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(relaxed trumpet music)
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- [Narrator] An attorney called him "a thug for the Lord."
His daughter dubbed him "the rescue machine."
To those who loved him, he was a hero.
A tough, tenacious, cantankerous, lovable hero.
A proud Marine who took the heart both on
and off the bench the motto, "Leave no one behind".
To his critics, he was a bleeding heart liberal
on the notorious Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
a would-be social engineer, a judicial activist
who ruled with his heart instead of his head.
He was a judge for over 50 years.
When he died still on the bench at 94, it was said,
"In the field of law and public interest, there are stars,
there are superstars and then there's Harry Pregerson."
(relaxed violin music)
- This morning, Harry's family and I laid
his body to rest at the VA Cemetery in Westwood.
We said Kaddish for his soul and we laughed
at the certainty with which we knew that Harry
after surveying his new surroundings
would have said, "It's about time,
I have always wanted to live on the Westside."
(audience laughs)
That was Harry.
Funny as hell.
He did not care about convention or much else,
other than living in the best tradition of the Hebrew
prophets who railed against oppression and hypocrisy
and stupidity and anything or anyone that subverted
the rights of the poor or the powerless or the vulnerable.
- We all recognize this, right?
This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
First of all, I want to thank you all
for coming today to honor my dad.
I loved him so much.
I have to tell you, he was the best father
in the entire world and I know you loved him too.
On the night that he passed away, I sat in his office.
At first glance when you walk in,
it looks like Hurricane Katrina just blew through it.
There are papers everywhere.
There's books everywhere, pictures, mementos.
You name it, it's all stuffed into this
very messy office and you could learn a lot
from him just studying what was on those shelves.
As I went through his desk, I found hundreds of letters,
handwritten notes and cards.
There were lots and lots of pictures,
mostly pictures of my beautiful mother, Bern.
There were pictures of my brother Dean and I.
There were pictures of the late Congressman
Jim Corman, who was very dear to him.
Pictures of guys he served within the Marines
and finally pictures of lots and lots of people
in this audience from the Bell Shelter or the Courthouse
or any one of the hundreds of charity events that
he was schlepping to almost every night of the week.
If you really wanted to understand what made my dad tick,
all you had to do was sit in that office.
- Robert Alton Harris was strapped
in a chair in the gas chamber.
The acid bath was filling beneath him
and then the telephone rang.
- [Newswoman] That's when Federal
Appeals Judge Harry Pregerson jumped in.
- Evidently Federal Courts have ruled
that San Diego County can make welfare applicants
submit to unannounced searches of their homes.
Bleeding heart judges called San Diego's program
"shameful," an "attack on the poor."
One of them added "The government does not
search through the closets and medicine
cabinets of farmers receiving subsidies.
They do not dig through the laundry baskets and garbage
pails of real estate developers or radio broadcasters."
Of course not, because those people aren't on welfare.
They receive corporate subsidies, totally different.
The Federal Appeals Court based in San Francisco has
refused to reinstate President Trump's immigration order.
- [Newswoman] President Trump's travel ban
met its end at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
- [Protesters] The people united-
- [Newswoman] By this afternoon, the President
was telling The Washington Examiner he would
absolutely consider breaking up the Ninth Circuit.
- You go to the Ninth Circuit and it's a disgrace
and I'm gonna put in a major complaint
because you cannot win, if you're us, a case
in the Ninth Circuit and I think it's a disgrace.
- [Harry] I'm not gonna sign any order that's gonna have
the effect of kicking out of this country kids who were
born here and who have the birthright as American citizens.
I'm just not gonna do it because I think it's morally wrong.
(soft piano music)
My father was born in the Ukraine
in a village called Kusrilla.
He came here about 1904 and he landed in Boston.
Ended up working in Chicago and then the War came
and he was drafted in the American Army
and was in the Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne
campaigns and he was badly wounded.
My mother came here as the young girl.
She lived in Philadelphia and worked
in one of the sweatshops for like $3 a week.
They met here in Los Angeles.
(upbeat trumpet music)
It was up real hustling, bustling place.
People moving up and down the street,
the Five & Dime and the pool halls, delicatessens,
creameries, bakeries, all the great smells, the markets.
You had poultry stores where
the live chickens would running around.
We lived on Sea View Avenue for the first 12 years
and it was heavily Jewish but not completely.
