New York's No. 1 Lawyer
He didn't win his high-profile BCCI case. But for District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, 74, that was just a temporary setback
The war years gave Morgenthau his own first shot at public service. Joining the Navy the day after graduating from Amherst, he became a lieutenant commander and was torpedoed twice--once in the Pacific, once in the Mediterranean, where his ship sank. "It sounds corny," Morgenthau admits, "but when I was swimming around out there, I made a couple of promises. One of them was that if I got out alive, I'd devote myself to public service."
Discharged in 1945, he earned a Yale law degree, then went to work as a corporate lawyer. "When my father left the government," says Morgenthau, "he was really lost. So I wanted to be sure that I had a profession I could always go back to." Former colleagues remember him as an earnest young man who often roller-skated to work. He soon became active in Democratic politics. When childhood pal Jack Kennedy became president in 1960, Morgenthau was named U.S. attorney for New York's southern district. He quickly won headlines with racketeering and corruption convictions.
Zest shortage. No one has ever accused Bob Morgenthau of charisma, at least not the kind needed to be elected governor of New York. But in 1962, he ran against incumbent Nelson Rockefeller. It was a monumental flop. Another try in 1970 was no more successful. Often painfully shy, and a wooden public speaker, he wasn't made for campaigning, recalls Mike Cherkasky, former chief of the DA's investigation division, who handled Morgenthau's successful re-election campaign for DA in 1985. "We'd bring him to a street corner to shake hands with passersby; within 20 seconds, he'd wander off."
But Morgenthau looks back with no regrets. Any larger public role, he says, would cut into the small amounts of free time he spends with his wife, journalist Lucinda Franks, and their two children, son Joshua, 9, and adopted daughter Amy, 3. Morgenthau's first wife, Martha Pattridge, with whom he had five children, died of cancer in 1972.
Endorsed by Republicans and Liberals, as well as Democrats, the DA remains unchallenged for re-election this November. He plans to stay on the job "as long as my health is good and the public wants me." That said, he lights up his first cigar of the day.
The walls of his office are decorated with a lifetime of eclectic trophies: photos with FDR, young Bob leading his shipmates in parade, two counterfeit "Dufy" gouaches confiscated from a forger, the old Stars and Stripes that stood by his father's desk during the New Deal days. The flag is never far from his mind. When the BCCI case broke and Morgenthau asked his friend Harry Albright, a partner in his old law firm, to become a court-appointed trustee of First American, Albright says he hesitated. "It was going to be a tough job. But Bob really leaned on me. He told me, 'Your uncle needs you.' Uncle? I asked. What uncle? 'Your Uncle Sam,' he told me. 'Your Uncle Sam needs you.' "
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