Robert Morgenthau Parlayed Luck & Fierce Integrity to Become 'America's DA'
Robert Morris Morgenthau takes a seat at his desk, sipping coffee from the vacuum-insulated, stainless steel cup he carried in when he arrived moments earlier. After 35 years as district attorney for New York County (meaning Manhattan) he recently chose not to seek re-election. Morgenthau is now situated handsomely as of counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City, the nation’s richest law firm.
He is asked about his very long career, for which just the highlight reel is fuller than the entire lives of many accomplished lawyers. Leaning back and occasionally dipping forward for coffee, he proceeds to speak for the first 40 minutes entirely about a man other than himself—though the stories do give him some purchase.
Morgenthau, who turns 91 in July, remains in awe of Robert L. Patterson. A legend himself, Patterson was Morgenthau’s mentor, giving him his first job in law at age 29.
Morganthau and President John F. Kennedy
Photo by Bettmann/Corbis
Morgenthau came a bit late to the profession: Between college and law school he spent 41⁄2 years in the Navy, mostly as executive officer on two destroyers in World War II, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander. When one was torpedoed and sank he treaded water for hours, and then swam to get attention from another ship. His surviving crew was plucked from the Mediterranean.
“I guess we were lucky,” he says.
That heroic tale clicked with Patterson, who had been decorated for bravery in World War I. Then in 1940, at age 49, he left his seat on the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to go to boot camp and regain his commission in anticipation of the next war. While emptying garbage cans on KP, Patterson learned by phone he would be leaving camp for appointment as U.S. undersecretary of war. He later would become the secretary.
“He either liked you or he didn’t like you,” Morgenthau recalls of his job interview with Patterson, where he’d been steered by one of his Yale Law School professors. “And I was lucky. He liked me.”
Continue reading “The Boss” here online in the June issue of the ABA Journal.