There were many Japanese families,
Mexican families, Slavs, Italians.
It was heavily Italian too.
In grammar school, junior high school, high school,
there was always an emphasis on respect for others,
respect for others' cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs.
This was emphasized.
In my high school, we had 52 different ethnic groups
but everybody got along and that was very important.
- [Interviewer] Did you experience any anti-Semitism?
- [Harry] These kids, I think they were Mexican,
they asked me "Well, like what are you?"
So I said "I'm a boy."
"No, no, no, we want to know whether you're a Jew or not."
I said "Yeah" and then they
wanted to know why I killed Christ.
Then I worked for The Broadway in Pasadena.
That was a good job because that paid like $5 a day.
I was there for a few days
and they found out I was Jewish and they fired me.
- [Interviewer] That was really your first experience?
- [Harry] That was the real first experience, yeah.
- [Interviewer] When did you first
begin to think about being a lawyer?
- [Harry] Well, I think it all came from my father.
He used to go and listen to Darrow in Chicago.
He had Darrow's debates on capital punishment
and from earliest childhood,
I knew I was gonna go to law school.
(upbeat carnival music)
I used to go to the Ocean Park Pier.
There were a lot of fishermen on the wharf
and this guy's caught a big one
and it's on the ground, so it's flopping.
I just ran over and threw it back in the ocean.
Well the guy was mad as hell, it was probably his supper.
So the guy starts to run after me.
But I just couldn't leave that boy alone.
He was a humanitarian, but I'll never forget that.
- All of us were the center of Harry's universe.
He made sure that I felt like a girl who could do anything,
who was tough, who had the fortitude
to really take care of myself, to weather any storm.
A turning point came when I was in
the seventh grade and my mom announced
that she was going back to school to study microbiology.
Bern told Harry that he needed to step up
to the plate and assume some responsibilities
of parenting and because my dad was totally
helpless in the kitchen, we went out every night.
Over dinner, he would tell me
what a mediocre student he was.
By far and away, the brightest
in the class were always the girls.
He'd say, "And what happened to those girls?"
Well, those girls got married out of high school,
they put their husbands through college
put 'em through graduate school,
raised the kids and then what happened?
Sometimes the husband would die.
Sometimes,
the husband would get bored
and the marriage would end in divorce
and it was too late for the woman at that point
in her life to start over and have a career.
It bothered him so much
that these women never had an opportunity
to really live up to their potential
and then he'd tell me, "That's why Katie,
you need to get a good education.
You need to be your own boss.
You need to make your own money.
You need to determine your own destiny, even if
you're lucky enough to marry the man of your dreams."
- What was it like to grow up with Harry?
Just imagine you're a barely literate young teenager.
You are happily reading "The Hardy Boys" mystery series,
maybe watching a little "Sea Hunt" on TV.
Harry strides up and hands you a poem.
"Read it, it's called 'Invictus.'"
(audience laughs)
"But why?"
"It builds character."
"Out of the night that covers me,
black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
my head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms but the horror of the shade
and yet the menace of the years
finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."
When Harry was working his way through UCLA
washing dishes at fraternities and sororities,
he decided that he was gonna run for Student Body President.
Those were different times.
Anti-Semitism was not in the shadows.
There were restrictive covenants and deeds.
Some schools had quotas,
private clubs had Jews not allowed policies,
anti-Semitic slogans and jokes were common.
No one who was Jewish had ever been
elected Student Body President of UCLA.
The other side smeared Harry, his heritage
and just said terrible, terrible things about him.
Harry in despair went to see the campus Rabbi.
"What should I do, Rabbi?" he asked.
The Rabbi said one word, a word that carried
Harry through the rest of his life, "Fight."
Harry the dishwasher won by a good landslide.
(anxious trumpet music)
(explosions booming)
It was 1944, the survival of America was at stake.
Harry enlisted in the Marine Corps and soon
found himself in Officer's Training in Quantico, Virginia.
Harry and three of his Marine
buddies are sent to the Pacific.
One is killed, one loses an eye and one a leg.
For Harry, it meant Okinawa.
More than 200,000 perished in the 82-day struggle,
twice the number of Japanese lost at Hiroshima
and more American blood than had been shed at Gettysburg.
(anxious violin, trumpet music)
It's May 3rd, 1945.
Harry is wounded both ways by bullets
from a machine gun shooting Dum Dum exploding rounds.
