[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 151 (Wednesday, November 20, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11730-S11731]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      A TRIBUTE TO ARMAND DERFNER

 Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, we have numerous inspirations in 
our Charleston, SC, community, but finally one unsung hero was heralded 
in the Post and Courier article this past Saturday. Armand Derfner 
spent his life fighting for the underdog, dedicated to civil rights. As 
a child of the Holocaust, his story is particularly inspirational. I 
ask unanimous consent to print the article in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Post and Courier, Nov. 16, 2002]

  Attorney's Lifelong Passion To Defend Underdog Has Taken Him to the 
                         Nation's Highest Court

                       (By Jennifer Berry Hawes)

       It's telling enough that Armand Derfner would win a 
     prestigious national award that honors an attorney who has 
     most contributed to the public interest in a precedent-
     setting case.
       What's just as telling: Derfner missed the fancy, Oscar-
     like ceremony to get it.
       Derfner and his wife, Mary Giles, were sitting on a tarmac 
     in Charleston because their flight was delayed.
       Of course, he had a defense for cutting it too close. He 
     couldn't miss cross-examining a witness the day before. 
     Besides, Derfner just isn't a man of pomp.
       The honor is called the 2002 Trial Lawyer of the Year 
     Award. It was given the summer by the Trial Lawyers for 
     Public Justice.
       Derfner and three other attorneys were honored for this 
     year's huge settlement of their 27-year class-action lawsuit 
     over Mississippi's treatment of the state's black college 
     students and its traditionally black universities.
       The state settled for $513 million. Now, even the suit's 
     settlement is being disputed: ``It's still going on!'' 
     Derfner grins.
       Such a draining, drawn-out conflict could tax many people. 
     But a good debate of any sort delights Derfner. It's why such 
     an ardent liberal can enjoy life in conservative Charleston. 
     ``Armand always goes against the wind,'' says his longtime 
     friend Martin Gold.
       As a Jewish kid growing up in New York, Derfner's friends 
     backed the Brooklyn Dodgers.
       Derfner cheered the Giants, the working man's team.
       Call it an early showing of a lifelong passion for 
     defending the underdog, a passion he's taken to courtrooms 
     around the nation--namely the South--arguing Civil rights 
     cases, taking several to its highest court.
       He's argued before the U.S. Supreme Court five times, and 
     won them all. He's won several more cases that he didn't have 
     to argue before the justices. He's also testified several 
     times before Congress.
       But in his hometown Charleston, he's better known for 
     challenging County Council's at-large system of elections, 
     arguing that the system discriminates against black voters. 
     He also defended the Charleston 5 and argued that County 
     Council violated the Constitution by posting the Ten 
     Commandments.
       They can be unpopular positions. It's why Derfner needs a 
     sense of humor to work in a place like this.
       In his office at Broad and Church streets, his thick legal 
     texts and filing cabinets tower near a pinball machine. And 
     this is no respectable pinball machine. It features The Fonz 
     and a buxom, redheaded Pinky Tuscadero. Get him playing and 
     Derfner, in slacks and a tie, grins like a 12-year-old in an 
     arcade.
       ``Stuffy, he's not,'' former partner Ray McClain says with 
     a laugh. ``He's not someone with the slightest trace of 
     arrogance or condescension.''
       Nor is he shy with his opinions. In 1999, amid the battle 
     flag debate, Derfner wrote this letter to the editor: ``I 
     believe the Confederate flag should keep flying over the 
     state Capitol. It is a useful reminder about the people 
     inside, like a warning label on a hazardous product or a sign 
     at the zoo saying, ``Beware of the Animals.''
       While Derfner has a lighter side, talk about his work and 
     he turns intense.

[[Page S11731]]

       On his office wall hangs a sketch of a white hand uplifting 
     a black one. In Hebrew and English, it reads, ``Thou shalt 
     not stand idly by.''
       And stand by he hasn't.


