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1
SENATE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to
3learn of the death of Abner J. Mikva, who passed away on July
44, 2016 at the age of 90; and
 
5    WHEREAS, Abner Mikva was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; his
6parents were Ida and Henry Mikva; he married Zorita Wise on
7September 19, 1948; and
 
8    WHEREAS, In 1944, after graduating from Washington High
9School, Abner Mikva enrolled in the United States Army Air
10Corps; after the war, he enrolled at the University of
11Wisconsin in Madison, where he met his future wife, Zorita
12"Zoe", on a blind date; he later attended law school at the
13University of Chicago, where he served as editor-in-chief of
14the law review and finished near the top of his class; after
15graduating in 1951, he served as a law clerk for United States
16Supreme Court Justice, Sherman Minton; and
 
17    WHEREAS, Abner Mikva was long known in Chicago and
18Washington political and legal circles as a liberal reform
19leader and a man of unassailable integrity; in 1956, when he
20was living in Hyde Park and practicing law in the Chicago
21office of Goldberg and Devoe (later Goldberg, Devoe, Shadur,
22and Mikva), he was persuaded by his friends, Victor deGrazia

 

 

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1and Lou Silverman, leaders in the grassroots Independent Voters
2of Illinois, to run for a seat in the Illinois House of
3Representatives in the newly drawn 23rd District; he won the
4primary and became the first independent Democrat from Chicago
5in modern times to have been elected to the General Assembly;
6as a Representative, he was a prominent supporter of handgun
7control, fair housing, and election and civil service reforms;
8and
 
9    WHEREAS, In 1966, Abner Mikva lost a close Democratic
10congressional primary election in the Second Congressional
11District on Chicago's South Side; in 1968, he was elected to
12serve in the United States House of Representatives, where he
13served on the Judiciary Committee among other assignments; he
14was known for his pro-civil rights and civil liberties views
15and as an opponent of the Vietnam War; in 1971, he served as a
16floor manager when the House passed the 26th Amendment which
17lowered the voting age to 18; after reapportionment in 1970, he
18moved to Evanston and ran in the open, newly created 10th
19Congressional District in Chicago's northern suburbs; after a
20loss in 1972, he won three consecutive elections, each by a
21margin of less than one percent of the vote; his hard-earned
22victories were widely attributed to the legions of enthusiastic
23doorbell-ringing volunteers he inspired, including many high
24school and college students; when he returned to Washington
25after the 1974 election, he exercised an influential voice in

 

 

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1the post-Watergate House of Representatives, serving as
2chairman of the liberal House Democratic Study Group and as a
3tax reform leader on the powerful Ways and Means Committee; and
 
4    WHEREAS, In 1979, Abner Mikva was confirmed to the United
5States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by a vote of 58 to
631 in the Senate; he served on the court until 1994, the last
7four years as Chief Judge; of his many judicial opinions, the
8one of which he was most proud was the one he wrote in a 1993
9case for a unanimous three-judge panel rejecting the Navy's
10dismissal of a homosexual Naval Academy midshipman, one of the
11early rulings by a federal court defending LGBT rights; the
12following year, he left the court to become White House
13Counsel; and
 
14    WHEREAS, Upon returning to Chicago in 1997, Abner Mikva and
15his wife started the Mikva Challenge, a non-partisan
16organization that promotes civic and political engagement
17among high-school students; through the program, thousands of
18Chicago students, with support from Mikva Challenge staff and
19their teachers, have volunteered in local and national election
20campaigns, served as election judges, and worked on
21neighborhood and citywide issues that the students identify as
22important to them; the Mikva Challenge model is now being
23implemented by teachers and school districts in other cities,
24most recently in Washington, D.C.; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, Abner Mikva was awarded the Presidential Medal of
2Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2014; and
 
3    WHEREAS, Abner Mikva is survived by his wife, Zoe; his
4daughters, Mary, Laurie, and Rachel; his sons-in-law, Steven
5Cohen, James Pfander, and Mark Rosenberg; and his
6grandchildren, Rebecca and Jordan Cohen, Sarah, Samantha, and
7Benjamin Pfander and Jacob and Keren Mikva Rosenberg;
8therefore, be it
 
9    RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL
10ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we, along with his
11family and friends, mourn the passing of Abner J. Mikva; and be
12it further
 
13    RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
14presented to the family of Abner Mikva as an expression of our
15sympathy.