The severity of punishment from the Board of Bar Overseers typically depends on precedents from earlier cases. But the board has not had a case before it in recent memory with a comparable set of circumstances, lawyers said.
Shudde Fath has read approximately 45,000 copies of the Austin American-Statesman.
That’s because she and her then-newlywed husband, Conrad Fath, first subscribed to the paper at their garage apartment near the University of Texas campus in January 1939.
“Been taking the paper ever since,” Fath, 104, says with a laugh. “One big thing back then is that we used to get two papers a day: the American in the morning and the Statesman in the evening. We’d read both.”
In 1939, a monthly subscription cost $1.35 for both papers.
For one, 75 cents.
“We didn’t have any money back then,” Fath says. “I was making $90 a month as a government employee, and my husband made $75 while he was still a student. Rent was $50. Utilities were $12.”