HANOVER — A well-known and respected lawyer in the Upper Valley, Bill Clauson tended to fight for the underdog.
“He hated bullies,” Clauson’s daughter, Laura, said. “He had great empathy for people who are poor or had injustices done to them.”
In his over 40 years of practice, Bill Clauson took on cases against Upper Valley institutions such as Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and the Dresden School District. He tended to represent the woman in divorce court “because he felt they often had the cards stacked against them,” his wife, Helen Clauson, said.
In many instances, Clauson represented his clients pro bono or for a very minimal fee “because it was the right thing to do,” said George Spaneas, Clauson’s former law partner. “He never bragged about it. He never did it to seek any awards.”
On the flip side, those who found themselves against Clauson in the courtroom often detested him.
When waitressing in downtown Hanover, Laura Clauson hesitated to share her last name. “50% loved him and 50% called for a new waitress,” she said.
Clauson died at age 81 on July 31 at his home in Hanover from Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia.
Clauson was born in Northampton, Mass. in 1943, to Barbara Walker and Karl Clauson, who subsequently moved to New York City and then Greenwich, Conn., where Clauson and his six siblings spent the majority of their childhood.
As the oldest of the bunch, “Bill was in charge,” Peter Clauson, Clauson’s youngest brother, said. Peter fondly remembered playing flashlight tag with his siblings while their parents went out to dinner on summer weekends.
“Bill took a lot after my father: smart, strong-willed, independent and stubborn,” Peter Clauson said. “His attributes coupled with my dad’s attributes led to hard feelings.”
Much to his father’s dismay, after his first year at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Clauson decided to leave school to road trip across the country, living out of his car and selling encyclopedias. “He did so on his own without sharing that with my mom and dad, and my dad had paid for a semester of college,” Peter Clauson said.
Clauson’s decision led to a falling-out with his father and he didn’t visit home much during the rest of his college years, Peter Clauson said.
When Clauson returned to college in 1964, he and a group of his fraternity brothers took a 45-minute trip to Saint Joseph’s College in Standish, Maine to attend a dance. There, he met the woman who would become his wife, Helen McColough.
“When I entered the hall that night, Bill was dancing with someone, but our eyes met and I knew immediately that he would ask me for the next dance,” Helen said.
Clauson did ask for the next dance and over the course of the night, tried to guess Helen’s name. When he guessed the name “Eileen,” Helen told him he was close but that her name was Helen.
“Two days later, I receive a letter saying ‘Dear Eileen’,” Helen said. “Next thing I know I’m over at Bowdoin and he’s introducing me as Eileen. He always called me Eileen. He never called me Helen.”
After Clauson graduated from Bowdoin and Helen from Saint Joseph’s, both in 1966, the two wanted to go on an adventure together. They decided to join the Peace Corps, but when they found out they wouldn’t be placed together, they quit. “We weren’t going to go two years without seeing each other,” Helen said.
They went back to Helen’s parents’ home in Weymouth, Mass. and tried to get married. “At the time I was Catholic and Bill was Protestant,” Helen said. “The pastor was a grumpy guy and he wouldn’t marry us.”
While living in Weymouth and applying to teaching jobs, the couple took a trip to Boston. Clauson stopped at Boston College Law School to ask for the address of a friend who was a student there.
“The secretary said to him, ‘Have you ever thought about going to law school? We just had a last minute opening’,” Helen Clauson said.
Unsure of what he wanted to do after graduating from Bowdoin, Clauson had taken the Law School Admission Test. He decided to try out law school while Helen lived with her parents, worked and paid for his tuition.
“I was taking quite a risk,” she said. “We weren’t even married yet and I’m paying for his first year of law school.”
Much like at Bowdoin, Clauson decided to take time off after his first year of law school to pursue teaching. A new priest at the church agreed to marry the couple and the newlyweds headed to Madison, Maine where Clauson taught geometry and Helen taught fifth-grade.
Recently, Helen came across a letter from one of Clauson’s former students.
“Teachers are supposed to build students into adults by educating them thoroughly and correctly,” reads the letter from 1969, “but you seem to go even a step further. If you had not been a teacher at Madison, I suppose that I would have graduated and become nothing. But Mr. Clauson, you set me on the right road and pointed the way.”
