BROOKINGS — There’s going to be some big shoes to fill in Brookings city government in the near future: Longtime City Attorney Steve Britzman is retiring in April.

The word “longtime” isn’t an exaggeration, either: Britzman, 69, has been involved in representing the city in legal matters as a deputy city attorney or as the city attorney since February 1983, with a bit of a break when he started his own law firm in 1997, before taking up the mantle once again in 2000.

“I felt like it was time to perhaps reduce the workload and turn the opportunity over to someone that’s likely younger than me that can carry on, learn the area of municipal law and excel and have the energy to really take it to the next level,” Britzman told the Brookings Register in an interview.

A huge, but also quiet and unassuming, presence in the Brookings-area legal community, Britzman was born in Iowa to the late Dar and JoAnn Britzman. His formative years were spent in Chicago, Sioux Falls and Brookings.

“I have a lot of fond memories,” Britzman said of Brookings. “My dad was getting his PhD in the early 1960s and so we were here for a couple years while he did that.”

He remembers walking from the campus of South Dakota State to Hillcrest Elementary School while his father was managing a couple of dormitories — including Brown Hall — as a graduate student. They lived in Brown for one of those years, and so Britzman would either walk or take a yellow cab to Hillcrest.

“I had a couple of fun years, and I knew Brookings pretty well just because I lived in a fun place, which was on campus as a kid,” he said.

He attended kindergarten and first grade at Hillcrest.

“I did everything that a kid would do — going to movies in downtown Brookings, Nick’s Hamburgers and all those things were part of my early childhood,” Britzman recalled.

Leaving Brookings, then coming back

Job opportunities would eventually draw his family away from Brookings, first to Chicago and then later to Sioux Falls, where Britzman graduated from Lincoln High School in 1974.

Arizona State University came next, where he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in business administration with an accounting major in December 1977. While his larger goal was always to go to law school, he spent a year and a half working at an accounting firm in Minneapolis. Then he was off to law school at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, graduating with a juris doctorate degree in spring 1982. He subsequently passed the South Dakota Bar Exam and dove headfirst into the working world of lawyers.

Through all of that, he never forgot Brookings or the experiences he had in the community as a youngster — so much so that he came back with his wife Lyndy, who was also an UNL graduate, to start as a deputy city attorney for Brookings in February 1983.

“(It was) right out of law school, so I had a lot to learn,” Britzman said.

He was in good hands, though: The law firm Britzman joined included luminaries such as Alan Glover — who was the city attorney at that time and had filled the role for a number of years — and Frank Denholm, who was not only the firm’s senior partner, but also a deputy city attorney and a former U.S. congressman from South Dakota.

Both of them introduced Britzman to municipal law, and he assisted Glover and Denholm in representing the city of Brookings. His duties also included being tasked with projects the city’s department heads would assign to him.

“All of that was good in terms of training because, really, I had very little governmental training in law school,” Britzman. “I had to learn, basically, through experience … and guidance from other attorneys.”

Those other attorneys included Brookings County State’s Attorney Clyde Calhoon and Deputy State’s Attorney Mark Kratochvil.

“That’s part of the way that you learn. You just pick up it up every possible way you can,” Britzman said.

Learning important

A willingness to learn, of course, is the key to acquiring new skills, new experiences and new outlooks on life, and that’s especially true for people who want to take up legal careers.

Britzman has some advice for these aspirants: “I think understanding, or trying to observe an attorney that could be a friend or family member and have some discussions — and follow that attorney or shadow that attorney — would be a good idea,” he said. “Just so that you see how the day is spent in that capacity.”

He continued, “I was probably too shy to do that, even though there was an attorney that I highly respected: (Brookings attorney) Eric Rasmussen’s dad, Laird Rasmussen, was a very well-respected attorney in Sioux Falls, and so he would have been someone that I wanted to emulate.”

Laird, who has since died, practiced for more than 50 years in Sioux Falls and was a neighbor of the Britzman family. “I always held him in high esteem,” Britzman said.

The other person Britzman admired in his youth was Roger Schiager, a longtime Sioux Falls attorney who served as that community’s city attorney. While in high school, he was able to shadow Schiager.