He's able to like flat in a small depression
of dirt while ordinance flies in both directions.
He slows the bleeding by using
his belt and clothing as tourniquets.
Through that long night alone, he hears
"Marine, tonight you die.
Marine, tonight you die."
At dawn, two guys run through hell to get him.
They dropped him several times sliding down embankments,
trying to escape, trying to stay alive
and this is where we remember that Harry
is from East LA and proud of it.
His friends were working class Latinos,
Jews, Asians, Italians, Irish, you name it.
The guys that saved his life were the Martinez cousins.
He didn't know them, but he knew them.
They were just like his buddies from the old neighborhood.
The greatest guys in the world.
(anxious violin tones)
(somber trumpet music)
Harry had spent about a year
at the Naval Hospital in San Diego.
His weight went up from 110 to a healthy 175.
He had a limp and he had a cane.
One day, he was playing pool with one of his buddies.
Harry said "Hey, do you know any girls I could meet?"
His friend said "Well you know, I'm going on a date
with this girl and I'll ask if she has any friends."
Well, this car drives up and Bern is sitting
in the front seat with Harry's friend who's driving.
Harry opens the door, looks at Bern,
looks at his date in the back seat
and he sits in the front seat.
(audience laughs)
Is anyone surprised?
And from that day forward,
he knew he was going to marry her.
- When I first met Harry, he was on crutches.
He was this handsome Marine
and what could be more romantic than a handsome
Marine on crutches to an 18 year old girl?
It was after about five or six times
that I had gone out with Harry,
I said "What do you want to do with your life?"
And he said without a minute's hesitation,
"Oh, I want to help people."
And he said, "So I'm gonna go to law school
and acquire the tools that I'll need to do that."
My background was living in Boyle Heights
during the Depression, growing up very poor.
My father never had a permanent job.
In fact, most of the time he didn't have a job at all.
He was a mechanic and they were not hiring mechanics
and so there were six children and sometimes
it was lean pickings when it came to food
and I felt poor
and so when I went to UCLA the semester I met Harry,
I couldn't believe how beautiful those homes
were around UCLA and I thought to myself
you know, I'd really like one of those.
So when Harry said he wanted to help people
and I'm thinking about those beautiful houses,
it didn't seem to me, as naive as I was, that maybe
helping people was not such a money-making proposition.
That maybe those houses would be out
of range with Harry working on helping people.
But I thought it was such an unusual thing
for him to say and when I dated him more and more,
I realized that I would probably never meet
anybody as unique as this man and so that's
when I decided that maybe this was the guy for me.
(up tempo Jewish style wedding music)
Harry took any case that came through the door
and I mean any case, he did wills for maybe $10.
Never thought about billable hours,
just whatever they could pay.
I remember Harry coming home with a package
of chicken legs or we got a free tire.
It never occurred to him to limit himself
to people of position, people of influence
and that's when he first embarked on the idea of
trying to find a way for the little guy to be represented.
- In the late 50s, I got to hanging around
with what was then the neighborhood gang.
My mother's optometrist was Dr. Edward Lamar
and every afternoon from about 2:00 to 4:00,
he'd put an out to lunch sign
and him and his receptionist would
basically have a lovemaking session in the afternoons
with their lunch and so we knew that the car
wasn't going anywhere for at least two hours.
So we actually went joyriding twice
before the third time, we got caught.
Detectives came that evening to the house
and told my dad that they knew that I was in the car
and after my dad got through straightening
me out with his belt, we had to go to court
and that's when I met Harry and he was hard.
I never met somebody that could scare me like he did.
I still remember one thing he said
that just kind of stuck with me and that was that if that's
the kind of life I wanted to lead, then I wasn't a very
good person and that they should throw the book at me.
But if I wanted to change,
then the change had to be with me.
It couldn't be anybody else
and I couldn't blame anybody else
and my father made the comment that he was a Marine
and he was a combat Marine and a decorated Marine
and that Marines didn't put up with any nonsense.
So that put the idea in my head that maybe
these Marines were a pretty tough outfit to belong to.
I wanted to be a Marine if they could make you that tough.
- It was when Jim Corman, the Congressman
who was very close to Harry said to him one day,
he said, "You know, you'd make a fine judge."
And he said "I'm going to try
to see whether that's possible."
Pat Brown, who was Governor Brown
was impressed with my husband.
