[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 24 (Tuesday, March 10, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E341-E342]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HONORING PROFESSOR JOSEPH CREA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 10, 1998

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, just one block away from my district office 
is the campus of Brooklyn Law School. This year, Brooklyn Law School 
Professor Joseph Crea celebrates his fiftieth year as a member of the 
faculty. I believe that Professor Crea may hold the distinction of 
teaching more law students and training more lawyers than any other 
person in the United States and possibly in the world.
  Professor Crea's path to the law is even more amazing than his 
longevity as a faculty member. He was born in 1915 and spent his early 
years growing up in Manhattan's Lower East Side. His family moved to 
the Gravesend section of Brooklyn and there he attended Bay Ridge High 
School as an evening student. By day, he drove a bread truck, and one 
day he drove past a pile of discarded books in an empty field. He found 
among them a legal treatise on corporate reorganizations and, when he 
read it, he discovered that the legal fees for reorganizing a small 
railroad, even in the depths of the Great Depression, amounted to $2 
million. Then and there he decided that law school was for him.
  But first he would serve his country in World War II. Then as a 
returning veteran, he attended Brooklyn Law School at night, while 
working for the Selective Service Administration by day. He started law 
school even before he eventually graduated from Brooklyn College. 
During this period he also met and married his beloved wife Regina and 
started a family of four daughters.
  Despite his family and professional commitments, Joe Crea was such an 
able student that then Dean Carswell asked him to join the faculty. The 
first course he taught in 1948 was Torts. Since then, he has taught 
most of the courses in the curriculum at one time or another and 
continues to teach a full load of both Corporations and Commercial 
Paper courses as Professor Emeritus.
  In addition to being a key teacher and mentor for five decades of 
students, Professor Crea has been a pivotal member of the faculty. 
Nearly thirty years ago, at a critical moment in the law school's 
history, Joe Crea provided the leadership, vision, and cohesiveness 
that allowed Brooklyn Law School to begin its evolution into a modern 
law school with a national curriculum, faculty, and student body.
  Even today, he provides the history and wisdom that helps Brooklyn 
Law School face its new challenges as we approach the beginning of the 
21st century and the one-hundredth anniversary of Brooklyn Law School.
  This year Brooklyn Law School honors Professor Joseph Crea's fifty 
years of teaching with two separate gala celebrations. I offer this 
tribute which will be presented to him in commemoration of his years of 
service and the incomparable impact he has had on his colleagues and on 
tens of thousands of students.
  Mr. Speaker, please join me in congratulating Professor Joseph Crea 
for his distinguished years of teaching at a Brooklyn Law School.

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