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The Late Sam Maynes Fought Ferociously Throughout His Storied Career By Russell Martin L egendary water attorney Sam Maynes absolutely hated to lose, he always was quick to confess to friends and colleagues: some- thing that goes a good distance toward explaining why the Durango lawyer who died in July was so successful during his remarkable and oftentimes controversial 46 -year career. Over the course of nearly half a century, Maynes's foremost and longest fight —one that earned him reputations in various quarters as either a tireless water champion or a stealthy backroom opera- tor —was his battle for the hugely contro- versial Animas -La Plata Project, the $500 million Bureau of Reclamation venture in southwestern Colorado scheduled for completion in 2011. In the decades following its 1968 authorization by Congress, Animas -La Plata repeatedly stalled and occasion- ally appeared utterly dead in its tracks, but time after time, Maynes successfully mustered small armies of colleagues in the Four Corners region, Denver, and Washington, D.C. to revive it, revamp it, and move it forward— tenacious efforts that finally culminated when actual con- struction of the project began in 2002. This was an event Maynes long had dreamed of and one he lived to see, a battle the pugnacious Irish - Italian with a quick smile ultimately won, many observ- ers believe, largely because he fought for it so tenaciously. Frank E. "Sam" Maynes was born in 1933 beside the Animas River in the high - mountain town of Silverton, fifty miles north of Durango, where his father labored as a hard -rock miner. In 1949, the Maynes family moved downriver to Durango, where soon he was mucking -out the Silver Dollar Bar —in which his father had become a partner —each morning before classes at Durango High School. Two years later, he was off to Colorado College in Colorado Springs where he played football and after - effects of a severe concussion he had suffered during a football practice were enough to keep him out of the Marines, Maynes enrolled instead in the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder. There he met Jacqueline Stahl, who was working toward a teaching degree and who would become his wife and "angel" until her death from complications of multiple sclerosis, a disease she endured throughout much of their 45 -year marriage. Except for a year the newlyweds spent in El Paso, Texas, Maynes spent his entire professional career in Durango, where he quickly made something of a name for himself defending an itinerant carnival worker charged with savagely beating a popular young hairdresser. Although townspeople were eager to see the carnie pay severely for his crime, Maynes suc- ceeded in getting the charges against him dropped on a technicality: the district attorney had neglected to list the victim as a witness to the crime. "People around town thought I was terrible," Maynes often remembered rather proudly, and he was convinced the case helped cement early on his reputation as a lawyer who could find every conceivable loophole to help secure a successful outcome for those he represented. By the late 1960s, Maynes had assured Jacqueline that he would make an effort to practice as little criminal law as possible. Despite the fact that at the time he knew little about water law, he soon acquired an important new client —the Southwestern Water Conservation District. The young lawyer who by now had four children to support proved to be a quick study, and beginning in 1965, he dove deep into the world of water law in ways that astound- ed his colleagues. In 1965, the only thing Maynes knew about water, joked his longtime friend and colleague Fred Kroeger —who has served on the board of the conserva- tion district since Maynes became its basketball— rather fiercely by all accounts, counsel —was that water was essential - in part; no= doubt; to =make up= for =h-is =small for the taking -of -showers, for swimming, size —and studied economics. When the and mixing with bourbon. Yet there was 18 COLORADO FOUNDATION FOR WATER EDUCATION