                             FLEEING HITLER

       His Jewish family lived in Poland as Hitler came to power. 
     With the rise of Nazi control in 1936, his parents fled their 
     home with forged Swedish passports. They traveled through 
     Germany and on to France, where they settled in Paris.
       In 1938, his mother gave birth to Armand, her first child. 
     During Derfner's first year of life, Hitler's aggression 
     escalated, and his troops expanded their control. The next 
     year, the Nazis invaded Poland.
       His parents, foreseeing that Hitler would not stop there, 
     tried to get passports to the United States--but couldn't.
       Finally, as the Nazis began to invade France, Derfner's 
     mother got the passports. His father raced to the U.S. 
     Consulate to get American visas. But the consulate was packed 
     up and the workers heading out. One worker still there broke 
     open a locked desk drawer and stamped the visas.
       It was June 12, 1940, Derfner's second birthday.
       They left Paris by train just hours before the Nazi troops 
     arrived. By June 14, Nazis occupied the city.
       The Derfners fled south and stopped in Bordeaux. They 
     crossed by train into Spain and then to Portugal, where they 
     boarded a Greek ship, the Nea Hellas, on its way to New York.
       Exactly one month later, on July 12, they landed in New 
     York.
       Derfner grew up mostly in New York, surrounded by fellow 
     Jewish immigrants with similar family stories. Many older 
     people he knew had numbers tattooed on their forearms.
       Derfner's parents never again saw their families in Poland. 
     ``Everyone was killed in concentration camps,'' he says, 
     turning emotional.
       Years later, Derfner would sit with his mother to look at 
     family pictures. On a good day, she could make it through 
     four or five names before breaking down. ``Everyone she'd 
     ever known was gone.
       ``In my family, there's always been this sense that there 
     is supposed to be justice in the world, and we're supposed to 
     help people get it,'' he says. Even before the Holocaust, his 
     father's family had gone to Palestine in the 1920s to fight 
     the British. ``Maybe it's a family tradition.''
       Today, Derfner's younger brother, Larry, is a journalist in 
     Israel who covers the conflict there for U.S. News & World 
     Report and the Jerusalem Post, an English-language newspaper. 
     His sister, Suzanne, is a lawyer for children with 
     disabilities in California.
       After growing up, Derfner got his undergraduate degree from 
     Princeton and then graduated from Yale Law School in 1963, 
     Derfner--and the nation--was focused on the civil rights 
     movement.
       He was among those who headed into law ``as an engine for 
     social change,'' McClain says.
       In college, Derfner clerked for the chief judge of a U.S. 
     court of appeals and then landed a job at Covington & 
     Burling, among the most prestigious firms in Washington, DC. 
     He began traveling to Mississippi for stints to work in civil 
     rights cases.
       When a civil rights law group needed a full-time attorney, 
     he packed up and moved south. Soon after, in 1968, he argued 
     his first case before the U.S. Supreme Court, an early Voting 
     Rights Act case.
       Derfner was just 29, a young liberal standing before the 
     court's renowned liberals, Earl Warren and Hugo Black, who 
     grilled him good.
       ``They were giants then,'' he recalls. ``And it was such an 
     exciting experience, so exciting to see the court looking at 
     laws and consulting in a way I though was so good for the 
     country.''


