Obituary

John G. Harrell, a partner at Bradley Arant Rose & White LLP in Alabama, died of an apparent stroke on Wednesday. He was 66.

Mr. Harrell, who worked in the firm's Birmingham office since 1973, practiced in the areas of public finance, energy, emerging business and technology, economic development, and corporate and securities law.

In 2007, he was bond counsel for the Alabama Public School and College Authority's $1.1 billion offering of capital improvement bonds. The deal marked the largest competitive sale of the year and the largest debt sale ever by an Alabama state agency.

"John was a great lawyer and, more importantly, a good and respected man," said J. Foster Clark, a partner at Balch & Bingham LLP in Birmingham and president of the National Association of Bond Lawyers. "I enjoyed working with him on countless transactions over 30 years and benefited from his counsel. He was one of the deans of public finance in our area and we will all miss him."

"John was 'old school.' Always a gentleman and someone you could rely upon. If he said something would be a certain way, you could be comfortable that is the way it would be," said David Caprera, a partner at Kutak Rock LLP in Denver who worked with Mr. Harrell on some student loan deals in Alabama. "He was a renaissance sort of bond lawyer. He always wanted to understand everything, the tax law, the securities law, the state law, the banking law. He will be missed."

Mr. Harrell was a NABL member. Prior to joining Bradley Arant, he was an associate law professor at Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, and a labor and corporate attorney for the Bell System operating company before it was broken up in 1984.

Mr. Harrell received his undergraduate degree from Emory University in 1963, and graduated magna cum laude with a law degree from Cumberland School of Law. He received his master of law degree from Yale Law School in 1967.

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