Herbert G. Bokish, engineer
Herbert G. Bokish, a German immigrant who became an AT&T engineer, died March 17 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at the Hospice of Palm Beach County in Boynton Beach, Fla. The former Randallstown resident was 85.
The son of Joseph Bokish, a machinist, and Esther Reidel Bokish, a homemaker, Herbert Gunther Bokish was born and raised in Gleiwitz, Germany, now a part of Poland, where he received his education.
In 1948, he moved to Israel, where he joined 10 family members who lived in a small tent, family members said. He served in the Israeli army, and after breaking a leg during parachute training, he was reassigned as a cook.
In 1955, relatives living in Vineland, N.J., sponsored Mr. Bokish, who worked after arriving until 1956 on their chicken farm.
He studied engineering at night school, family members said.,
From 1957 to 1961, he worked as an
William T. Coleman Jr., a civil rights lawyer from Philadelphia who prevailed in several landmark Supreme Court cases, broke a number of racial barriers in his own right and was the second African-American to lead a Cabinet-level department, died Friday at his Alexandria, Va., home of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Transportation secretary during the Ford administration and co-author of the main brief in Brown v. Board of Education, Mr. Coleman was a prominent Republican who advised presidents of both parties.
Mr. Coleman's service in President Gerald Ford's Cabinet from 1975 to 1977 was a high point in a career that included work on government commissions and partnerships in law firms in Philadelphia and Washington.
William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. was born on July 7, 1920, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia to a family of ministers, teachers and social workers.
Mr. Coleman showed an early interest in both civil rights and the law. As a teenager, he often spent vacation days sitting in on trials and decided early on he wanted to be a lawyer.
His first effort to break down a racial barrier occurred at Germantown High School when he tried to join the all-white swimming team. He was suspended for his activities.
“They abolished the team rather than let me swim,” Mr. Coleman recalled in a 1982 interview with The New York Times.
After graduation from Harvard Law School, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, becoming the first African-American to clerk at the nation's high court.
Following his clerkships, he became an associate at the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison law firm in New engineer for Design Service in New York City and then moved in 1961 to its branch in Chicago.
Mr. Bokish moved to Randallstown in 1964 when he went to work at Western Electric Corp.’s Point Breeze facility, where he designed power systems for telephone companies.
In 1980, he joined AT&T in Bethesda, where he worked until retiring in 1992.
He moved to Bethesda in 1987, and after retiring, to Boynton Beach, Fla.
Services for Mr. Bokish were held March 21 at Beth Israel Congregation in Boynton Beach.
He is survived by his wife of 58 years, the former Gail Still; a son, Bruce Bokish of Raleigh, N.C.; a daughter, Linda Bokish Lichtenauer of Reisterstown; four brothers, Gerhard Bockisch of Boynton Beach, Abraham Bokisch of Palm Coast, Fla., and David Bokish and Zeev Bokish, both of Israel; and four grandchildren. York City in 1949. There he did volunteer work with Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Mr. Coleman's best-known civil rights work was on a series of cases that were combined into Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court unanimously declared in 1954 that school segregation is unconstitutional.
He was co-counsel in the 1964 case of Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court struck down the ban on interracial marriages. In 1966, he represented Pennsylvania in its successful efforts to desegregate Girard College in Philadelphia.
In 1964, he was named an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That is where he first met Mr. Ford, a Republican congressman and a member of the panel.
In 1973, Mr. Coleman declined an offer by his longtime friend Attorney General Elliot Richardson to be the special prosecutor for Watergate.
Mr. Coleman accepted President Ford's offer to run the Transportation Department in 1975. A fiscal conservative, Mr. Coleman advocated less reliance on federal subsidies for transportation and higher user fees. The Democratic-controlled Congress continued to increase federal spending for transportation programs.
He returned to the practice of law when President Ford left office in 1977.
In 1982, he accepted the Supreme Court's invitation to appear as a friend of the court to challenge the Reagan administration's position that segregated private schools should be allowed to be taxexempt. Mr. Coleman's position prevailed.
President Bill Clinton awarded Coleman the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1995.