Judge Harold E. Achor

Harold E. Achor was born in 1907 in Coffeyville, Kansas, and brought to Kosciusko County as an infant.  He graduated from Indiana Central College and earned his law degree from Indiana University School of Law in 1931, where he was on IU’s international and varsity debate teams.

He maintained a general practice, Achor & Peck, in Anderson.  While practicing law, he also taught speech and political science classes from 1932 to 1937 at Anderson College, a school for which he served on the Board of Trustees for 20 years.  Judge Achor was long active in the Church of God, with which Anderson College was affiliated.  At the college, he met and married Helen Martin; they had two daughters.

A Republican, Judge Achor was elected Judge of the Madison Superior Court in 1942 and 1946, serving two terms, then to the Indiana Appellate Court in 1950 where he served one term.  He was Chief Judge of the Appellate Court for the May 1952 term. 

He was then elected to two terms on the Indiana Supreme Court, serving from 1955 to 1966.  For many of his 16 years on the appellate bench, he commuted to Indianapolis from Anderson by bus, reading cases on the trip.  He maintained an extensive law library at his home in Anderson.

Judge Achor was an officer of the Indiana State Bar Association, the Madison County Bar Association, and the Indiana Judges Association.  He served on the Disciplinary Commission of the Indiana Supreme Court.  He was a member of the board of governors of the Associated Colleges of Indiana, and in Anderson, a member of the Urban League, the Lions Club, the Civic Arts Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Edgewood Country Club.  

Judge Achor died in Anderson on February 5, 1967 at the age of 59, two months after resigning from the Indiana Supreme Court due to a heart ailment.

View the In Memoriam obituary for Judge Harold E. Achor
9 pages | 287 kb