Attorney Charne helped desegregate schools
Irvin B. Charne was a quiet man of modest nature, with a love of music and a dedication to the law.
The son of a tailor turned corner grocer, he grew up in the three-room apartment behind his father’s store and went on to carve out a distinguished career as an attorney.
Along the way he served his country, inspired his children and swung sweetly enough on the clarinet to play in college dance bands.
Charne died last week after a long illness. He was 95.
Perhaps best known for his work as one of the attorneys representing children in litigation that desegregated Milwaukee Public Schools in the 1970s, Charne was a widely respected lawyer who practiced in a variety of areas.
Among other cases, Charne won equal pay for a group of female brewery workers and handled the complicated liquidation of an insurance company.
The U.S. Supreme Court appointed him to represent a man challenging Wisconsin’s sex crimes law, and following Charne’s argument the court ordered a new hearing for the man.
In 1976, Federal Judge John Reynolds appointed Charne to serve as cocounsel with Lloyd Barbee in the longstanding case over segregation in Milwaukee schools.
A court-approved settlement calling for sweeping measures to desegregate the schools was reached in 1979. A few years later, Charne was representing Milwaukee Public Schools in a legal challenge to suburban districts — a case that led to a settlement providing for the transfer of students between the city and suburbs.
A 1978 Milwaukee Journal article said Charne enjoyed a reputation as “a thorough and shrewd legal strategist” and as “one of Milwaukee’s finest trial lawyers.”
His colleagues felt likewise. In 1999, Charne received the Professionalism Award from the American Inns of Court for the Seventh Circuit, an honor given annually “to a lawyer or judge whose life and practice display sterling character and unquestioned integrity, coupled with ongoing dedication to the highest standards of the legal profession and the rule of law.”
Charne was born in Milwaukee in 1922. By the time he was 7, his parents were running a small grocery store in Riverwest, at the corner of N. Weil and E. Wright streets.
Charne graduated from East Division (Riverside) High School and had begun college when his reserve unit was called to active duty and was sent to Attu, in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
“I rose to private first class,” Charne later told a Milwaukee Journal reporter.
It was a characteristically humble remark.
“He was very quiet,” said his son James. “He was a very modest person.”
After the war , Charne’s unit was stationed in California, and Charne, a fan of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, was assigned to a band that included many professional musicians.
“Playing with them,” he later wrote, “was my best military experience.”
After his discharge, Charne returned to college. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin Law School and, in 1951, entered private practice.
James Charne said his father stressed that the most important goal of a professional such as an attorney should be providing service, not making money.
“And if you do a good job and you provide service, then the rest takes care of itself,” James said, quoting his father. “He felt very strongly about that.”
James Charne said his parents, rather than trying to impose their own viewpoint, always supported him and his brother, David, in their life choices.
Surviving Charne are his wife of 71 years, Merla; his son James; and a sister, Anita Laufer. Services were held Monday.