James Putnam Archibald ’34 died on May 28, 2006, in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Born on May 17, 1912, in Houlton, he prepared for college at Houlton High School and became a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity at Bowdoin. Following his graduation in 1934, he studied at the Boston University School of Law in 1934- 35 and 1936-37, with a year spent in between working with his lawyer father, Bernard Archibald of the Class of 1904, in Houlton.
He served three two-year terms as county attorney in Aroostook County and spent three years during World War II as a first lieutenant in the Maine State Guard and six months in the Navy as a seaman first class.
He was a Superior Court justice from 1956 to 1971, when he was appointed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. In 1981, he became active-retired, a position that he held until 2005, practicing generally for six months every year.
He was a member of the Unitarian Church of Houlton, the Masons, the Houlton Rotary Club, the Order of the Eastern Star, the American Bar Association, and the Aroostook County Bar Association. He was a director of the Houlton Regional Hospital, the First National Bank of Houlton, and the Houlton School Board. In 1997, the Aroostook County Courthouse was rededicated in his name.
He was married in 1938 to Leta Kitchen, who died in 2000, and is survived by a son, James K. Archibald of Montreal, Canada; a daughter, Susan Kluge of New Smyrna Beach, FL; seven grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.