He liked what Harry was doing
and so it just happened there was an opening.
Harry first became a Municipal Court Judge.
One year later, he was appointed
to be a Superior Court Judge.
He was appointed to the District Court
by President Lyndon Johnson.
(gunfire clacking)
(explosion booms)
Harry was torn when it came to Vietnam.
He felt that everybody should serve
but he understood why others didn't feel that way.
- The War was just heating up when I got out of high school
and you could go into college, you could get a deferment
and avoid going in the service at all
and so I took that deferment and I went to college,
not necessarily because I wanted to go to college
but because I could get a deferment.
A couple of years down the line when the War began getting
worse, I decided I had to take personal responsibility
for my position on the War and that I had sort of white
privilege going to school when other kids couldn't.
So I sent in my 2-S and they made me a 1-A.
They called me for a physical
and I refused to take the physical and then I was indicted.
When they said "The People of the United States
of America versus Robert Paul Zaugh,"
I felt this huge wave of adrenal fear
jolt me and pass through my body
and once it did, I was not nervous.
The Judge didn't have to let you defend yourself.
They could just keep it to
"Did you refuse induction or did you not?"
It's a yes or no answer
and that could be the end of your case.
Even though the prosecutor objected to my presentation,
Pregerson said, "I want to hear what Mr. Zaugh has to say."
So I spoke for, I don't know, 20 minutes.
He acquitted me of refusing induction
and he convicted me of refusing to take a physical.
He sentenced me to work in the national interest.
I told them that I was working at Peace Press,
that we printed for Angela Davis, Daniel Ellsberg,
the Communist Party, the Black Panthers, et cetera
and that that was the national interest and that's
what I was going to do and they never challenged that.
I thought perhaps it was my so-called
brilliant defense that had kept me out of prison.
But what Pregerson said was that he visits everybody
he sends to prison and that he went up to Lompoc
to visit a bank robber and he looked on
the prison manifest and he saw the name of Mike Swartz.
He thought Schwartz was picking corn in Safford, Arizona,
the minimum security prison
that most resisters were sent to.
It wasn't my argument that got me off.
It was one, he didn't like the conditions
in that prison and two, he realized how serious
the draft resisters were about what they were doing
and he decided personally he was not gonna
send any more draft resisters to prison
and lo and behold, I was the next case.
(relaxed guitar music)
- They came home, they had to find a job.
Many of them had been gone for a number of years.
They hadn't had training to move into the mainstream
and so many of them wound up on the streets.
They were homeless and they were needing
help and nobody was giving them help.
So Harry just went crazy over that idea
that you have people serving, putting their life
on the line, as he saw all these men do,
Marines
and Navy and Army guys
and gals and he said, "How can you treat them so poorly?"
- In Los Angeles alone, there were about 24,000 homeless
veterans and he really took it to heart that these guys
were out on the street and they and they couldn't get help
and tears came to his eyes,
just showing that he cared deeply about everyone,
about every veteran who wasn't being helped in the world.
Harry and I really connected early on in that.
He found out that I was a Marine.
We are taught to protect those around us.
We become a unit and we watch each other's back,
which in combat is absolutely essential.
So he identified a building, he found
the people who would give the down payment on the building.
He really put together
the building blocks of what became US Vets.
Our workers go out into the streets,
go under the bridges, by the freeways
and when they see an encampment of homeless people,
they'll say, "Are any of you veterans?"
- Are you a veteran?
You got any vets out here?
And Army, Navy, Marines? - Army.
- Are you a veteran by any chance?
Are you a United States veteran?
- Once be bring them in, we assess them, try to determine
what are those things that led them to homelessness?
- We got guys that just got out
of the military last year, you know?
We have from World War II all the way up.
(plane humming)
The only family they have is right here, this community.
- You see, it started 35 years ago.
Harry was watching television and on the news,
the Salvation Army was managing
a homeless shelter, a cold winter shelter.
It was a very bleak and cold winter
and many of the homeless were dying on the streets.
The city announced that the shelter would
be closed and that the Salvation Army would cease
to manage it because there were no more funds left.
They asked my father, "What are these homeless going to do?"
And he says, "They're gonna probably
have to go back to sleeping on the streets."
Well, Harry saw that interview on television
and just within about an hour after my father
got back to his office, he got a phone call from Harry
and you know that when you get a phone call from Harry,
something's about to happen, something's going to be done
and it's probably gonna challenge you to do
a lot more than you ever thought you were gonna do.
