The remarkable life of Robert Rines came to an end last Sunday, but not his influence on Concord. Franklin Pierce Law Center, the state's only law school, was the vision of one man who was an inventor, patent attorney, musician, composer and educator.

The school, which is now the alma mater of one-third of New Hampshire's lawyers, had humble beginnings. It opened in 1973 in a bull barn on Mountain Road in East Concord that is now home to a church. It was staffed by Rines and six faculty members, including the late Dane Buck, professor emeritus Dick Hesse and James Duggan, now a New Hampshire Supreme Court justice.

Rines wanted his students to graduate with practical as well as theoretical knowledge. "My goal for this class is that they bridge the gap between Ralph Nader and businessmen who think they're perfect," Rines said in his address to the law school's second graduating class.

The law center's 450 students come to Concord from within New Hampshire and around the world. Its $12 million budget boosts the city economy and allows Concord to claim that it is home to one of the top intellectual property law schools in the world.

In the past year, speculation about a potential merger between the law center and the University of New Hampshire has become an agreement to move toward that goal. If a merger means that the law school moves to Durham, much of what Rines built here will fade, because the law center's biggest contribution has been the people it educates who make their lives here.

The law center's first graduation was held in the very yellow and white-striped tents used in the filming of the movie The Great Gatsby. They were rented for the occasion from their owner, someone the new school's special events director had worked with while at Brown University.

The graduation was covered by then-Monitor reporter Margaret Warner. She is now the senior correspondent on CNN's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. "It's not often in modern life that you can make a dream come true in a short time," Rines told the class on that May day 33 years ago.

There are many familiar names among the 86 members of that 1976 graduating class. It included former Concord school board member David Immen and local lawyers Dennis Pizzimenti, Charles Russell, David Siff and Nancy Richards Stower.

Among those who also graduated in the school's early years are Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams, Merrimack County Superior Court Clerk William McGraw and lawyers Mark Sisti, Cathy Green and Ken Brown. The state's newest Supreme Court justice, Carol Ann Conboy, is a Franklin Pierce graduate, as are new superior court judges Marguerite Wageling and Jacalyn Colburn. So too is real estate lawyer Richard Uchida, who for years could be seen making his case to another Pierce Law graduate, three-term Concord mayor Mike Donovan.

Rines left a global mark on intellectual property law education and an unsolved mystery - the existence of the Loch Ness monster. But the people who he and his law school trained will continue to be his biggest achievement. Much of the good they have done locally might never have occurred had Rines not followed through with his daring vision to create something new.