Bernard Jaffe

1915 - 2015
JAFFE, BERNARD
Bernard Jaffe, 100, died at home in Edgewater, NJ on December 31, 2015. Born in the Bronx on May 23, 1915, the son of Louis and Kate Jaffe (Rosenberg), he excelled academically and graduated from Columbia University at the age of 18, then Columbia University Law School, receiving his law degree at the young age of 21. He subsequently served in the Puerto Rican Redevelopment Authority at the behest of President Franklin Roosevelt.

He served in the U. S. Army Air Corps in World War II for three and a half years, including overseas in India, attaining the rank of Captain.

After the war he entered general private law practice in New York City, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. When the great African American public intellectual, writer, and civil rights advocate Dr. W. E. B. DuBois was accused of sedition by the federal government, Bernard was recruited for his defense team by lead attorney, Congressman Vito Marcantonio. Through the skillful efforts of Bernard and other lawyers on the team, Dr. DuBois was acquitted. When Dr. DuBois subsequently decided to relocate to Ghana at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah, he retained Bernard as his personal attorney. Bernard served him in this capacity until the end of Dr. DuBois' life, and continued to serve as attorney, friend and confidant to his widow, Shirley Graham DuBois, throughout the remainder of her life.

Bernard's legal brilliance and versatility extended to many and varied applications of law, with a depth and breadth of expertise that is extraordinary by any measure. He had a scholar's analytic sense of political and economic history and cared deeply about issues that concern those less advantaged due to poverty, political oppression, and racial inequality.

His father was an operatic baritone and has parents toured the country in the famed DeWolf Hopper's Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, and Bernard had a lifelong love for music and theater. He was an avid skier and tennis player until the age of 90, a masterful bridge player into his 101st year, and embraced life with joy and enthusiasm.

Bernard was a devoted and beloved family man and friend. He was predeceased by his sister, Charlotte Klate, and his son, Daniel Joseph Jaffe. He leaves his daughter, Cynthia Jaffe of Louisville, CO, his wife, Claire Young Jaffe of Edgewater, NJ, his stepdaughter and stepson, Lisa and Matthew Young, and many nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, and extended family, whom he loved without limit.

Interment will be private. A celebration of his life will be held at a future date. Donations in his honor may be made to the W.E.B. DuBois Library at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in support of the establishment of the Bernard Jaffe collection.