Time stopped in drab Cook County Eviction Court last week as the lawyer George N. Leighton smoothly argued for the Illinois International Port District in a marathon dispute involving a 1965 lease and whether a slip for big ships on the Calumet River was properly dredged.
Without reading from notes, the elegant Mr. Leighton detailed the silt-filled matter between the district, long known as the Chicago Regional Port District, and Dockside Development Corporation.
Standing ramrod straight before Judge Joan Powell and with a clear-as-a-bell baritone, he spent a flawless 15 minutes citing a tortuous history as he built to a strong, low-key climax, replete with a gentlemanly thank you “to Your Honor for being here this afternoon.”
Listening and viewing just his back from the gallery, you would guess that the intellectually nimble advocate was in his 50s, maybe early 60s. He walks with nary a limp. He looks as if he jumped out of a Hugo Boss show window. His hearing, eyesight, cholesterol — you name it — are all fine.
Mr. Leighton is 97.
“I got some advice from an elder care center and now take a few vitamins to avoid getting tired,” he said.
But Mr. Leighton is not discernibly different from when I first covered him, in 1977. He was a federal judge, a liberal Democrat nominated to the post in 1975 by President Gerald R. Ford after serving on the Cook County Appellate Court. He was tough but fair and didn’t tolerate imprecision.
“Tell me how the evidence indicates your client is innocent,” he would say.
He was a stickler for decorum and imposed longer sentences than many judges, though he was not a “banger,” federal building parlance for harsher colleagues.
And in a world in which we conflate celebrity and achievement, and where the definition of “extraordinary” can encompass quarterbacks in their 20s throwing three touchdowns, this man has led a remarkable life.
The son of Portuguese immigrants, he was born George Neves Leitao (a fourth-grade teacher arbitrarily changed his surname to Leighton) in New Bedford, Mass.
He worked with his parents in the cranberry bogs and picked blueberries and strawberries from March until late November, attending school for only a few months each year.
He finished seventh grade at age 17, went to sea on an oil tanker and returned to work in restaurants and to play percussion in a dance band.
Without having gone to high school, he talked his way into Howard University at age 24, where he graduated magna cum laude, and then became one of the few nonwhites of his era admitted to attend Harvard Law School.
After a year there, Mr. Leighton fought in the Pacific theater in World War II for three years. He then finished Harvard and arrived in Chicago in 1946, only to be barred from the segregated Chicago Bar Association.
He became a successful criminal defense lawyer who, after filing suit in 1951 for a black family blocked by angry whites from moving into an apartment they had rented in all-white Cicero, was indicted by a county grand jury for conspiracy to incite a riot and lower property values.
Thurgood Marshall, the future United States Supreme Court justice, represented Mr. Leighton, and the indictment was dismissed. Mr. Leighton was active in civil rights and represented Sam Giancana, a mobster and the head of Chicago’s organized crime outfit, convincing a judge that the Federal Bureau of Investigation needed to limit its surveillance of Mr. Giancana.
“With grace, integrity, humility, perseverance and extraordinary talent, George Leighton has defined for generations of men and women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds what it really means to be a lawyer,” said Jeffrey Colman, a Chicago lawyer who first appeared before him in 1977.
Other than an occasional Dry Sack sherry, Mr. Leighton doesn’t drink alcohol or coffee; he doesn’t smoke or even exercise. He is an inch and a half shorter, and only three pounds heavier, than when he was released from active duty on Oct. 23, 1945. A widower with four great-grandchildren, he plays high-level computer chess when he can’t sleep.
Mr. Leighton has a second home in Plymouth, Mass., but his ties to New Bedford are so great that the City Council and the local congressman, Representative Barney Frank, had the main post office named in his honor in 2005.
In two interviews, Mr. Leighton’s recall is startling. He is as upbeat as a religious broadcaster. And though he lost that port ruling, he told me the other day that he would definitely appeal.
Why not? Time is obviously on his side.
James Warren is a longtime Chicago journalist and the publisher of The Chicago Reader.
Read the original article from the Chicago News Cooperative.