Misplaced Pages

Coleman Hicks (26 April 1943 – 3 August 2004) was a United States lawyer who served as General Counsel of the Navy from 1979 to 1981.

Biography

Coleman Hicks was born in Columbus, Ohio, and raised in Mason City, Iowa. Hicks was educated at Princeton University, receiving his B.A. in 1965. Bill Bradley, whom Hicks had met at a conference of high school students involved with student government, was one of Hicks' roommates at Princeton. After Princeton, Hicks enrolled at Yale Law School, graduating in 1968.

In 1969, Hicks joined the Judge Advocate General's Corps, U.S. Navy. In summer 1971, he was posted as an instructor at the Naval Justice School in Newport, Rhode Island, but he left this position after only a few weeks when he became personal assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. (He was recommended by Kissinger's previous personal assistant, David Halperin, who was a friend of Hicks' from the Navy.)

In June 1972, a week before the second of the Watergate burglaries, Hicks left his post as Kissinger's personal assistant to join the law firm of Covington & Burling. There, he was a general litigator and participated in a wide variety of cases.

In 1979, President of the United States Jimmy Carter nominated Hicks as General Counsel of the Navy and, after Senate confirmation, Hicks held this office from May 25, 1979, until January 13, 1981.

After leaving government service in 1981, Hicks returned to Covington & Burling, where he practiced law for the next fourteen years. One of the highlights of his legal career came in 1987, when he wrote the winning brief in the case of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (484 U.S. 260 (1988)).

Death

In 1995, at the start of the dot-com bubble, Hicks left Covington & Burling, relocating to Waltham, Massachusetts, and joining Oak Industries, a company headed by a friend from the Navy Office of General Counsel, William Antle III, that provided broadband networks, frequency control devices and fiber-optic components to the telecommunications industry. He served as Oak Industries' General Counsel, and later as Chief Financial Officer. Oak Industries was acquired by Corning Industries in 2000.

Hicks was diagnosed with cancer in 2000. He died from complications of cancer and a stroke on August 3, 2004, at his home in Boston. He was 61 years old.

References

Citations

1. "Coleman Hicks". Retrieved August 6, 2020.

Bibliography

• Joe Holley, "Coleman Hicks, 61; Lawyer, Executive", Washington Post, Aug. 6, 2004, p. B06
• Obituary in Princeton Alumni Weekly

v t e United States secretaries of the Navy
Secretaries	Cabinet-level Stoddert Smith Hamilton Jones Crowninshield S Thompson Southard Branch L. Woodbury Dickerson Paulding Badger Upshur Henshaw Gilmer Mason Bancroft Mason Preston Graham Kennedy Dobbin Toucey Welles Borie Robeson R Thompson Goff Hunt Chandler Whitney Tracy Herbert Long Moody Morton Bonaparte Metcalf Newberry Meyer Daniels Denby Wilbur Adams Swanson Edison Knox Forrestal Dept. of Defense Sullivan Matthews Kimball Anderson Thomas T. Gates Franke Connally Korth Nitze Ignatius Chafee Warner Middendorf Claytor Hidalgo Lehman Webb Ball Garrett O'Keefe Dalton Danzig England Winter Mabus Spencer Braithwaite Del Toro
Under Secretaries	Forrestal Bard A. Gates Sullivan Kenney Kimball Whitehair Thomas T. Gates Franke Bantz Fay BeLieu Baldwin Baird Warner Sanders Middendorf Potter Macdonald Woolsey Murray Goodrich Garrett Howard Danzig Hultin Pirie Livingstone Aviles Work Davidson Modly Raven
Assistant Secretaries	Pre–1954 Fox Faxon Soley McAdoo T. Roosevelt Sr. Allen Hackett Darling Newberry Satterlee Winthrop F. Roosevelt G. Woodbury T. Roosevelt Jr. Robinson Jahncke H. Roosevelt Edison Compton Bard Hensel Kenney Andrews Koehler Askins Fogler Post–1954 Financial Management and Comptroller Energy, Installations and Environment Manpower and Reserve Affairs Research, Development and Acquisitions General Counsel of the Navy defunct: Air Installations and Logistics Material Research and Development Research, Engineering and Systems Shipbuilding and Logistics

• 2004 deaths
• General Counsels of the United States Navy
• Princeton University alumni
• Yale Law School alumni
• Carter administration personnel
• People from Mason City, Iowa
• 1943 births
• People associated with Covington & Burling