GRIFFIN, MEADE FELIX (1894-1974). Meade Felix Griffin, who served on both the Texas Supreme Court and the state Court of Criminal Appeals, was born in Cottonwood, Callahan County, Texas, on March 17, 1894, the son of W. F. and Frances Lodi (Patterson) Griffin. He received an A.B. degree in 1915 and an LL.B. in 1917 from the University of Texas, and in August 1917 he was in the first graduating class of the Officers' Training Camp at Leon Springs. In World War I he rose to the rank of major of infantry; in World War II he was promoted to colonel. He helped establish the trial section of the United States Army's war crimes department at Wiesbaden, Germany, at the end of the war.
Griffin was admitted to the bar in 1917 and practiced in Tulia, where he was county attorney from 1917 to 1919 and mayor in 1919; he served as county judge in Hale County from 1923 to 1926 and as district attorney for the Sixty-fourth Judicial District from 1927 to 1934. In 1949 Governor Beauford H. Jester appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court, where he served as associate justice until his retirement in 1968. A year later he was appointed a special judge to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, thus becoming one of few men who have served on both of the highest courts in Texas. He also served as an assistant attorney general under Crawford Martin.
On June 2, 1917, Griffin married Eleanor Sykes, from whom he was divorced in 1950; they had two children. He married Dorothy Porter on November 8, 1950. He received the Rosewood Gavel Award from St. Mary's University in 1965 and was a member of the American Legion and the State Bar of Texas, in which he was chairman of numerous committees. Griffin died in Austin on June 3, 1974, and was buried in the State Cemetery, Austin.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Austin American-Statesman, June 4, 5, 1974. Who's Who in America, 1968-69. Descendents of Griffin.
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "GRIFFIN, MEADE FELIX," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/GG/fgr62.html (accessed September 8, 2005).
