In Memoriam: Hugh Calkins
Minute in Remembrance
Hugh Calkins
February 20, 1924 – August 4, 2014
The following is an abridged version of the Minute in Remembrance read at the ALI Council Meeting on October 16, 2014.
Hugh Calkins, who died on August 4 at age 90, was a member of the Institute for 53 years and a member of the Council for 32 years until he took Emeritus status in 2007. Hugh was a brilliant lawyer and a citizen passionately devoted to serving the public good. Truly dedicated to the mission of the ALI, he offered his unstinting support for more than five decades, and his piercing mind was an invaluable asset to Council meetings.
Born in Newton, MA, the youngest of six children, Hugh graduated from Exeter Academy in 1941. He went on to Harvard College, where he was elected President of the college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. When World War II began and he was rejected by the Naval and Army ROTC because he was color blind, he opted to enter the Air Force Maintenance Program. His unit was sent to the Pacific to staff the Guam Air Depot, which serviced B-29 bombers, one of which dropped the atomic bomb.
After the war, Hugh entered Harvard Law School where his first-year academic standing earned him a place on the Harvard Law Review. Later he was elected President of the Review. That distinction led to coveted clerkships with Judge Learned Hand on the Second Circuit and Justice Felix Frankfurter on the Supreme Court.
Jones Day and Outside Activities
Hugh joined Jones Day in 1951, when its attorney count was just 53 and the firm had only two offices. He began to practice in the tax field, became a partner in 1958, and was made the coordinator of the tax group. His partners obviously held Hugh in high regard, as one of them wrote: “His ability to reason, the precision of his analyses, and his comprehension—his sheer intelligence—were of once-in-a-lifetime quality.”
When President Eisenhower created a Commission on National Goals, Hugh served as Deputy Staff Director under Staff Director William Bundy. Later he was a member of the Trilateral Commission created by David Rockefeller with the goal of achieving closer relations among North America, Europe, and the north Pacific.
The American Law Institute
Hugh was elected to the ALI in 1961, and thereafter rarely missed an Annual Meeting. He served as a member of the Executive Committee for four years and at various times on the Program Committee, the Finance and Development Committee, and the ALI-ABA Committee on Continuing Professional Education.
Hugh was also a member of the Special Committee on the 75th Anniversary of the Institute. At the Annual Meeting in 1998, he delivered a brilliant survey of the work of the Institute in its first 75 years. At Council meetings, Hugh was always provocative, asking the probing questions that made the Reporters or the Council reexamine and justify material in the drafts.
Harvard
Hugh’s devotion to Harvard University was unsurpassed. Elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers in 1966, he was soon invited to serve on the Harvard Corporation—the university’s governing body. In May 1969, when student unrest at Harvard boiled over, Hugh received word that students were seizing control of University Hall, which housed the President’s office. He took the next plane to Boston and spent the next week meeting with students and faculty, ultimately garnering credit for calming the situation.
ABA Tax Section
As Hugh’s tax practice flourished, he joined the Tax Section of the American Bar Association and rose in its ranks, ultimately being elected Chair of the Section. The contemporary passage of the Revenue Act of 1986 resulted in a busy year of testifying before committees of the Congress.
A New Career
Hugh retired from Jones Day in 1989 at age 65 and turned his talents and energy to the field of education, an area that had remained a vital interest ever since his service on the Cleveland Board of Education in the late 1960s. With his days suddenly free, Hugh concluded he should teach in Cleveland Schools in order to find out what life in the classroom was like. After three years as a floating substitute, he was assigned to a sixth-grade classroom in an underprivileged section of Cleveland where he taught for one year.
In 1991, Hugh’s children, friends, and former clients raised funds to establish in his honor Initiatives in Urban Education, a nonprofit corporation with a mission to improve the education of low-income children in the Cleveland area. Among its initiatives were successful efforts to change Ohio’s school finance system and to found a charter school in the inner city. Hugh served for three years as chair of the board of the charter school, Citizens Academy.
I have not sought to portray Hugh’s rich family life. He leaves a wonderfully supportive wife, Ann, who has in her own right been an active force in the field of education. Their four children, each in his or her own way, reflect Hugh’s commitment and values.
Roswell B. Perkins
