I am honored to say a few words for a friend I admired and respected so much.
Let me begin with a word for Emily. I have no words equal to the task of easing your pain. Only the consolation of God’s amazing grace will do. You and he were as close and considerate and truly kind to each other as any couple I have ever known. Each of you was blessed to know the other and for more than 50 years. I hope focusing on what you had rather than what you lost brings some consolation. Emily, your pursuits, your research and scholarship brought him joy.
It is said that a real love story never ends. As is written repeatedly in the “Song of Songs,” “Love is as strong as death.”
Gregory’s ever dignified manner and serious pursuits cloaked a robust sense of humor. He loved life. He had fun and was fun. He had a preternatural persistence and surpassing intelligence—two traits common among real leaders, as noted in Doris Kern Goodwin’s new book Leadership.
He was without rancor and always—always—a gentleman. He was also humble and generous. He was my guardian angel, guaranteeing total compliance with all election laws and regulations for two decades.
He could have simply worked hard and retreated to a world of comfort but the commonweal called. For him, citizenship required commitment, and democracy demanded it. And so, the “Super Lawyer” doubled as a Super Citizen.
Gregory took to heart Oliver Wendell Holmes admonition: “As life is passion and action it is required of a man to participate in the passion and action of his time at the peril of being judged not to have lived.” For at least five decades his participation helped make this big city better.
Gregory was liberal, much as JFK described liberalism: “Not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow man the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.”
Public office was not for those who saw nothing wrong in pursuing their private interests with their public power, or for those who would divide rather than unite.
Gregory’s politics were never narrowly partisan or ever self seeking. Government was less often the problem and more often the solution. It was about people. All of them. It was about justice and equality and freedom.
His trumpet never sounded an unclear note. He was brave and laser-like in making a difference. He didn’t covet the limelight. He was content to labor in the trenches where the less glamorous work was done.
The first rung on the political ladder is committee person. There is no salary, secretary, office or pension. It is also the closest to the people. He drew close to his neighbors and they to him. In every primary and general election each voter in his division received a personal letter suggesting how that voter should vote and why. They listened to him. His good motives, knowledge, integrity, honesty and concern for them was evident.
Gregory was a party man as long as his party was for everyman.
He was asked to head the center city reform democrats. He was also chosen to head the ADA—the Americans For Democratic Action—chapter in Philadelphia, a liberal reform group first chaired in the city by [Mayor Richardson] Dilworth and [Mayor Joe] Clark.
Greg was first and foremost a lawyer, cited again and again as a “super lawyer” when those lists were published. When it came to election law, he was the Dean in the city and the state. No wonder with his credentials, Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard undergraduate, and Harvard Law he was welcomed by one of the most preeminent firms in the city.
He could have simply worked hard and retreated to a world of comfort but the commonweal called. For him, citizenship required commitment, and democracy demanded it. And so, the “Super Lawyer” doubled as a Super Citizen.
Gregory took to heart Oliver Wendell Holmes admonition: “As life is passion and action it is required of a man to participate in the passion and action of his time at the peril of being judged not to have lived.” For at least five decades his participation helped make this big city better.
Most notably, as his obituary made clear, was his courageous legal leadership of the battle to recall [Mayor Frank] Rizzo. The Mayor attacked, threatening Greg’s firm: The firm would get no city bond business and any other entities extending bond business to them would also be shutout. To Morgan, Lewis and Bockius’s great credit, they backed Greg. They were not cowed by threats and neither was Greg, then or ever.
[My wife] Pat and I were pleased to discover another side of Gregory: His passion for art. We bought our first painting before we had a wall. When Gregory first visited our home, we were taken with his enthusiastic response. Art gave the four of us another intersection to meet and bond.
I hadn’t known that both of his parents were artists. So he grew up with an eye and an appreciation that was finely tuned. He quite simply loved art, public and private.
And being Gregory, his interest and passion gave him more work to do. He served as a Trustee of the Association For Public Art for 38 years and as V.P for 16. He also served on the Committee for Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Music also animated his being, filled his heart and soothed his soul. He loved the orchestra, which had for so long presented Philadelphia’s finest face to the world. He was a fan and a patron. He was as familiar with Beethoven and Brancusi as he was with a ballot.
We had the rare privilege of living with the very best of the human spirit. Here at Christ Church we believe that spirit lives on.
No recognition, no honor, meant more to him than the James Madison Award from the Philadelphia Society of Journalists for his work on 1st Amendment issues. He saw freedom of speech and freedom of the press as the lifeblood of democracy.
Notable was his courageous legal leadership of the battle to recall [Mayor Frank] Rizzo. The Mayor attacked, threatening Greg’s firm: The firm would get no city bond business and any other entities extending bond business to them would also be shut out.
The calls to weaken The New York Times vs. Sullivan and dishonest cries of “fake news” are dangerous. At this time losing a warrior in the vanguard of freedom like Greg makes his passing yet more sad.
I was pleased to read the flash flood of laudatory comments by his longtime partners at Morgan Lewis, and Montgomery McCracken, and by so many other prestigious practitioners who saw first hand his legal talent and basic human decency, many of whom he happily mentored.
Praise for Gregory flowed in from many disparate sources: From elected officials, from the Association for Public Art, from the Ezra Pound Society, which awarded him their Pegasus Award for his role at the 27th International Ezra Pound Conference held last year at Penn. That gathering hosts leading poetry scholars like Emily from all over the world. lt meets again in Spain in 2019.
That organization’s condolence struck me: “Those of us who met Gregory in Philadelphia last year were always cheered by his alert intelligence, lively comments and knowledge of everything on earth.”
We all felt better and were better for his presence among us. I have so many wonderful memories. He was one of the finest persons I have ever known.
Today we celebrate Gregory’s life. Christ Church is a most appropriate forum. Gregory did love his neighbor like himself. He was a good samaritan. He was his brothers keeper. And Christ Church is the place in Philadelphia where so many Super citizens and Super lawyers rest.
Emily is grateful that Gregory’s ashes will be buried near the grave of Andrew Hamilton, a kind of historical legal mentor to Gregory, who in a New York courtroom argued and established as law the principle that truth was a defense to libel, thus strengthening freedom of the press in America at its birth. Throughout the new nation Hamilton’s victory brought high regard for the term “Philadelphia Lawyer”.
Gregory brought honor to that term.
He and I had many wide ranging, thoughtful discussions, none of them overtly theological in nature. He didn’t discuss his faith. He lived it.
May he rest in peace.
Bill Green was Mayor of Philadelphia from 1980 to 1984.