Britzman also pointed out that the undergraduate backgrounds of people interested in law school come in all varieties — mathematics, sciences, physical education and so on.

“All types of majors would still be accepted into law school,” Britzman said. “Law school then involves — and practicing law involves — a substantial amount of reading, analysis and having good writing skills. Those things can be learned just by taking courses that require you to do a lot of reading, a lot of analysis — problem solving, basically — and then writing and reaching conclusions as to how the problem should be solved. That’s primarily what a lawyer does.”

Those skills don’t necessarily have to wait until later in one’s academic life to learn — starting earlier never hurts, and can be done at the high school level via debate, English and composition classes.

“Those are key skills that a lawyer would have,” Britzman explained. “The writing, analysis and reading carefully for comprehension.”

His own desire to become an attorney emerged when he was in ninth grade. He wanted to be academically oriented, what with a mother who was a teacher and a father who had advanced degrees in poultry science and animal science.

“I also wanted to go on and get an advanced degree,” Britzman related. “I felt like what a lawyer did would be interesting, and so that motivated me to develop my writing skills, took some debate in high school (and) competed in a little bit of debating.”

Family, hobbies

It wasn’t all work and no play for Britzman after his return to Brookings. He and his wife, Lyndy, raised a family as well, with their son and daughter graduating from Brookings High School and moving on from there.

Their son, Garth, is an architect in Sacramento, California, and was married this past November — his wife hails from California — at Dakota Nature Park, while daughter Katelyn owns, along with her husband, Mosaic Wine Bar in the Masons building next to Kool Beans Coffee.

Basketball has also been a big part of Britzman’s life. “Not built for (it), but I love the sport and I played it until maybe 10 years ago,” he said.

Running, too, figures large in his life, starting in junior high and only trailing off in the last few years. A big part of these years was spent in the Prairie Striders Running Club, where he was the race director for 30 years for the Arbor Day Run and for 25 years as the Hobo Day Run. He’s retired both of those positions, but remains a club member.

Other activities have included hunting — which he grew up doing — golfing, traveling and reading. His book preferences are mostly nonfiction, including travel essays, autobiographies and, more recently, books about Brookings County history. The latter includes works by Chuck Cecil and Jim McKeown.

Impressive city

Britzman’s decades in Brookings have left a lasting and deep impression on him.

“It’s just been a wonderful experience for us, to raise my kids here, to be able to help the city, …” he said. “I just think Brookings has turned out very well over the years, and I’ve just enjoyed living here and I’ve particularly enjoyed the inclusiveness of this community.”

Britzman said some of those lessons stretch back decades to the times when his father would have international students over in the early 1960s for dinner.

“All of that, those aspects of Brookings — the inclusiveness, and just the progressiveness of this community has been rewarding, you know, to be a part of it,” he said. “It’s just been a comfortable place to live.”

In addition having more free time in retirement — he couldn’t take many vacations, as he was a one-man operation — he’s also open to mentorship opportunities.

“I think as you get older, you would recognize that maybe you do have some ability to be a mentor,” Britzman said. “Most of us don’t assume that we’re a mentor, but I think our experience probably lends itself, so — I like to work with young people. If there was an opportunity where they recognize I could be helpful in some mentorship capacity, that would be good.”

He’ll also still be busy with other aspects of his practice — such as taxes and real estate — and will continue to be Volga’s city attorney, something he’s done since summer 1983. Over the years, he’s also helped represent area communities, including Elkton, Sinai, Aurora, Bushnell and Ward, in legal matters.

‘Inspirational’

And, yes, he’s going to miss certain things that’ll go away with retirement, such as working on a regular basis with city staffers.

“Really, working with the staff of the city has been inspirational for me,” he said. “You can talk about an issue that needs to be resolved, researched, analyzed, but you could also have a fun interaction with that person.”

Britzman also harkened back to the interactions with county officials, community members and the general public over his many years as the city attorney for Brookings.

“All those interactions … have been fun and a diversion from just sitting at the desk and analyzing legal cases and contracts,” he said. “That’s what I’ll miss.”

— Contact Mondell Keck at mkeck@brookingsregister.com.