Mary Abigail McCarthy

...The visit comforted me a lot...

...I call it that because you were truly unique, bringing to each case, no matter how seemingly 'routine,' a fresh perspective on some statutory phrase, legislative history, or obscure clause in a court rule that no one had ever bothered to read before...

...And another: "I am working now with very talented, very hard-working attorneys...

...Slowly, quietly, like snowflakes -like small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night-little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her...

...You have-to be sure-taught me about the law, about drama and the law, about litigating, and about how tough and irrational the legal system can be...

...There is a very empty place she had filled with her passion, her teaching, her wit, and her insight...

...Another wrote from California: "Mary should have had many more years with us and we with her...

...Although you made my job a thousand times harder, I have admired you greatly from the start...

...One friend summed it up this way: "We all loved Mary very much...

...I sincerely wish that I could have given to Mary as she gave to me...

...She still had her delightful sardonic sense of humor and was still able to be almost as wonderfully present as ever...

...We wanted you to know...

...Clients wrote as well...

...That level underlies everything, and makes reflection impossible...

...She was also a friend, a faculty member whom I could call by first name, who was interested in other parts of my life, not just my legal education...

...One of her friends and colleagues wrote of Mary as teacher in the last year of her life: "The representation of clients poses a particular challenge for clinical professors...

...What I miss, though, is talking over cases with someone who wants desperately to win for the clients' sake rather than for wallet-fulfillment...

...In grief I find that you live on two levels-a level on which you function quite normally, write, go out to dinner, chat, enjoy others you love, do the chores of every day-and another level on which you wander in a kind of wilderness of wavering attention, strange lapses of memory, bursts of sorrow and fierce longing...

...His wife added: "Many people are gifted-but few use their gifts as Mary did...

...She has been uncompromising in commitment to zealous, effective representation of clients, and if students have learned nothing else from her, they learned that lawyers exist to serve others and to serve them well...

...Yes, we were, and it is very hard that she is not with us still...

...I believe that my own clients have benefited in turn, from the many lessons I learned as a young 'kid' who had the chance to watch a true master in action...

...A lawyer who was a clerk to a judge when Mary was in the Public Defender Service wrote: "Certain experiences in our lives make an indelible impression-things we hear and see that make such an impact we can remember every detail with great clarity years later...

...One of her high-school friends wrote to say, "I have such fond memories....you were blessed to have such a special daughter-bright, warm, funny, feisty, and loving...

...Your representation of your clients was such an experience for me...

...Abigail McCarthy NARY ABIGAIL McCARTHY 'BLESSED IS SHE THAT CONSIDERETH THE NEEDY' must thank Keith Burris (Commonweal, October 12) for writing about what I have felt I could not-the life and death of our dearly loved daughter, Mary Abigail McCarthy...

...her intelligence, of course...

...She gave us our life...

...She treated everyone as an individual and generated in return deep affection and respect...

...The real shape will be quite hidden in the end...

...We are just plain people-Mary had nothing to gain by helping us...

...We shared many projects, dinners, values, a few arguments, and a warm caring friendship...

...I was incarcerated at the time...

...Back in '86, however, you taught me more about courage and integrity and conviction than about the law...

...One colleague wrote that, "Mary cared deeply about teaching and devoted an inordinate amount of time and energy to her students...

...Thanks to Mary, my incarceration came to an end several months later...

...Over the years I have felt that Mary's sudden appearance in my life (after six years in prison and after a petition for reduced sentence had been long ignored) was rather mysterious...

...And those we did not know wanted us to know how much she meant to them...

...Those who read what Keith Burris wrote about her-"a great teacher, but more, a great person who remained true to the clear idealism of the sixties without the crutch of nostalgia...

...And a friend who came a few days before Mary died said: "I was surprised and enormously pleased that she was well enough to talk for a while...

...I think that is true and, because I don't want that to happen, I have not and will not try to write about Mary...

...The zeal, the freshness, and the diligence with which you represented your clients at PDS (Public Defender Service) was and always will be an inspiration to me...

...And I can share what those others have written...

...One law student wrote: "I don't think I have ever told you that you made a strong positive influence in my life...

...And still another: "Your willingness to speak up very bluntly about things that matter to you reminded me that lawyers don't always have to equivocate-that some issues require us to take a firm stand even if it's unpopular...

...Mary McCarthy inhabits that tension as skillfully and sensitively as anyone in the business...

...They must provide an opportunity to learn-by-doing without sacrificing clients in the process...

...Mary had a gift for friendship...

...I want her back for my selfish reasons, and I am also upset that this new first-year class won't get to learn from her example...

...I have vivid memories of what I have come to call the 'Mary McCarthy' school of law...

...Lewis's A Grief Observed, a notebook of jottings written after the death of his wife, Joy, also from cancer...

...The one thing he feared in writing, he said, was that the person he loved would become "a more and more imaginary woman...

...The most moving letter began: "Mary touched my life as well...

...Your endless quest for new ways to challenge 'the system' was amazing-and sometimes, a little scary...

...Mary was a very special role model for me...

...As Professor Stephen Cohen said at her graveside, the love and support she received from her friends was a reflection of her own gift...

...her common sense...

...Having been introduced to 'practice' by you, I believe I will always have only the highest standards for our profession...

...She showed me how to be a loyal and thorough advocate for my client, how to maintain the highest ethical standards at all times, and how to be calm in the midst of legal chaos...

...There have been so many letters like these and they are still coming-from contemporaries and from former neighbors and long-ago convent-school classmates, too...

...and, most of all, her sense of humor...

...Some of my best memories center around Mary's bottomless soup pot and the lively gatherings of colleagues that she brought together in the beach cottage she so loved...

...Letters to Mary from students and former students in that last year bear that out...

...But she did anyway...

...A kind friend sent me C.S...

...And many students and former students wrote to us enforcing that...

...her sense of outrage...

...One student's letter was typical: "Personally, I am stunned and enormously sad...

...a lawyer whose "commitment to law was incidental to her commitment to justice"-know that she was loved and valued by many others...

...But quotations from those we were able to save are moving testimony...

...I can never repay my debt to Mary, but I think she would have been glad to know that when I found a way to give to another I said inside, 'That's a "Thank you" to Mary.' We were a little moment in Mary's life...

...You shared with me some of your indelible spirit....I wish my life to have some of the effect on people that yours has had on mine...

...Her friends were faithful and constant- many traveled great distances to see and be with her in that last year...

...You have set for me an example to which I see few aspire...

...However, it is not possible to think of my freedom without thinking of Mary...

...I believe that Mary's efforts to my benefit were greater than she ever acknowledged to me....I had the sense that Mary believed she was merely doing her duty, and for that no praise or thanks was warranted...

...She appreciated these letters but she abhorred clutter and, after reading them, threw them away...