Notes on Thomas P. Griesa, a federal judge and a gold-standard friend
My friend Tom was a reader of my “stuff” — just about the most appreciative one — and I have mentioned him over the years. Quoted him. Sometimes anonymously, sometimes not. A lot of my judicial wisdom came from him. Anyway, I will devote a whole column to him.
He was Thomas P. Griesa, a distinguished judge of the Southern District of New York. A better man, you never knew. Warm, loving, principled, funny, smart, democratic, adventuresome, ever reliable. Damn near perfect, I would say.
If you want to read his obit in the New York Times, go here. I will simply speak personally.
How do you pronounce his name? His last name? His wife, Chris, had a saying about it: “Sounds French, looks Italian, is German.” They pronounced it “Grih-SAY.” What can you say? It was pretty much the most confusing name in America. But they wore it well.
Tom was from Kansas City, Chris from St. Louis. So, it was a mixed marriage, I used to observe. The two great, warring capitals of Missouri, united.
I went with Tom to Kansas City once. Have several stories from that trip — the first of which takes place in the airport, before we left New York.
We were going through the process — taking off our shoes, emptying our pockets, getting the bins right — when Tom said, “I can’t stop thinking of Mrs. Eiseman.”
Mrs. Eiseman — Gertrude Eiseman — was Tom’s Sunday School teacher in Boston, when Tom was a college student, at Harvard. She was a wonderful woman — and a good friend of Tom and Chris’s in their adult lives.
At the airport, Tom said, “Mrs. Eiseman was such a lady. She was always perfectly dressed, immaculately dressed. There was not a thread out of place, and not a hair out of place. I just can’t imagine her going through all this rigmarole.”
After a while, we agreed that Mrs. Eiseman would know exactly what to wear, and exactly how to behave.
I used to kid Tom that he had been a cog in the Pendergast machine — the political machine of Tom Pendergast, the old boss of Kansas City. Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth.
Tom told me a number of stories about Pendergast. “He gambled heavily,” Tom said. “Thousands and thousands of dollars a day, in the Depression.” That’s one reason his corruption was so vast — he had to pay his gambling debts.
Pendergast owned a concrete company (along with other things, including the city itself, in a way). In the mid ’30s, he paved Brush Creek — which was lucrative. I guess the water flows over concrete. “They call it ‘Flush Creek,’” Tom told me. “You don’t want to know why.”
Tom and his family were very Republican, and they hated the machine. They were also not too crazy about FDR. In 1936, when Tom was six, the paper delivered news that Roosevelt had defeated Landon. Little Tom stomped up and down on the paper. (He was later a model of self-control.)
Speaking of newspapers: Tom said that newsboys would come through the neighborhood shouting “Extra! Extra!” as in the movies. He remembered two occasions, in particular: in 1939, when Pendergast was indicted for income-tax evasion; and in 1945, when FDR died — and Truman, a local, became president.
Tom met Truman once, in Independence, after Truman left office. Tom simply asked to come visit him, and Truman said sure.
He went to Southwest High School, Tom did, and it was one of the best high schools in the country. On our visit to Kansas City, we drove by it. “Home of the Indians,” said an old sign (obviously old). The school had been closed — done in, said Tom, by bad judicial decisions.
When I saw him last, we talked about high school. “Were you the valedictorian?” I asked, mischievously. “No,” he said, with disgust. But he went on to say that he had contrived to speak at graduation anyway. Somehow, he finagled the principal into letting him give a talk on U.S.-U.K. relations after the war. Tom had spoken to the British consul in Kansas City in preparation.
At Harvard, Tom studied the classics, and one of his favorite professors was Werner Jaeger, a great German scholar. Tom would invent reasons to go to his office hours, just because it was “so exciting to be in his presence,” as Tom said.
Jaeger wrote a famous, or once-famous, three-volume work called “Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture.” Tom got the first volume inscribed. Sometime last year, at his direction, I took it down from a high shelf. The inscription was in Greek (which I don’t read). “What does it say?” I asked Tom. He answered, “It says something like, ‘May you be who you already are.’”
After college, he served in the Coast Guard. And he went to Stanford Law School. One of his professors there was Phil Neal, who later became famous as the dean of the law school at Chicago.
I met Phil Neal once. He had been a college classmate of John Kennedy’s. In fact, they were good friends. Neal beat JFK in a student-council election. It was the only election he ever lost.