                            old mississippi

       When he moved to Mississippi, he was joined by his first 
     wife, Mary Frances. They'd met in Washington. She was from an 
     old Charleston family named Legare, he was a New York son of 
     Jewish immigrants.
       Different as they could have been, they shared a passion 
     for civil rights. And they were about to become partners in 
     risky work.
       When Derfner landed in Mississippi in the late 1960s, a man 
     he didn't know greeted him at the airport. ``Hello, Mr. 
     Derfner.'' He was followed day and night. And he was 
     threatened. His dog was poisoned. He was arrested and jailed 
     for contempt of court.
       And while driving down a highway with May Frances one day, 
     a bullet smashed through the passenger window beside her, 
     shattering it, but missing them.
       ``It was definitely a war zone,'' he says. ``I had a lot of 
     friends who were shot at, so I wasn't surprised.''
       Yet he never unlisted his phone number. And Mary Frances 
     remained active in the work with him. They stayed for three 
     years.
       ``After a while, I could see that the work was so intense 
     and so unrelenting that it has an effect. I began to feel 
     like it was time to take a break.''
       They returned to Washington for several years. He was 
     thrilled to work on hot national issues, but at times the 
     work was abstract, less personal than toiling in legal 
     trenches, working hands-on with clients who needed help.
       And the couple wanted to start a family.
       Yet Mary Frances suffered from juvenile diabetes. As a 
     teenager, her doctor had said that she would die young and 
     couldn't bear children. When they met, she'd already begun 
     to feel the terrible disease's effects but didn't believe 
     the doctor's dire prediction.
       ``She was active while being sick,'' Derfner smiles. ``Her 
     life was a miracle, too.''
       Mary Frances drove, even played baseball. And she wanted to 
     have children.
       But they didn't want to raise them in Washington and 
     preferred to move south, closer to family and the civil 
     rights work they loved. Her aunt was lieutenant governor, and 
     her grandfather had been instrumental in restoring what 
     became Charles Towne Landing.
       In 1974, they made the move. Their first son, Joel, was a 
     baby then. When Joel was born, doctors warned that he might 
     not live because he was so premature. But he did.
       And after they moved to Charleston, the Derfners welcomed 
     their second son, Jeremy. Doctors again warned that the 
     newborn might not live. He also survived.
       Today, both sons live in New York. Joel, a Porter-Graud 
     School valdictorian and Harvard summa cum laude graduate, 
     composes musical theater. ``I expect to see his name up in 
     lights one of these days,'' Derfner says, smiling proudly.
       Jeremy, named Porter-Gaud's best all-around, graduated from 
     Brown University summa cum laude, wrote for Slate magazine 
     and now is pursuing this Ph.D. at Columbia University.
       When he moved to Charleston, Derfner joined a firm here 
     with McCain and Frank Epstein working on civil rights and 
     workers' rights cases. Twice he served as South Carolina's 
     representative to the American Civil Liberties Union's 
     national board.
       Despite his liberal views in Charleston, Derfner says he 
     never felt unwelcome. That may be thanks in part to his 
     synagogue involvement and Mary Frances' family roots here.
       then in 1981, the Derfners returned to Washington for a 
     third time to pursue a chance to extend the Voting Rights 
     Act.
       Derfner toiled from an office near the U.S. Capitol and 
     taught at American University. He worked closely with 
     Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy and clashed with his home 
     state's Sen. Storm Thurmond.
       ``He could be legitimately called one of the two or three 
     most experienced and most effective attorneys in the area of 
     voting rights in the country,'' McClain says.
       But the Derfners returned, again, to Charleston. Soon 
     after, around 1990, Mary Frances's diabetes ravaged her body.
       She died in 1992 when she was just 45.
       Joel was in college, and Jeremy in high school at Porter-
     Graud. ``I think they were raising me,'' Derfner says, 
     looking back on the painful time.
       McClain recalls the years Derfner cared for his wife.
       ``He was very devoted,'' McClain says. ``He grieved quite 
     deeply for Mary Frances.''


                              joy in life

       But then, in the mid-1990s, Derfner met a woman named Mary 
     Giles. She worked at the S.C. Historical Society, which has 
     archived some of Derfner's papers.
       He became intrigued by this warm woman who found a 
     fascinating life behind potentially dry documents. They began 
     to date.
       They married in 2000. Today, she works as archivist for the 
     Catholic Diocese of Charleston.
       Talking about her, Derfner grins big, like a boy with a 
     giant crush. She's clearly returned joy to his life.
       ``She's an extraordinarily warm person,'' he says. ``People 
     are bulldozed by how close you feel to her. I know I was.''

                          ____________________