Photo of the Month June 2024

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Courtesy Dauphin County Bar Association

Attorney Paul Henry Rhoads -- a native of New Jersey -- established a law practice in the Pennsylvania state capitol city of Harrisburg and co-founded a law firm that became one of the largest and most influential in the state. His firm enjoyed an 80-plus-year reputation for furnishing sophisticated services for corporate, municipal and government clients.

Paul was the only child of Rev. Henry S. and Sudie E. (Seacrest) Rhoads and grandson of William Michael and Susan (Gumbert) Rhoads of Somerset, PA. He was a 1928 graduate of Gettysburg College and received his law degree in 1931 from the University of Pennsylvania. The early years of his career were in the office of the Attorney General of Pennsylvania followed by what today is the Public Utility Commission. Then in 1935, Paul went into a partnership with John Fox Weiss, and as their firm prospered, they added a new partner Frank A. Sinon, former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General and son-in-law of former Pennsylvania Governor Arthur H. James. At that point the firm name changed to Weiss, Rhoads and Sinon, later shortened to Rhoads & Sinon.

In the profession, Paul was president of the Dauphin County Bar Association in 1952 and editor of the Dauphin County Reporter, a legal journal, from 1935 to 1946. In the early 1950s, he and local clergy helped found the Lutheran Service Society of Harrisburg and eventually established a Lutheran home for aging citizens. Other community stewardship roles Paul held were the boards of Gettysburg College, the Court of Adjudication of the Lutheran Church of America, Harrisburg Hospital, Harrisburg Public Library, Dauphin County Historical Society, Tri-County United Way and the publications board of the United Lutheran Church in America.

Paul was deeply interested in his family roots and is known to have made remarks at the 17th annual reunion of the Abraham Rhoads descendants in Somerset in 1933.

At his death in 1984, the County Bar Association issued a memorial resolution, which said that "The success of his law firm is evidence of the leadership and guidance of this unusual and exemplary legal scholar." In the decades following, Rhoads & Sinon continued to be a pre-eminent firm. His son Henry, armed with a law degree from Harvard, joined the firm and became a partner. But as law firm economics changed dramatically in the early 2000s, the firm struggled financially, and the partners voted to cease operations in 2018, after eight-plus decades of business.

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