The Judge drove him down to Bell,
government land that wasn't being used.
He said, "What could you do with this?"
500 men and women from that day forward were
housed at this complex because Harry made it happen.
(relaxed guitar music)
- [Harry] If you want to meet wonderful people,
kind people, sharing people, decent people,
you go to a homeless shelter and you sit down with them.
They'll share whatever they have with the next person.
They're concerned about others' problems.
There's so much talent there.
We've had lawyers who were homeless.
We've had bankers who were homeless.
We've had NBA basketball players.
We've had a lot of folks that
are just struggling to survive every day.
They come to our place and we have a total array
of programs to help 'em get back on their feet.
- When the Pregerson family
asked me to share a few reflections,
I wanted to speak from my heart and think of what's
the truest thing I can say to honor this magnificent man
and it occurred to me it is somewhat ironic
that as a Catholic and Christian, the person
who most has reminded me of Jesus on my journey
was a man of Jewish persuasion named Harry
and I had mentioned this to my wife,
my most honest critic, Denise.
She said "No, you're not gonna say that.
First of all, Jesus was a Jew.
You're gonna sound like an ignorant
Catholic boy who doesn't know his history.
You're not gonna say that."
It kinda reminded me of those moments when you've been
at those events that honor Harry and as was mentioned,
he has a tendency to kinda go on and on
with his enthusiasm and so finally Bern
pops up and says "Harry, get down,
you're done, get off the stage."
God bless our wives.
Harry recognized that as devastating
as material poverty can be,
it is the disconnection from a community of care
that most depresses the plights of our homeless neighbors.
I am convinced that this is why the individual attention
he devoted to the poor and powerless surpassed that
which he directed to the powerful and the elite.
His message to the homeless was you deserve more
and I believe in you, don't give up on your dreams.
The message he conveyed to the powerful was
you need to do more or I won't believe in you because you'll
be giving up on the dream of what we must be as a community.
- In 1979, Harry was nominated to the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals by President Jimmy Carter.
He went before the Senate
Judiciary Committee for confirmation.
Harry was asked by one of the Senators
and pushed by one of the Senators,
"What would you do, Judge,
if you had a case in which you had to decide
according to the law or your conscience?"
And Harry really said afterwards to me
and others that that made him very uncomfortable
to try to answer a question like that
and he finally, because they pressed him, he finally
said "My conscience is the product of the 10 Commandments,
the Bill of Rights, the Boy Scout Oath
and the Marine Corps Hymn.
If I had to follow my conscience or the law,
I would follow my conscience."
Harry could not lie.
Harry had no guile.
He just was what he was.
People would take him for what he was
and I think everybody recognized that this was a man of
great
honor,
of great morality, of integrity.
(soft piano, violin music)
- I was asked to speak on behalf
of HP's law clerks past and present.
There are over 150 of us
over his 45 years on the Federal bench.
He has sworn most of us
into the Bar and into other positions.
Since he's been a Circuit Judge, he has taken
the liberty of embellishing the State Bar Oath.
He adds the promise, which he makes us all repeat,
"I will never file an oversized brief."
(audience laughs)
He bragged about other people's kids
and shared pictures as if they were his own.
He took the cane, an item that some might view
as a symbol of weakness and made it powerful and fun.
He used to do tricks with his cane.
HP regularly hired female law clerks from the get-go,
long before many of his colleagues
would even consider such a hire and if you got
pregnant while you were working for him, no problem.
Just bring the crib in.
He had it all set up as a nursery.
He was always on the phone,
moving and shaking, wheeling and dealing.
It was so frustrating if you were trying to keep him
on a deadline or help him get an opinion out but he taught
us how to get amazing things done by personal contact.
When he saw a wrong that needed to be righted,
he gathered the law clerks
and he gave us our marching orders.
Find the law and build to the right decision.
He said the law is like going to Builder's Emporium,
figure out what you want to build
and then use the law as a tool to build it.
And he had amazing legal vision.
His dissent in Sullivan versus United States in 1985
lamented the failure of the Court and our government
to recognize the importance of a party's same-sex marriage.
In 1998 in US versus Lipman,
long before the DACA controversy,
he authored a little-known opinion that
gave legal recognition to real life on the street.
That it is no surprise that children
brought to this country illegally by their parents
become as American as the rest of us.
