Robert D. Hornbaker, of Los Angeles passed away Sunday morning, Father’s Day, Jun 18, 2017 at 4:00am. He was the cousin of Molly (Barker) Loofbourrow. David Agnew was their shared grandfather. Robert was born the afternoon of January 6th, 1926, near Mt. Sterling Iowa, the first child of Phil and Mary Hornbaker and was named after his great grandfathers Robert Agnew and David Roten Hornbaker.
Robert was raised in Van Buren County Iowa and attended the Vernon Prairie and Ward one-room school from 1931 to 1939. He attended High School in Bonaparte (1939-43).
In 1943, he tried to join the Army Air Corp but he was underage (17) and his parents would not sign a waiver so he instead left home to attended Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts (now Iowa State University) where he had to work through college, lived on a basement cot, and yet graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree (B.S.E.E) in 1946 with the highest scholastic record of any graduate.
During university studies he joined the Navy’s V-12 Officer Training program and completed that in 1946 and was discharged as an Ensign. He then attended Iowa University to study law and received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 1949. He moved to New York and worked as a Patent Attorney with General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y. He later decided to move to New York City and attended Columbia Law School where he received a Master of Laws (LLM) in 1951. He was immediately hired by the famous law firm Cahill, Gordon and Reindel (CGR), having been interviewed by John Cahill and Harold Reindel and hired on the spot.
At CGR, Robert worked on the famous Supreme Court Patent case of Graver v. Linde (1951) that established the doctrine of equivalents for Patent law. At the end of 1951, the Navy inducted Robert into active duty, where he was first stationed in San Bruno, California and eventually served on ship and stationed at Guam, where he spent all of 1953. After release from the navy, Robert returned to Cahill, Gordon and Reindel and was assigned to San Francisco to work on the International Oil Cartel case, his client Standard Oil of California. He lived in California ever since.
He became an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in Los Angeles from 1958-60 where he impressively prosecuted over 50 federal criminal cases, many before juries. After the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he worked for Lyon & Lyon, the largest patent firm west of Chicago and later became a partner with Thomas P. Mahoney. In 1974 he joined other partners to form the firm Freilich, Hornbaker, and Rosen of West Los Angeles, where Robert worked for the next 40 years in patent law.
Robert recently published books pertaining to his experience attending the Vernon Prairie one-room school and a family history book documenting his Hornbaker grandparents’ family. Copies of both books were donated to the Keousaqua Library’s Genealogy Room.
Robert is survived by his wife of 42 years, Nobuko Hornbaker, 3 nieces, 1 nephew, and several grand nephews and nieces.
