Wenke Returns to Law Practice in County After 3 Years of Fund Raising

William F. Wenke, a former State Bar of California president, has returned to Orange County to practice law after working at raising funds for the last three years, first for his alma mater, the University of Nebraska, and then for the Salvation Army.

Wenke, 59, has joined the Newport Beach firm of Harwood, Adkinson & Meindl. He will handle divorces involving large estates and will consult on trial matters. The 10-lawyer firm has a general business, corporate and trial law practice.

When he decided to leave his law practice in 1984, Wenke already had been trying for several years to join the Salvation Army’s fund-raising operation in a full-time capacity. He had long been active in Salvation Army charity work.

But no job was available, so he went to work as head of the University of Nebraska Foundation to raise money for the school. He left that position and moved back to Orange County 13 months ago when a Salvation Army fund-raising job finally opened up in Los Angeles.

“I’ve always believed you should spend a portion of your life in charitable work helping others who are less fortunate,” Wenke recently said of his decision to stop lawyering.

But the daily drive from his Newport Beach home to downtown Los Angeles finally wore him down, he said, and he decided to return to a practice in Orange County.