To Life: The Story of a Chicago Lawyer

583 Pages·1990·1.24 MB·English

by  Elmer Gertz

title: To Life : The Story of a Chicago Lawyer
author: Gertz, Elmer.
publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0809316080
print isbn13: 9780809316083
ebook isbn13: 9780585206974
language: English
Gertz, Elmer,--1906- , Lawyers--Illinois--
subject Biography, Civil rights--United States--
History.
publication date: 1990
lcc: KF373.G47A37 1990eb
ddc: 340/.092
Gertz, Elmer,--1906- , Lawyers--Illinois--
Biography, Civil rights--United States--
subject:
History.
Page ii
Books by Elmer Gertz
Charter for a New Age: An Inside View of the Sixth Illinois
Constitutional Convention (with Joe Pisciotte)
For the First Hours of Tomorrow: The New Illinois Bill of Rights
A Handful of Clients
Frank Harris: A Study in Black and White (with A.I. Tobin)
The Short Stories of Frank Harris: A Selection
Henry Miller: Years of Trial and Triumph, 19621964. The
Correspondence of Henry Miller and Elmer Gertz (edited by Elmer
Gertz and Felice Flanery Lewis)
Moment of Madness: The People vs. Jack Ruby
The Odyssey of a Barbarian: The Biography of George Sylvester
Viereck
Quest for a Constitution: A Man Who Wouldn't Quit. A Political
Biography of Samuel Witwer of Illinois (with Edward S. Gilbreath)
Page iii
To Life
The Story of a Chicago Lawyer with a New Afterword
Elmer Gertz
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS
CARBONDALE AND EDWARDSVILLE
Page iv
Copyright © 1990 by Elmer Gertz
First published 1974 by McGraw-Hill Book Company
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Marcy J. Katz
Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga
93 92 91 90 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gertz, Elmer, 1906
To life: the story of a Chicago lawyer / Elmer Gertz: with a new
afterword.
p. cm.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974.
ISBN 0-8093-1608-0
1. Gertz, Elmer, 1906 . 2. LawyersIllinoisBiography.
3. Civil rightsUnited StatesHistory. I. Title.
KF373.G47A37 1990
340'.092dc20áá 89-19726
[B] CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Page v
For
the two glorious women in my life,
Ceretta and Mamie,
and
our children and grandchildren
Page vii
Contents
Specimen HoursA Prefatory Note ix
One Pictures Out of My Past 1
Two A Very Serious Young Man 19
Three The Law 33
Four Beginnings 45
Five My First Books 55
Six Growing into the Middle Years 73
Seven Carl Sandburg 83
Eight Race, Religion, and the Law 93
Nine "Mr. Housing" 109
Ten President Truman 119
Eleven Out of the DepthA Personal Tragedy and Its 131
Happy Aftermath
Twelve A Literary Boom 139
Thirteen Litigating for and against the Police 161
Fourteen Writing a New Constitution for Illinois 167
Fifteen Nathan LeopoldAfter stateville 187
Sixteen Fighting the Death Penalty 199
Seventeen The Many Lives of Libel 217
Eighteen A Sabbatical Leave-taking 247
TimeWhere Does It Go? 253
Page ix
Specimen HoursA Prefatory Note
No book about any man can be complete. In a sense, a man writes
only of specimen hours, typical moments, when he does his memoirs.
The real man is viewed, if at all, by indirection, through the
interstices, so to speak, of the narrative.
Perhaps no one, not in my position, will care about the omissions, but
they trouble me greatly. I am tempted to list those friends, cases,
writings, organizations, incidents that I have left out. Some of them
were once in this book. Their spirits still hover over these pages.
I think of George Herman, Eli Fink and Leo Rosten, whom I have
known for more than fifty yearseach a distinct personality with
different life experiences. They traveled with me from the grades to
gray hairs. We have savored and endured much together, but scarcely
a hint of this survives in my book.
A whole untouched era in my life is represented by the name of that
dynamic and lovely woman, Lois Weisbergthe Shaw Centennial, the
Shaw Society, The Paper. And through her I recall actors, authors,
characters of every hue and shade. All these subjects and persons were
interconnected with the Adult Education Council and its gifted
executive directors, Esther Fain and Robert Ahrens. It is a feat to write
of my life and not deal with them, like excluding myself from my
autobiography.
I think of the Kurgans family who have been parts of my life for a
generation; Peter Pollack for a longer period; John Ligtenberg; Jack
Cowen; Alexander Isaacs; Ralph G. Newman; Carey McWilliams and
Louis Adamic; Wayne Andrews; so many others. I think of the
members of my familybrothers, sister, children, aunts and uncles,
cousins. Some men and women have been close to me for a moment
and then have vanished with scarcely a trace. Some are as unreal as if
they had never existed.