[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 175 (Tuesday, November 13, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Page S14280]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to 
be printed in the Record.)

                     TRIBUTE TO DONALD J. MULVIHILL

 Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I speak in memory of the life of 
Donald J. Mulvihill, a distinguished lawyer, a proud public servant, 
and an honored friend of the Dodd family. He recently died at the age 
of 76.
  Donald gave nearly a half century--more than half of his life--to his 
law firm, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and the length of his service 
testifies to his dedication and consummate skill as an attorney. For 
more than four decades, he managed his firm's Washington office, where 
he gained a reputation as one of America's leading authorities on 
federal business regulations.
  Donald would tell you, though, that his most successful day at the 
office came when he was fresh out of law school and assigned to the 
same office as Grace Conroy, one of Cahill's first female lawyers. ``He 
thought he was getting demoted because they put a woman in his 
office,'' Grace would later joke. But Donald's attitude soon changed--
he and Grace were married 3 years later, and they spent 45 years 
together.
  Donald's skill in the law led President Johnson to tap him in 1968 to 
direct a task force on individual acts of violence for the National 
Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, a council convened 
in the wake of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Along 
with Princeton sociologist Mel Tumin, Donald wrote three volumes of the 
committee's final report, clearly detailing the link between 
deteriorating urban conditions and a swell in violent crime.
  In 1970, he wrote with great insight and penetration on what it means 
to feel the seductive draw of crime in the inner city, ``to be young, 
poor, male and Negro, to want what the open society claims is 
available, but mostly to others; to see illegitimate and often violent 
methods of obtaining material success, and to observe others using 
these means successfully.''
  For Donald, that was no mere academic conclusion; with the Eisenhower 
Foundation, he spent years working to put his recommendations into 
practice, giving as much energy to the revitalization of urban America 
as he did to his work in the law.
  His example still reminds us: An open society is justly measured by 
the gap between what it claims is available, and what it provides--
between what it promises, and what it delivers.
  For his services, Donald Mulvihill will be remembered as a public-
spirited leader who combined, in equal proportion, private success and 
civic duty. But I confess that all of those accomplishments mean 
comparatively little to me, next to what he did during a few months in 
1967.
  I was 23, but I can still recall as if it were yesterday the Senate's 
censure hearings of my father, Senator Tom Dodd. What a painful time 
that was for my family--but it gave me strength to know that sitting at 
my father's side, through the whole ordeal, was a talented young lawyer 
named Donald Mulvihill. I know how thankful my father was for Donald's 
good counsel.
  It was the rare case that Donald didn't win; but still, he won my 
father's sincere and lasting gratitude. And though Tom Dodd is long 
gone, my family and I have kept his gratitude alive.
  Now Donald is beyond our thanks. But I pledge to remember him, to 
keep alive his good name, and to hold up his example of a life well 
lived.

                          ____________________