Bio

Bud Fanning is a Wichita native with a storied career as a trial lawyer and one of the original partners of Hite, Fanning & Honeyman. Bud served in both World War II and the Korean War. He began his education on the G.I. Bill at Wichita University (later, Wichita State University) but became an insurance adjuster before he graduated. After two years of negotiating claims with lawyers, he concluded: "I knew just as much about tort and contract law as they did, but I was making a lot less money." He went to Washburn Law School, which at that time allowed entrance before completing an undergrad degree and completed law school while working part-time as an insurance adjuster. He began working at the firm's predecessor three months before Dick Hite, and the two of them practiced law together for over 50 years.

Bud was a talented litigator, earning him a place in the American College of Trial Lawyers in 1975. He was elected President of the Wichita Bar Association in 1978. In 1986, the Kansas Supreme Court appointed him to the Board of Law Examiners, which wrote and graded bar entrance exams and held hearings on applicants' fitness to sit for the bar exam.

He was awarded the Bill Kahrs Lifetime Achievement Award by the Kansas Association of Defense Counsel in 2010.

Bud is currently, deservedly, retired.