No sign of stopping: from the savannahs of Kenya to the streets of Honolulu, there's no terrain too rugged for Martin Anderson. (Infocus).

Martin "Marty" Anderson is, in every sense of the word, a true pioneer. And his lively, vivacious manner of storytelling leaves very little to the imagination. Whether reciting tales of hunting wild elephants in East Africa, or delivering the bracing climax to one of his noteworthy lawsuits,

he does so in such a vivid fashion that you can't help but drift off to the exact place and time to which he's referring. As the photographs that line the walls of his office at the state's largest law firm, Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel, will attest, it's doubtful that the 78-year-old senior partner will ever run out of stories to tell. In three years, he will celebrate 50 years as a partner with Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel.

He recalls, with great fervor, meeting former President Ronald Reagan and then-hopeful presidential candidate, George W. Bush -- a privilege afforded to board members of the Hoover Institute, the prestigious Stanford University think tank. He's got captain's tales of leading both the track and football teams to victory at Stanford University, where he obtained his Juris Doctor on an athletic scholarship. He is animated in his description of the bamboo pole with which he broke a pole-vaulting record at Punahou High School in 1942 -- an unsurpassed feat to this day. He's also got a multitude of stories that reflect his tours of duty in both World War II and the Korean War (Anderson retired as a colonel from the United States Marine Corps Reserve after 30 years of service).

He's even got a narrative about his curly koa desk, which he claims is one of three identical desks uniquely designed and crafted by incarcerated prisoners in Hawaii in the 1800s. "Both sides of the desk are exactly the same, down to the drawers and everything. And then there's ample desktop space on both sides," he says, gliding his hand over the length of the extra-wide surface. "That's because it was made for partners." Speaking from experience, Anderson certainly knows a thing or two about partners.

Beginning in the late 1950s, he and a partner co-owned the Heavenly Valley Ski area on the south shore of Lake Tahoe for 25 years. And at one point, Anderson was actually a partner in two firms at the same time. In 1972, after having relocated to San Francisco to open a new branch of Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel, Anderson was offered a partnership with a local firm there, McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enerson.