Back to Tom — who went to Washington to work at the Justice Department, late in the second Eisenhower administration. The attorney general was Bill Rogers, William P. Rogers, who would later be a secretary of state under Nixon.
At last, Tom made his grand arrival in New York. He joined the firm of Davis, Polk — the Davis being the 1924 Democratic presidential nominee, John W. Davis, who lost to the incumbent, Coolidge. Tom worked under Lawrence Walsh, who would become well-known in the 1980s as the special counsel in the Iran-contra affair.
Tom respected Walsh a great deal. So do I, although I didn’t in the ’80s.
I used to tease Tom mercilessly about Davis, Polk (as I did about everything). I would say what a hoity-toity firm it was. “Tom,” I might say, “I’m sure that Jews weren’t allowed to work there. But could you take them as clients?” He would give me a dismissive wave of the hand, a classic gesture of his. (Tom, a staunch conservative, was the most liberal-minded guy in town.)
Before long, he was made a partner of the firm — and very quickly after that, he left it to join the federal bench.
I used to tell Chris, “He doomed you to a life of poverty. You could have been rollin’ in it, as the wife of a Davis, Polk partner, over the decades. You could have been like Zsa Zsa Gabor, here on the Upper East Side. But instead, you have a plain Republican cloth coat.”
He managed to keep her in an Adolfo or two. And he himself wore Brooks Brothers, always. I teased him about this no end. I’d sometimes check the label of his jacket, just to be sure.
He bought me several items from “Brooks,” as he called it, and he did the same for his nephew, Christopher Meyer. It gave Tom great pleasure. He was very generous. But also, in my case, I think he wanted to implicate me.
Tom Griesa — the Honorable Thomas P. Griesa — is my idea of a judge: devoted to the rule of law, devoted to procedure, devoted to that whole way of life. Once, I expressed some skepticism about juries. He assured me that they usually got it right — and that the jury system is invaluable.
Not too long ago, he was saying that American institutions in general are strong. People come and go. The institutions are designed for the longer haul.
He had a very big office — I’m talking about his physical office. He was slightly embarrassed about this, and I’d milk it. I might say, “Tom, I hear the NYU lacrosse team needs a place to practice. Is your office available on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons?”
He hated it — hated it and loved it — when I’d ask, “How are things going down at the Daniel P. Moynihan Building?” It’s not that he minded that the place was named after Moynihan, which he did. It’s that he didn’t think it should be named after anyone.
He once pronounced, “Do you know what the best name for a U.S. courthouse is? ‘U.S. Courthouse.’”
As far as I’m concerned, that ought to go in Bartlett’s. Here’s another one from Tom: “A mediocre night at the opera beats a mediocre night at the ballet. But a great night at the ballet beats everything.”
Tom was a pianist and a harpsichordist; Chris was a ballerina. They inhaled the arts, as they did life itself.
Do you know the Griesa Rule? I named it that many years ago. Once, at a restaurant, Tom said, “I’ve read everything left, right, and center for many years. I’ve done my due diligence. From now on, I’m not going to read anything I’m not going to agree with.”
Some of us adopt this stance, this rule, prematurely . . .
He and Chris traveled all over: to Stratford, Ontario, for theater; to Salzburg, Austria, for music. When Chris could no longer go very far, Tom organized a trip to the Statue of Liberty. He was as enthusiastic about that as about anything.
A year or two ago, he wanted a tour of Brooklyn. Christopher and his wife, Jane, were living there. He wanted to get to know the borough better. So he did, in a limo. He had the spirit of discovery, and appreciation.
He loved — loved — his law clerks. He had a big alumni association of clerks. One of them had been the Rose Queen, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. He got a kick out of that.
Tom Griesa was devoted to his church, to the law, to his country, to his friends — and if he met you, you were his friend. He was always so happy to see you! When he greeted you, you were really greeted. There was never a readier or heartier handshake. It was that way right till the very end, when he was flat on his back. The handshake was just the same. The delight in seeing you was just the same.
By the way, I never knew a man who complained so little. Ever.
Whenever I saw him, he made me feel better, though my intention might have been to make him feel better. I never saw a greater example of moral courage. Ever. He was moral courage personified.
A great man, full of Christly wisdom and Christly love. A great man, a real man. I’m so glad I knew him, and know him.