[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.''
____________________