- He was obviously incredibly impactful
as a jurist and I think for two different reasons.
One, he personified idealism.
The law was there to protect people.
It was infused with values, equality and fairness
but he also was the consummate pragmatist.
He measured whether something was just
based on its actual effect on real people's lives.
(relaxed piano music)
- In the mid-80s, it came to light that the city
of Los Angeles had been inadequately treating its sewage
and was essentially dumping everything that
was flushed down a toilet into Santa Monica Bay.
- The Hyperion Treatment Plant was not coming close
to meeting the requirements under the Clean Water Act.
We had a dead zone in the middle of Santa Monica Bay.
We had sewage spills closing the beaches
even in the height of summer and people were
just sick and tired of the poor water quality.
It was very much under the radar.
Then Assemblyman Tom Hayden held hearings.
Then all of a sudden, the sorry state
of sewage became front page news.
Judge Pregerson had been the District Judge
who had been presiding over the enforcement case.
It then got put on hold for many, many years and by the time
it reopened, he was an Appellate Court Judge but he kept
on the case because he already had the experience.
He required all of us to go on a tour
of the Hyperion Treatment Plant and he made sure
that everybody got up close and personal
to what's known as the headworks,
where there are bar screens that screen
out the crazy large items and things that people dump
into sewers down manholes and flush down the toilets.
It's the most odorful area.
- [Mark] We ended up meeting once a quarter.
Judge Harry Pregerson presided to run those meetings.
- Stuck in a room having to go through everything,
we started to develop some honest relationships.
Being able to ask questions, you know,
"Would you let your daughter go swim
in the beach out near the plant?"
And the answer was no.
- He was so down earth and so folksy
and he just had this incredible way
of making everybody in that room feel at ease
and also feel that their voice was important.
We I think realized, somewhat to our horror,
that we had approached talking about
the men and women of the Public Works Department
as if the folks who went to work at the sewage
treatment plant went there every morning to manufacturer
sewage for the joy of dumping it in the ocean
as opposed to it being hardworking men and women
who were dealing with a river of human waste
coming at them 24 hours a day that they hadn't been
given the resources they needed to deal with adequately.
(soft piano, trumpet music)
I think Judge Pregerson and his very humanity
in forcing us to come together as people to figure out
what could be done as opposed to fighting in the
traditional sense really brought the best out of all of us.
- We hear the term activist judge.
That doesn't really encompass
the activist judge that Harry Pregerson was.
He taught us it's not just what you do in law
with your hands in the opinions that you write
but it's what you do with your feet outside the courtroom.
When a freeway going through South Los Angeles was going
to uproot low income families, he stopped it in its tracks.
The first time in the history perhaps of this nation
that a judge stopped an infrastructure project
like that out of justice, to make sure that something that
was supposed to serve all of us did not leave anyone behind.
- The Century Freeway was planned
deliberately to go right through the urban area
and in doing so, it would destroy
approximately 8,000 housing units.
We were very young, still very green
and trying to figure out what
public interest law could be about.
Judge Pregerson understood the need to act quickly
and Judge Pregerson kept going back to Caltrans
and saying "You need to do a better job
of addressing the problems of blight."
He continued the injunction in effect for seven years.
Judge Pregerson clearly understood that a very robust
mitigation plan was going to be the optimum solution.
He delivered that message and that was critical
to getting both the Federal and the State
government to agree to a plan that was
going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The settlement provided that roughly half the cost of the
freeway was going to be put into the mitigation measures.
Pregerson was more responsible than anybody
for establishing the Apprenticeship Program.
You should have certain numbers of women,
you should have certain numbers of the minority.
You should try to have as many people
from the impacted area as possible.
That proved to be extremely difficult
because a lot of people that you would want
to get those jobs didn't have the skills.
Pregerson said "Well, let's have an Apprenticeship Program
where we teach these people the skills from the beginning,
how to hit a hammer into a nail,
then go up from there and drive the bulldozer."
(bulldozer rumbles)
He had a great concern for minorities.
Maybe it was his Jewish background,
that he felt he was a minority religiously
and that the Jewish community was one
of many minority groups as he grew up
and so he felt concerned for other minority groups.
I'm not sure where he got that.
(relaxed trumpet music)
- This is a letter from a Congressman,
Chuck Holifield of the 19th District in California
and he writes to my husband on September 11th, 1945,
"Dear Harry, I rejoice with you
in the restoration of your Commission.
