Edwin Pewett

PEWETT EDWIN HENKEL PEWETT (Age 96) Prominent Antitrust Attorney EDWIN HENKEL PEWETT, who was a prominent antitrust attorney, passed away peacefully on Monday October 13, 2008 at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He was born on May 26, 1912 in Jonesboro, Arkansas and was a graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia where he was business manager of the school newspaper Ring Turn Phi, a member of the Student Body Executive Committee and a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. After graduation in 1934, he worked in the Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. where he met his future wife, Gertrude Caffery Glassie, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, who also worked at the Library. He graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1939. He then became a Special Attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, D.C. and New York City. In 1942 he and his family moved to Trenton, New Jersey for the anticipated trial of a large federal antitrust case against the nation‘s major electrical equipment manufacturer, General Electric. On the eve of the scheduled trial, which was expected to take several months and involve many lawyers and company officials, defense counsel persuaded the Defense Department to seek the postponement of the trial until after the end of World War II. Under an arrangement directed by President Franklin Roosevelt, the District Court granted the request of the war agencies and postponed the trial of the case until after the war. It was the first case so postponed. Thereafter, he operated the Justice Department field office in Trenton until he was transferred back to the Washington Antitrust Division. In 1943 Ed volunteered to serve in the U.S. Navy and was commissioned as a LTJG, USNR. He attended Navy Indoctrination School at Fort Schuyler, New York and then went to the Navy Communications School at Harvard University. Upon graduation he served as a Navy Communications Officer in New York and Boston before being assigned in 1944 to the Communications Department of Commander Sixth Naval District (COMSIX) in Charleston, South Carolina. Lieutenant Pewett was transferred to the Pacific in October, 1944 to serve as Communications Officer on the staff of the Commander Seventh Fleet at his headquarters in Hollandia, New Guinea. During that assignment he was selected to serve as the Communications Officer, Naval Base Hollandia, New Guinea. In January 1946, he returned home from the war and to the Justice Department where he became Chief, Judgments and Judgment Enforcement Section, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice. In 1953 he resigned from the Justice Department to enter private law practice in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Weaver and Glassie. There he functioned as General Counsel of numerous trade associations and several of their larger member companies. He was especially well known for obtaining a settlement of a federal antitrust case in Federal court for his native state of Arkansas. In 1983, after thirty years of law practice, he retired from his firm of Glassie, Pewett, Dudley, Beebe and Shanks. He was a member of the Chevy Chase Club, and had been a member of the Metropolitan Club, Army and Navy Club, National Lawyers Club, and Jefferson Islands Club. He also had been active in the American Bar Association and was a past president of the Arkansas State Society. He was predeceased by his wife of 64 years, Gertrude Glassie Pewett in 2002, as well as his daughter-in-law Patricia Lockhart Pewett in 2000. He is survived by his three sons: Edwin H Pewett, Jr. of Chevy Chase, Maryland; Captain Robert H Pewett USN (Ret) and his wife Gay Riera Pewett of Annandale, Virginia; and Daniel R Pewett of Rockville, Maryland, five grandchildren and five great grandchildren who are sixth generation Washingtonians. Family and friends may call at JOSEPH GAWLER‘S SONS, INC, 5130 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., (at Harrison Street N.W.) Washington, DC, on Thursday, October 23 from 4 to 7 p.m. Funeral services and inurnment will be held at St. John‘s Episcopal Church, 6701 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland, 20815 (at the corner of Bradley Lane and Wisconsin Avenue) on Friday, October 24 at 11 a.m. Donations may be made to the Montgomery Hospice, 1355 Piccard Drive, Suite 100, Rockville, Maryland 20850.