Background
Tappaan was born in Baldwinsville, New York, the son of Wallace Tappaan and his wife Frances (McMechan) Tappaan.
Tappaan was born in Baldwinsville, New York, the son of Wallace Tappaan and his wife Frances (McMechan) Tappaan.
He was educated at the Baldwinsville Free Academy, and enrolled at the University of Michigan, transferring after two years to Cornell University where he received his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1900.
Tappan played college football at Cornell University and served as the head football coach at the University of Southern California ( University of Southern California) for a one-game season in 1901. While at Cornell, he played on the football team In 1901, he played on the football team of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and the same year he served as coach of the University of Southern California football team, which played only one game – a 6-0 road loss to Pomona College.
He joined the University of Southern California Law School"s first faculty in 1904.
During World War I, he worked in physical training with the Young Men’s Christian Association, with much of his work done in France. In August 1927 he was appointed to the Superior Court by Governor Creative Commons Young, and he was elected to a full term in September 1928.
In January 1932 he was appointed to a six-month term as justice pro tem of the California Court of Appeal, and he received two later three-month appointments to the same position. He ended his tenure at the University of Southern California Law School in 1928, but continued to lecture there and at Loyola Law School.
Loyola later conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
Tappaan suffered a fatal heart attack at age 54 while walking to his office in downtown Los Angeles, shortly after addressing a luncheon of the Los Angeles Bar Association. His death was ruled the result of chronic myocarditis and sclerosis of the left coronary artery. Their only child Francis was an All-American for the University of Southern California football team in 1929.
Tappaan was a longtime official of the Sierra Club, serving as its fifth president, from 1922 to 1924, and on the board of directors from 1912 until his death.
At the time of Tappaan"s death, Sierra Club members were organizing to build a ski lodge on Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California. The Lodge opened on Christmas Eve, 1934, according to Lodge oldtimer Frank Shoemaker.
Clair Tappaan Lodge is the Sierra Club"s largest and most popular lodge, known among its many supporters as the Sierra Club"s "flagship lodge". Tappaan"s photo hangs in the entry.
