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Do a JoB—Harvey tHe litiGator
Nevertheless, it was a very heady experience that was capped off by my serving as messenger to take the signed petitions to the office of Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana (not to be confused with his son, Senator Birch Evan Bayh of Indiana) in Washington in time for the news confer- ence that was scheduled to reinvigorate the anti-Carswell campaign. I was thus the bearer of two incredibly heavy litigation bags, who, having taken a taxi to the wrong entrance of the Senate Office Building, had to trudge what must have been the length of two New York City long blocks in order to arrive completely perspired, but on time, to meet with the senator (not, I hasten to add, with a staffer).
History records that Carswell was defeated, and many credited the Judge for kick-starting the successful and unexpected endgame. And who ended up in Fortas’s vacant seat? Harry Blackmun (author of Roe v. Wade), the Republican who fooled Nixon and his party by becoming one of the most liberal justices on the modern Supreme Court.
To celebrate the victory, Judge Rosenman, a man who had coun- seled presidents, was gracious enough to take Asa Sokolow, Renée Roberts, and Harvey J. Yaverbaum to dine at La Côte Basque, an incred- ibly sophisticated, not to mention incredibly expensive, French restaurant, no longer with us, which was famous not just for its food and atmosphere but also for the attention regularly paid to it by such people as Jacqueline Kennedy and Frank Sinatra. Now that was one heck of a way to treat a fledging lawyer!
Most memorable about my trip to D.C. with the Carswell petitions, however, is the phone call that I made from a phone booth (that’s right, a phone booth!) in the Delta shuttle terminal at LaGuardia Airport. When I called home before boarding, Phyllis very excitably informed me that she had just learned that she was pregnant.
I was ecstatic! This wasn’t a pregnancy that had anything to do with the Vietnam War. This was a pregnancy that we wanted for the purest of reasons. It was real, and we were going to have a baby. It was actually going to happen. This time I had no doubts about the results: we were going to be a family, a beautiful family.
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