Although the students loved Clauson, the administration had a different opinion of him.
“Some Southern speaker came in and made racist remarks,” Helen said. “Bill was disgusted and walked out, and his action was noticed.”
School leaders also frowned upon Clauson’s refusal to put his hand over his heart while pledging allegiance to the flag as a way of protesting the Vietnam war, Helen said.
In 1969, the school didn’t renew Clauson’s contract. The administration offered to renew Helen’s, but she refused. The couple returned to Massachusetts and Clauson went back to law school.
Right after graduation, Clauson clerked for the New Hampshire Supreme Court and Helen became pregnant with their first child, Laura.
In 1972, Clauson convinced Larry Gardner, an attorney in Hanover, to give him a job practicing business law and the Clausons moved to Lyme.
Clauson worked for Gardner for a few years before renovating an old garage on Buck Road in Hanover and opening his own practice there.
In 1976, the couple moved to Greensboro Road in Hanover, where they raised their six kids.
“I was blessed to have a father that loved his kids more than anything and supported us totally,” said Ryan, the Clauson’s youngest child. “My dad drove me to endless hockey games, taught me math, read to me, supported me, worked his butt off so we were taken care of. My childhood was awesome.”
Although Clauson worked a lot, he always came home in time to entertain the kids while Helen cooked dinner, Laura Clauson said.
During college, if Laura struggled with an assignment her father would drive to McGill University in Montreal to help her and spend the night on her futon. “He always had your back,” she said.
Clauson’s family knew him as gentle and patient, but beginning in 2000, they noticed a shift in his personality.
“Bill really died for me 25 years ago,” Helen Clauson said.
Instead of coming home for dinner, Clauson stayed out late, often with other women, Helen Clauson said.
Clauson’s family attributes his personality change to declining cognitive function and memory loss. “I never felt anger toward him,” Helen Clauson said. “I just knew something was wrong with him.”
Though still married to Helen, Clauson moved out of the house on Greensboro Road into an apartment in Lebanon in 2002.
He continued practicing law until 2013, when the Professional Conduct Committee, which falls under the purview of the New Hampshire Supreme Court and disciplines New Hampshire lawyers, suspended his license for six months over a conflict of interest case.
In 2009, Clauson represented both a husband and a wife in a domestic violence case. The wife did not consider herself a victim and wanted the no-contact order on her husband lifted, the Valley News reported in 2013.
However, the disciplinary committee found he broke the rules by representing both parties.
“Once he was suspended, he didn’t have the cognitive ability to get unsuspended,” Laura Clauson said.
A few years after retiring from law, Clauson met Mary Layton on an online dating site. For nearly a decade Clauson lived with Layton, now the chair of the Norwich Selectboard, in her home.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple went on cruises all over the world. “I think basically he wanted a travel companion,” Layton said.
In the beginning of their relationship, Clauson had “mild cognitive impairment” and Layton helped him with the trips by keeping track of the documents, she said.
However, Clauson’s memory and cognitive abilities declined quickly.
Ryan Clauson, who lives in Lebanon, visited his dad once or twice a week while he was living with Layton.
“We became very close during this time,” Ryan Clauson said. “He fell in love with nature, really enjoying the trees and the birds and the sky….My dad lost part of his mind, but he seemed to gain a deep appreciation for the natural beauty around us all the time.”
By 2023, Layton no longer had the time or financial resources to care for Clauson, she said.
“I negotiated with the family to take him back,” she said. “It worked out, but not necessarily very smoothly for everybody. But his family still loved him and probably preferred that he’d come home.”
In July 2024, Clauson moved back in with Helen on Greensboro Road.
“Bill was the live of my life and I would take care of him,” Helen Clauson said.
Layton did not attempt to see Clauson or speak with him again. “That was goodbye,” she said.
The Clauson’s children also helped care for their father at the end of his life. Laura Clauson returned to the house from England with her husband and 11-year-old son; Sean Clauson, the Clausons’ son, moved back in from Hawaii, and Ryan Clauson moved in from Lebanon.
“Although it was the hardest thing my family and I have gone through, it taught us so much and made us better people,” Ryan Clauson said. “I felt it was my dad’s last gift to us…Nothing in life is more important than taking care of our loved ones when they are sick.”