio Northern University from 1956 to 1958; Dickinson School of Law in Pennsylvania from 1958 to 1962; and the University of Arkansas from 1962 to 1963. In 1963, Multnomah County District Attorney George Van Hoomisen offered him a job, which he accepted. He worked in the district attorney’s office until 1966, when he began to practice law in private law firms in Portland. In 1974, Joseph was appointed Multnomah County counsel by Multnomah County Commissioner Don E. Clark. He served in that position until 1977, when Governor Bob Straub appointed him to the Oregon Court of Appeals. He served as chief judge on that court from 1981 to 1992. He died in 2003.

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