Alan M. Lerner, lawyer and professor

In 1964, Alan M. Lerner, a second-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania, spent the summer in Mississippi helping black residents register to vote. He was there, he later told The Inquirer, because he believed that helping people achieve civil rights was the right thing to do. His belief became a lifelong passion.

Mr. Lerner, 68, of Center City, a lawyer and law professor, died of complications of lymphoma Thursday, Oct. 7, at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse.

After volunteering with the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council and living with a black family in Mississippi that summer, Mr. Lerner returned home to finish law school.

Three other young civil-rights workers weren't so fortunate. In June 1964, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two white Northerners, and James Earl Chaney, a black Mississippian, were abducted and shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan. Their bodies were found in an earthen dam six weeks later.

Mr. Lerner told The Inquirer in 1989 that he recalled the chill he had felt when he learned the men were missing. "We all assumed they were dead," he said, adding: "You don't think those things are going to happen to you. Schwerner and Goodman were nice Jewish boys from the North. And they were your age. It was real."

Since 1993, Mr. Lerner had been on the faculty of Penn's law school, where he established a law clinic to provide an interdisciplinary approach to child advocacy - teaching lawyers, social workers, and doctors to work together. He inspired many of his students to pursue careers in child advocacy. Others, joining law firms, volunteered in the field, said his wife, Adelaide Ferguson, also a lawyer.

"His students loved him," she said.

Before becoming a professor, Mr. Lerner was with the firm of Cohen, Shapiro, Polisher, Shiekman & Cohen for 25 years and was involved with several high-profile cases.

In 1975, he was one of three lawyers who successfully sued the city in a wrongful-death case on behalf of the family of Leroy Shenandoah. An American Indian who was a Green Beret Vietnam veteran and a member of the honor guard at President John F. Kennedy's funeral, Shenandoah was beaten and shot to death by Philadelphia police.

Many of Mr. Lerner's cases involved discrimination issues. In 1985, the John Wanamaker department stores agreed to pay $615,486 to the former buyer for their gourmet food shops when a U.S. District Court jury found the 56-year-old buyer had been fired as a result of age discrimination. Mr. Lerner said the store's allegation of unsatisfactory job performance had been a pretext to cover up Wanamakers' "emphasis on youth policy."

In a highly publicized lawsuit, Mr. Lerner represented lawyer Kathleen Frederick, an associate lawyer at Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay who accused a partner with the firm, Richard Glanton, of sexual harassment and defamation. Frederick contended that Glanton, then president of the Barnes Foundation and general counsel to Lincoln University, had seduced her with the promise of making her a partner in the firm, then fired her after she ended the affair.

"This case is about power and about corruption of power," Mr. Lerner told the jury in his opening statement.

In 1993, a federal jury awarded $125,000 to Frederick. Appealed by both sides, the case later was settled for an undisclosed sum.

Mr. Lerner was a volunteer with the American Civil Liberties Union and served on the board of advisers of the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia.

A native of the Feltonville section of Philadelphia, he graduated from Central High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Penn's Wharton School.

After graduating from law school, he became director of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council in New York for a year and then clerked for two years for Leon Higginbotham, a federal judge.

Mr. Lerner and his wife met when she was a paralegal at his law firm. "I was attracted to him because he had the most interesting cases," she said.

The couple raised a family in Ardmore, and he served on the Lower Merion school board from 1991 to 1999.

"Alan loved his family, his work, and baseball," said his brother Benjamin, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge. Mr. Lerner played baseball for Central, Penn, and a semipro team, and in recent years played with 55-and-older teams.

"He was the star," said his brother, who also plays. "He had terrific eye-hand coordination."

Mr. Lerner had Phillies season tickets, and in 1987 he and his brother attended Phillies Dream Week.

He carefully indoctrinated each of his children and grandchildren from infancy with the love of baseball, his wife said.

In addition to his wife of 34 years and brother, Mr. Lerner is survived by a son, Jason; a daughter, Rachael LeMasters; another brother, Carl; and three grandchildren.

A memorial service will begin at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 10, at Goldsteins' Rosenberg's Raphael-Sacks Memorial Chapel, 6410 N. Broad St.

Memorial donations may be made to the University of Pennsylvania Law Clinic, 3400 Chestnut St., Philadelphia 19104.