Legislator was important SIDS activist, judge
The nation’s first statewide push to reduce Sudden Infant Death Syndrome started in Illinois under the leadership of Bernard Wolfe.
After a friend lost a baby to SIDS, Mr. Wolfe — at the time an Illinois lawmaker — helped organize a bipartisan commission in 1973 to investigate what was once called “crib death.” The group interviewed medical examiners, physicians and grieving families around the state.
He said he was seeking “to remove the stigma” for families.
“Coroners, fire rescue squads and police must be informed SIDS is a real killer,” he said at the time. “These unexplained deaths needn’t be linked with abuse.”
“One of the most important changes that came out of [his] study were the recommendations that SIDS be an acceptable diagnosis on the death certificate,” said Nancy Maruyama, a registered nurse and executive director of the organization SIDS of Illinois.
Mr. Wolfe’s “deep dedication to all bereaved parents and their beloved babies was clearly evident,” Maruyama said. “He brought SIDS to the forefront in Illinois, insisting that these families be treated with compassion and not suspicion.”
With SIDS, an otherwise healthy baby dies unexpectedly, usually in its sleep. Some scientists theorize it’s linked to an abnormality in the part of the brain that regulates heart rate, breathing and waking, and that environmental factors may also be involved, such as stomach-sleeping, soft bedding, high room temperatures and exposure to smoking.
It remains the top killer of infants between 1 and 12 months old, but after educational efforts like the 1994 national Back to Sleep campaign — which encouraged putting babies to bed on their backs — SIDS deaths dropped 50 percent nationwide. In Illinois, they have decreased by 76 percent, Maruyama said.
Before he died on April 9 at 101, Mr. Wolfe served five terms, from 1964 to 1974, as a state representative from Chicago. His statehouse friends included Abner Mikva, Anthony Scariano and Paul Simon — part of a group dubbed the “Kosher Nostra.”
After leaving the legislature, Mr. Wolfe spent a decade as a Cook County judge. He then worked as a court-appointed mediator in divorce cases. Earlier in his career, he worked in private practice and as a federal prosecutor.
As a judge, he advocated for mediation and joint custo- dy, and he issued news-making divorce rulings, according to his children, Bunny Polovin and Rick Wolfe.
In some cases where children loved their neighborhood and school — or if they had divided parental loyalties — he decreed that the youngsters should remain in the family home while their mother and father alternated residences instead.
“Let the inconvenience go to the parents rather than the children,” he said in 1979. “Usually, the kids are shuttled. ... This time, the parents will shuttle.”
He moved around as a kid, living in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. His father, Ira W. Wolfe, ran a lively restaurant in 1920s California, Coffee Dan’s, part of a ham-and-eggs chain rumored to have started as a speakeasy. It attracted movie stars, opera goers, sailors and the hoi polloi. Belter Sophie Tucker, known as “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” performed there.
In Chicago, young Bernard attended Schurz High School, Crane Junior College and Chicago-Kent Law School, graduating in 1937. Being a lawyer was a natural. “He liked to talk and argue things,” said Rick Wolfe.
During World War II, he served on a Navy supply vessel. He was honorably discharged after a fire hose, used during a ship blaze, struck his knee, shattering it.
As a federal lawyer in the 1940s, he helped implement inflation controls and regulate the wartime price of rubber, relatives said.
He had two long marriages. His wife of 46 years, Harriett Poncher, died in 1980. Later, he married Beulah Zee. They were wed 26 years until her death in 2008.
After raising his family in Peterson Park on the city’s North Side, he lived for 35 years in a condo on Lakeke Shore Drive, where he enjoyed watching the sailboats go in and out. Ten years ago, Mr. Wolfe moved, “kicking and screaming,” to a Glenview retirement community, his son said.
In the city, “He felt like he was in the middle of Chicago politics and the Daley Center,” said his grandson, Andy Polovin.
At 100, he self-published a novel based on his father called “From the Edge of the Crowd.”
A member of Chicago Sinai congregation, Mr. Wolfe served as the JAG officer for Post 800 Jewish War Veterans.
He is also survived by a stepson, Steve Zee, 10 grandchildren and many greatgrandchildren. Services have been held.