James Lynde Sneed, was born on June 24, 1938, and died on Thursday, November 10, 2005, at the age of 67. He is survived by: his wife of more than 47 years, Jane Barnes Sneed; 3 children, David Cornelius Sneed of Telluride, CO, Elizabeth Sneed Sparks of Norman, OK, and Thomas Montgomery Sneed of Alta, WY; a son-in-law, John Hunt Sparks; and 2 grandsons, John Hunt Sparks, II, and Benjamin Adams Sparks.
An attorney, Jim was President of the Tulsa law firm of James L. Sneed Law Offices; he was also "of counsel" to Sneed, Lang, P.C., and General Partner of Sneed Company. Son of the late Earl Sneed, Dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Law for 20 years, and Cornelia Lynde Sneed, Jim received a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude in 1960 from Harvard College and a Juris Doctorate degree in 1963 from The University of Oklahoma, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif, an Editor of the Law Review, and an officer of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity.
An attorney in Tulsa since 1962, he specialized in the areas of trusts, estate and gift taxes, estate planning and charitable giving. He was a member of the Tulsa County, Oklahoma, and American Bar Associations. He was elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the Oklahoma Bar Foundation, of which he served as chairman; and he was a member of the Tulsa Estate Planning Forum. In addition to his professional activities, Jim gave generously of his time and talent both to the City of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma. He was a trustee of Hillcrest Medical Center and its Foundation for over 30 years, a Director of the Grand River Dam Authority, and President of the Tulsa Tennis Club. Devoted to the arts, he served on the Boards of the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa and the Tulsa Philharmonic, and, with his wife, Jane, sang in the First Presbyterian Church's Chancel Choir.
At the time of his death, Jim was a member of the Boards of the Salvation Army, the Oklahoma Private Enterprise Forum, the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, the Oklahoma Planned Giving Council, Camp Loughridge and the Nature Conservancy. Jim Sneed was an accomplished writer and co-authored several books: Oklahoma's Earl Sneeds-The Generations; Celebrating Seventy Years of Clay Court Tennis, a history of the Tulsa Tennis Club; and the Tulsa Bar Association's Building Tulsa: Lawyers at Work. In 2000, he received the Oklahoma Bar Association's Maurice Merrill Best Scholarly Article Award for his article on Conservation Easements.
Sports and Jim Sneed went together. A soccer player at Thomas Jefferson School in St. Louis and then at Harvard, Jim was very involved in starting youth soccer in Tulsa. After soccer came tennis and running, both sports that Jim enjoyed for many years. Each week during his forties, he ran his birthday age in miles.
Jim will be remembered as a man of high integrity and great generosity, devoted to his family, to the law, to his church, to music, and to his community. Donations may be made to his favorite charities: Camp Loughridge, the Salvation Army, the Nature Conservancy, First Presbyterian Church, and the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville. Moore's Rosewood, 744-1202.
