HAL WITT

1936 - 2021

HAL WITT
Passed peacefully at home in Manhattan on December 27, 2020, surrounded by his wife of 60 years, Lois; his children, Gavin and Susanna; his son-in-law, Paul; and his granddaughters, Claire and Anne. Hal was born in Washington, DC in 1936 before his family moved back to their native New York, where between his studies at Bronx Science he enjoyed playing stoop ball, assessing egg creams, rooting for Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and setting pins at a local bowling alley. He left Manhattan for college and law school at University of Chicago, with an intervening stretch in Paris studying at the Sorbonne to pursue fluency in French, films, and food. Returning to Washington, he embarked on a lengthy legal career marked by a commitment to civil rights and individual advocacy-first clerking for Judge Warren Madden in the D.C. Court of Claims, then variously serving as counsel for the United Poverty Organization, as a volunteer lawyer with Julian Bond and the freedom riders, as a longtime board member of the regional ACLU, and as a private criminal defense attorney before pivoting to domestic relations. Some high-profile career landmarks included overturning wrongful capital convictions in the Giles-Johnson case, earning recognition by the NAACP, and contributing to crucial litigation adjacent to former-Gov. Agnew's bribery scandal; at the same time, he was noted for approaching even seemingly quotidian cases with the same relentless demeanor that won him both praise and notoriety as a "lawyer's lawyer." He took particular pride when his zealous advocacy helped untangle challenging custody disputes or earned the enduring friendship of former clients. Hal was an insatiable consumer of wildly varied cultural life locally and around the world, equally passionate about theater, dance, opera, music, museums, film, literature, and sports. He remained to the end a curious amateur linguist, an irrepressible gastronome, and an avid traveler-whether hiking the backwoods of Maryland's Catoctin Mountain, venturing down Venetian alleyways, or crossing arid deserts in Iran. The same insatiable enthusiasm extended to every topic under the sun, from raiding secondhand bookshops to stock his overflowing shelves to juggling multiple newspaper subscriptions, which generated a stream of apposite clippings (typically replete with his copious copy edits) for acquaintances old and new. Remaining a loyal, devoted friend across distance and decades, he became an equally devoted and doting grandfather. No memorial is planned. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the ACLU or other organization.