Attorney Irvin Graybill Jr. does not gloss over his failings — he asked that his story be told “warts and all.” From his Market street law office in Middleburg, Graybill recalled working at a Baltimore shipyard before quitting in 1943 to join the Army when he was 19.

“I was afraid the war was going to end, and I wouldn’t get in it,” he said.

His welding experience landed him an assignment in boat maintenance in the South Pacific, surrounded by other skilled laborers.

“We could fix anything,” he said.

In fact, some U.S. medics in Manila asked them if they could disguise a jeep they’d recently “borrowed” from the Navy. The workers burned off serial numbers, relocated distinguishable dents, repainted it and replaced the steering wheel and seat.

“Everybody worked on it,” Graybill said. “A lot of skills were involved.” In gratitude, the medics gave them five gallons of medicinal alcohol. “Which is the equivalent of 50 bottles of liquor,” Graybill said, adding with a nostalgic smile, “Well, that party lasted all weekend.” Years after his discharge, the Army mailed him military medals for service, good conduct and marksmanship, among others.

“If I ever write a book of my Army experience, I think I will title it, ‘Seven Medals and I Never Fired A Shot,’ ” he quipped.

At Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Graybill joined Phi Lambda Theta, a new interracial, nonsectarian fraternity.

“Dad called it ‘your United Nations,’ but a lot of people thought it was a Communist plot,” Graybill said. “That was a wonderful experience. We had blacks, Jewish people and Catholics, and a boy from Hawaii, and a Chinese refugee.” One campus sorority would not allow their girls to attend PLT’s dances “because they’d be dancing on the same floor as Negroes,” Graybill said. Collier’s magazine wrote a story about the fraternity, and Graybill and four other members were photographed on the cover page.

Graybill graduated from Harvard Law School in 1952. On the day he accepted a job in the copyright division of the Library of Congress, his father died. He headed back home to close his father’s estate and accepted a position as an attorney in the new state 1-percent sales tax bureau in Harrisburg.

He served two terms, from 1956 to 1964, as Snyder County district attorney.

“In eight years, I had one drug case,” he said. “Some guy sniffing glue.” While continuing his private practice and his DA work, Graybill taught business law at Susquehanna University, a job he loved and ended up doing for 31 years.

“The difference between teaching law and practicing law is that when you’re teaching law, you can study the cases and determine whether they’re right or wrong,” he said. “In other words, you’re trying to determine the truth. When you practice law, the client says, in effect, ‘This is your truth. Defend it.’ ” One of his cases involved the Shikellamy school board verses seven students who “refused to cut their hair to the standards of the time,” Graybill said. “It was a complicated case. I had a lot of help from attorney Tom Clark and Jimmy Knepp, both of whom worked with attorney John Moore at the time.” Though he knew the students had no money, he spent a lot of time on the case, eventually winning.

“The judge agreed that the length of a school boy’s hair was not a proper concern of the school board,” he said. He was touched when, after the court decision, the students got permission to sell candy at lunch time and, a few months later, sent him a check for $312.

Graybill has mixed feelings about his years as a DA and lawyer. He admits that he lost some cases that he probably should have won, which returned to plague him in two elections for judge, both of which he lost by about 100 votes. He is probably his own worst critic, too, making a point of revealing that he was temporarily suspended from practicing law: “I was disciplined by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and disbarred for four months for neglecting two small, complicated estates, of which I was the executor.”