Earlier this week I finished reading the autobiography of Frank Kelley, Attorney General of the State of Michigan for 37 years, 1962-1999. I found the book, written "with" Jack Lessenberry, at a recent trip to Detroit's great John A. King bookstore.
The book is called "The People's Lawyer", which is important.
I don't read autobiographies much, as I generally know how the story ends, and there are only so many ways to get around starting most of your sentences with the word "I". But I really liked this book, which I felt got better as it went along. I hope to submit a review for an upcoming issue of the Detroit Bar Association's Detroit Lawyer magazine.
Mr. Kelley holds several Michigan AG records-he was the youngest when appointed, and the oldest when he decided to step down in 1999. While those records could be broken, his 37 years in office will stand forever (while Michigan has term limits). His last day as AG was his 75th birthday in 1999. Thereafter he went into private practice, starting the firm Kelley and Cawthorne. He stayed with the firm as owner and consultant until 2014.
A lifelong Democrat, he served most of his time as Attorney General with Republican Governors: George Romney, William Milliken, and John Engler.
Frank Kelley served through some very contentious times. He was appointed the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He served during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and the Detroit Riot. He was a pioneer in consumer and environmental protection. He was true to his oath. He was the people's lawyer, and not the governor's lawyer. He learned that the people were best served if those in government cooperated in solving the state's problems. He was a Democrat but did not believe in the type of "Party First, Last and Always" politics that currently plagues this country.
The autobiography was written in 2015, and Mr. Kelley passed away in 2021. Those days are important when you remember that we had a presidential election the year after the book came out. Frank Kelley died 2 months after the events of January 6, 2021. His views on those events would have been very interesting indeed.
But to finally get to the Butler family history reference in the title to this piece. My father graduated from Detroit St. Theresa High School (north of Grand River, between Quincy and Pingree) in 1941. A few times it had been mentioned in the family that my dad went to high school with Frank Kelley. My dad passed away in 2010, and I can't confirm now if the story was that he "went to school with" or "graduated with" Kelley. (During my legal career, I think I said my dad graduated high school with Frank Kelley. Opened a lot of doors for me. Insert sarcastic emoji).
My dad never talked about Frank as a classmate. That's fine, as Frank never mentions my dad in his autobiography. In fact, Kelley is a bit vague about the dates and places of his grade school and high school education. According to Frank, he went to grade school and started high school at St. Theresa, his home parish, but left before graduation. He attended one year at U of D High and eventually graduated from Visitation parish High School. And he was not specific, at all, about the dates of his attendance.
Not a huge deal in the scheme of things, but my time is my time (mostly), so I tried to track this down in my uncatalogued collection of historical Detroit Catholic School "stuff". After sifting through several boxes of yearbooks and such I found a very thin, softcover volume, the 1938 Theresian. This was the yearbook for Detroit St. Theresa High School. I think the yearbook industry was still struggling through the Depression. No leather bound, 200+ page volume with 50 pages of paid ads at the back. Nobody could afford the ads, and therefore the book.
But among the 27 pages of the 1938 yearpaperback, I found the freshmen of the class of 1941 represented. On page 18, bottom row, second from the left is my dad, James Butler
And on page 20, top row, second from the right is Frank Kelley, name misspelled as "Kelly"-St. Theresa was a heavily Irish parish.
So, a little piece of family history clarified. Would make for a nice story at a family gathering. Sadly, all members of that generation have passed away. But, we do have our memories-some pretty good stuff at that.
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