SR2488 99TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SR2488 LRB099 24026 GRL 51624 r

SENATE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to learn of the death of Abner J. Mikva, who passed away on July 4, 2016 at the age of 90; and

WHEREAS, Abner Mikva was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; his parents were Ida and Henry Mikva; he married Zorita Wise on September 19, 1948; and

WHEREAS, In 1944, after graduating from Washington High School, Abner Mikva enrolled in the United States Army Air Corps; after the war, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he met his future wife, Zorita "Zoe", on a blind date; he later attended law school at the University of Chicago, where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review and finished near the top of his class; after graduating in 1951, he served as a law clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice, Sherman Minton; and

WHEREAS, Abner Mikva was long known in Chicago and Washington political and legal circles as a liberal reform leader and a man of unassailable integrity; in 1956, when he was living in Hyde Park and practicing law in the Chicago office of Goldberg and Devoe (later Goldberg, Devoe, Shadur, and Mikva), he was persuaded by his friends, Victor deGrazia and Lou Silverman, leaders in the grassroots Independent Voters of Illinois, to run for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives in the newly drawn 23rd District; he won the primary and became the first independent Democrat from Chicago in modern times to have been elected to the General Assembly; as a Representative, he was a prominent supporter of handgun control, fair housing, and election and civil service reforms; and

WHEREAS, In 1966, Abner Mikva lost a close Democratic congressional primary election in the Second Congressional District on Chicago's South Side; in 1968, he was elected to serve in the United States House of Representatives, where he served on the Judiciary Committee among other assignments; he was known for his pro-civil rights and civil liberties views and as an opponent of the Vietnam War; in 1971, he served as a floor manager when the House passed the 26th Amendment which lowered the voting age to 18; after reapportionment in 1970, he moved to Evanston and ran in the open, newly created 10th Congressional District in Chicago's northern suburbs; after a loss in 1972, he won three consecutive elections, each by a margin of less than one percent of the vote; his hard-earned victories were widely attributed to the legions of enthusiastic doorbell-ringing volunteers he inspired, including many high school and college students; when he returned to Washington after the 1974 election, he exercised an influential voice in the post-Watergate House of Representatives, serving as chairman of the liberal House Democratic Study Group and as a tax reform leader on the powerful Ways and Means Committee; and

WHEREAS, In 1979, Abner Mikva was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by a vote of 58 to 31 in the Senate; he served on the court until 1994, the last four years as Chief Judge; of his many judicial opinions, the one of which he was most proud was the one he wrote in a 1993 case for a unanimous three-judge panel rejecting the Navy's dismissal of a homosexual Naval Academy midshipman, one of the early rulings by a federal court defending LGBT rights; the following year, he left the court to become White House Counsel; and

WHEREAS, Upon returning to Chicago in 1997, Abner Mikva and his wife started the Mikva Challenge, a non-partisan organization that promotes civic and political engagement among high-school students; through the program, thousands of Chicago students, with support from Mikva Challenge staff and their teachers, have volunteered in local and national election campaigns, served as election judges, and worked on neighborhood and citywide issues that the students identify as important to them; the Mikva Challenge model is now being implemented by teachers and school districts in other cities, most recently in Washington, D.C.; and

WHEREAS, Abner Mikva was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2014; and

WHEREAS, Abner Mikva is survived by his wife, Zoe; his daughters, Mary, Laurie, and Rachel; his sons-in-law, Steven Cohen, James Pfander, and Mark Rosenberg; and his grandchildren, Rebecca and Jordan Cohen, Sarah, Samantha, and Benjamin Pfander and Jacob and Keren Mikva Rosenberg; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we, along with his family and friends, mourn the passing of Abner J. Mikva; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Abner Mikva as an expression of our sympathy.