U.S. District Judge Edward J. Boyle, appointed to the federal bench in New Orleans in 1966 by President Johnson, died Wednesday at Memorial Medical Center. He was 88.

Judge Boyle was born in Gretna, where his father worked for the Texas-Pacific Railroad. He lived for the past 69 years in New Orleans. Judge Boyle was a graduate of Gretna High School and in 1935 earned his law degree from Loyola University. He also played baseball and was twice scouted by major league teams, but he turned down their offers.

Before becoming a judge, Judge Boyle was an assistant U.S. attorney in the 1940s and a longtime partner in the law firm of Sehrt, Boyle and Wheeler.

In 1981, Judge Boyle, then 68, took senior status on the court, which allowed him to retain his chambers, staff and law clerks while handling a reduced caseload. He relinquished his caseload and staff in the early 1990s because of his failing eyesight.

Judge Boyle was remembered Friday by New Orleans lawyer Gregory Grimsal, his law clerk from 1981 to 1989, as "a consummate judge" and "a first-class public servant."

"He had a wonderful judicial demeanor," Grimsal said. "He was extremely fair. He was extremely conscientious, and he stood for the value of sheer hard work."

U.S. District Judge Morey Sear, a former federal court magistrate in New Orleans, said Judge Boyle helped him "to come to the court and to have the opportunity to become a district judge. He helped me become a good judge, as he was."

Judge Boyle's love of big recreational vehicles was recalled by both Sear and Judge Boyle's daughter, Kathleen Boyle LaGarde.

"He called them ?my bus,' and he loved to drive them, he loved to go in them, and I think that other than his wife, that was the love of his life," Sear said.

LaGarde said that in 1965, her dad bought the first of what would be five motor coaches and traveled in them throughout the United States, often spending a month or more seeing "all the national parks and points between."