Gerry Spence, legendary lawyer and author. He was 96.
Among the people he defended or represented: Karen Silkwood.
Randy Weaver.
Imelda Marcos.
…
Mr. Spence often boasted that he had never lost a criminal case with a jury trial, as either a defense lawyer or a prosecutor, and that he had not lost a civil case since 1969. That was not actually true, but it was not far off. He was known to lose now and then, and several of his notable civil verdicts were overturned on appeal.
But in the tradition of Perry Mason, he seemed unbeatable — not only to courtroom foes but also to lawyers who attended his seminars, and to Americans who read his best-selling books and tuned in to his television programs and network commentaries, most notably on the O.J. Simpson murder case.
I remember seeing a “60 Minutes” profile of him some years back. I can’t find that now, but there’s a two-part interview with him on the ‘Tube.
Masaoki Sen. He was 102.
Mr. Sen was best known for serving as the 15th-generation grand master of the Urasenke, one of the three main schools of Japan’s tea ceremony. After inheriting the role from his father in 1964, he used it as a platform to promote peace, often while speaking of his own experiences during the war.
Traveling the world to engage in a sort of tea-ceremony diplomacy, Mr. Sen used the ancient art, whose roots lie in Zen Buddhism, to call for an end to all wars. He was known for the phrase “peacefulness through a bowl of tea.”
He was also a former kamikaze pilot.
After leaving Doshisha University in 1943 he was drafted to the Imperial Navy, where he trained to be a pilot. When his unit was asked to form a “special attack” squadron to carry out suicide missions, Mr. Sen was one of the volunteers.
“I thought I was ready to die,” Mr. Sen said in a 2021 interview with a Japanese newspaper. “But I was just a greenhorn of 20 or 21 years of age. I didn’t know what death meant.”
While many young men in his unit flew off to ram their aircraft into Allied ships, Mr. Sen was never sent. Historians say the Japanese military often spared the oldest sons, especially from historically significant households.
After the war, Mr. Sen asked a former commander why he was never sent. The older man answered: “Just think of it as fate.”
Unlike many war veterans, Mr. Sen spoke openly of his experiences and sorrow for comrades who never returned. He also made no effort to disguise his anger toward his nation’s leaders who sent them on one-way missions.
“We were told to die because others would fill our ranks,” he said in another interview. “But who wants to die?”