Karen Heller: Shestack worked to make the world better

When Jerome Shestack died two weeks ago at 88, the city lost that rarest of residents: a great Philadelphian, a citizen of the world, a leader who left a substantive legacy.

"A committed public servant and a dogged defender of human rights," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "Countless men and women are better off because of Jerry."

Calls and e-mails flooded in from around the world, and 700 mourners attended his funeral.

Since his death from renal failure, I've been thinking a lot about what kind of extraordinary character and work are required to rise above your immediate circle and make an enduring difference.

Shestack was a celebrated litigator, perennially listed as one of the nation's most influential lawyers. That would satisfy plenty of practitioners, but his work extended far beyond his profession.

He championed human rights on a local, national, and international level, perpetually in the vanguard of fighting for racial and gender equality. Shestack tended to chair every organization he ever joined, including the American Bar Association and the International League for Human Rights, and collected so many awards they are scattered throughout his apartment. One hangs in a kitchen alcove above an ironing board.

He was also a lover of poetry, especially Auden and Yeats, and he served as chair of the American Poetry Center and director of the American Poetry Review. He championed Jewish causes. After one of his five grandchildren was diagnosed with autism, he became a crusader for people with autism, too.

"He came of age in a time when being a generalist was respected," said his son, Jonathan. "You could move with ease from subject to subject. These days, you're not permitted to let your mind work that way."

Born into humble circumstances with a strong sense of justice instilled by two rabbi grandfathers, Shestack was raised in Atlantic City, then Overbrook, graduating from Penn and Harvard Law, where he advocated successfully for women's admission. As a law professor at Louisiana State, he did the same for African American students. As deputy city solicitor, he helped desegregate Girard College, as well as city swimming pools and recreation sites. As U.N. ambassador to the Commission on Human Rights, he fought for the disappeared in South America and the oppressed in South Africa and the Soviet Union.

"He was very courageous. He had a lot more courage than a lot of us," said Marciarose Shestack, his wife of 60 years, sitting in their Fairmount apartment, his gold wedding ring hanging from her necklace. "He didn't much care if he was liked. His concern was being fair and fighting for justice. If he was bothered by something, it was incumbent upon him to do something about the situation."

He mentored scores of young people. In his spare time, he published pamphlets on politics, poetry, the law.

Although Shestack was successful as a top partner at Schnader, Harrison, he was not armed with the sort of wealth that endows buildings. For four decades the couple rented the same sprawling duplex penthouse apartment on the Ben Franklin Parkway, where they hosted a diverse array of friends to watch fireworks every July 4.

Shestack made his mark by doing, donating time and his terrific legal intellect. He was rarely at rest. He never retired.

"In a society where so many are powerless, where lifetimes are spent in humdrum detail, where few can be actors in the enfolding spectacle," he wrote in one pamphlet, "we, as lawyers, have a singular opportunity to contribute to society's needs, to make a limping legal structure work for justice, to revitalize old institutions to serve today's demands, to grow ourselves, to be part of the vital struggle for human dignity and worth. And to accomplish much."

This Jerry Shestack most certainly did.