Mark Pascal Schlefer

1922 - 2020

Mark Pascal Schlefer died peacefully at home in Putney, Vermont, on November 2, 2020, surrounded by family and friends.

Mark was born on May 9, 1922 in New York City to Sara (Nacht) and John Jacob Schlefer. Of his early life in New York City, he spoke enthusiastically about the Ethical Culture schools he attended, particularly the Fieldston School, where he began to develop his life-long devotion to literature, history and argument. Much of what he read in high school he could still quote in the last years of his long life. The theory and practice of education were of particular interest and importance to him. He served on the boards of trustees of the Putney School, the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, and on the Putney Town School Board, where he strongly advocated for a literature-based ethics class in each grade of school, beginning in kindergarten and running through high school.

Mark attended Harvard College, where he met Marion King, the love of his life and wife of over 70 years. He recalled that the first time he saw her walking toward him across the lawn, he fell in love. They married shortly after he graduated in 1943. He loved his college years, particularly his studies of American literature, as well as his work on the Harvard Crimson where he found life-long friendships.

After college Mark served as a navigator-bombardier in the U.S. Army Air Force, European Theater of Operations, flying 36 combat missions over Germany between 1943 and 1945. He received seven air medals and four Presidential Citations for his service. Like many veterans of World War II, he rarely spoke about his experiences in the war until in his nineties, he wrote a memoir that included moving, harrowing, and sometimes humorous stories of those times.

After he was discharged, he and Marion moved to Putney for a year while he taught American history at the Putney School, from which Marion had graduated in 1939. They lived on a farm and had many stories of raising chickens - Mark bought one and, city boy that he was, got so excited when it laid an egg that he went out and bought 50 chicks!

Mark then returned to school, graduating from Harvard Law School in 1949. Mark and Marion moved to Washington in 1951 where he joined the law firm of Radner, Zito, Kominers & Fort, which later became Fort & Schlefer. The firm represented shipping companies and industrial corporations in their maritime and ship financing matters and others in proceedings before independent regulatory agencies and the federal courts.

In his law practice, Mark frequently practiced before the Federal Maritime Administration on behalf of his shipping clients. After being denied access to certain documents held by the agency, Mark became determined to make sure that this kind of secret law be stopped. He joined two other lawyers in drafting the original Freedom of Information Act and had a major place in obtaining its enactment.

Mark's love of the law and its application to wide ranges of problems, including some of the most intractable of our time, such as nuclear disarmament, led him in many directions.

He founded, together with Lydia Katzenbach, the Negro (now Black) Student Fund. To quote from its website: "Established to racially desegregate the independent schools of the National Capital area, the Fund serves as an advocate for all black children and strives to assure that black students and their families have equal access to every educational opportunity." Mark once said that this was the achievement that he was most proud of.

During the years from 1994 to 2004 Mark was a member and later Chairman of the board of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C., dedicated to educating the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. The Lawyers Alliance was particularly active in promoting the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty and the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

In 2005 Marion and Mark moved to Putney full time to be nearer to their children. Both were active in the Putney community and made many friends. They lived in the farmhouse that Marion's mother had bought in 1941. Mark shopped at the Putney Coop most days and was well known for his ever-present bowties, brightly colored Irish tweed cap and his gregarious chiding people about their grammar. Mark served on the Board of Directors of the Windham World Affairs Council, the Putney Town School Board as well as the Putney Affordable Housing Committee. He also pulled together a group of friends to form the "Gaggle a monthly gathering to dine and participate in discussions ranging from networking systems to epigenetics to Hawthorne and Dante. This became the center of his intellectual life in Putney. He also was devoted to the Supreme Fitness gym where he lifted weights and worked out, well into his nineties. He made friends with almost everyone he encountered including on the supermarket line. He was also known for his classes in "How to make the Perfect Martini."

He is survived by his three children, Jonathan King Schlefer, of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts and partner, Jane Baird, of London, England; Katharine Schlefer Dodge and husband, Charles Dodge, of Putney and Ellen Schlefer and husband, Michael Bicks of Durham, New Hampshire, as well as three grandchildren, Maggie Dodge and Lucy and Molly Bicks, two step-grandchildren, Samantha Dodge and Baird Dodge and two step-great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his beloved wife, Marion King Schlefer and his brother, William Schlefer.

A memorial celebration will be held in the spring. Donations may be made to the Black Student Fund, 3636 16th Street, NW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20010.