The most important thing in this whole affair
is that you've proven your ability
to overcome what seemed to be a very great tragedy."
Oh, where to begin?
There's no question that my husband suffered from PTSD.
I've known it, Harry has known it and you could say well,
he certainly suffered in the battlefield.
He had these severe wounds in Okinawa
but by far the greatest suffering that my husband had
was when he was in Quantico, Virginia
in the Officer's Training Facility
to become a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps.
When Harry and his friend Mike graduated from the ROTC
program at UCLA, they were then sent to Quantico.
They were absolutely shocked
by the outrageous racism,
bigotry,
anti-Semitism that would permeate
every aspect of their military life there.
Right after they had taken an exam,
they were called into the office of an officer
who they considered not very friendly towards Jews and told
that they had been found to have cheated on the exam
and of course they denied it and then the officer said,
"Well then now that you've denied it,
you're not only a cheat but you're liars."
Just before graduation, they were called in
and told they were going to be dishonorably discharged.
That was probably the greatest pain that Harry's ever known.
The day that they received their dishonorable discharges,
Harry decided that he would enlist
the very next day in the Marine Corps as a Private.
He was going into that War.
And then a strange thing happened.
Evidently there were enough people
in high places who said this is terrible travesty,
what was done to these two boys.
Harry was told
that he would get back his commission
and it would be a field commission.
But what happened was he was severely
wounded with these badly mangled legs.
The doctor came to see him and he said, "Son,
one of the requirements is you're going to have to walk.
You're gonna have to walk."
And so
Harry got up
and he walked.
He walked about 10 steps
and the doctor had a wheelchair waiting for him and
he got his commission back
and so, this wound that Harry suffered
was rectified and yet it wasn't.
He never wanted to talk about this.
He didn't tell our children for years and years
because he felt it was a stain on his character.
One of the things that Harry learned
from this experience was that a little person like Harry
who was barely out of his teens when this event happened,
a little person who had no power and had no network,
no resource, no person who could help him
was totally at the mercy of whatever powers might be
and so I think Harry learned
that one of the things he needed to do was to get power,
to have some voice and then to start networking.
I'll never forget his last words.
"I'm so sorry.
I regret so much that I can no longer help anybody."
- I'm gonna bring it home.
When I was eight years old, my grandfather gave me
a stone with the inscription "Never, never, ever quit."
Being eight, I didn't have anything yet to quit from.
(audience laughs)
When I was 10 years old, he bought me the book
"How to Win Friends and Influence People."
Win friends?
Influence people?
I was just focused on trying to be like Michael Jordan.
As I got older, my grandpa continued to buy me books.
Autobiographies of Abraham Lincoln,
speeches of Winston Churchill
and of course, Strunk's "Elements of Style."
One summer, we went through this book cover to cover.
He would call me each Sunday
and say without any introduction,
"Turn to page 57."
(audience laughs)
During one weekend session that I will never forget
because it was a particularly beautiful summer day,
I asked him if we could skip that day's session.
Grandpa, I said, "It's a beautiful day.
I want to go outside and have fun with the other kids."
He said "Brad, let me tell you something.
Fun is bullshit."
(audience laughs)
And I'll never forget that but it was ironic
coming from someone who loved to make people laugh
and even at 12 years old, I knew what he really meant.
Don't waste time, work every day
towards bettering yourself and strive to be better.
In his later years, I went with him
to many dinners and charity events and at those events,
he would be seated at a table and a stranger would
inevitably approach him and introduce themselves.
He would slowly extend his hand.
They would shake and suddenly the stranger
was confronted with a Kung Fu grip they could not escape.
The crippling grip continued as pleasantries were exchanged
while the stranger pretended everything was normal.
The handshake would continue an unusually
long period of time where this stranger
would finally begin to smile or laugh,
I'm sure thinking this crazy old judge
is squeezing the crap out of my hand and won't let go.
Eventually grandpa would release his grip
and a conversation or rather a history lesson would ensue.
"Where do you live? Near downtown, near Pershing Square?
Do you know about General Pershing?"
(audience laughs)
Soon contact information was requested
and then exchanged and then the stranger unknowingly
had enlisted as a member of grandpa's army.
The truth is that all the good deeds he was able
to accomplish were not the result of his efforts alone.
No, there was an army of people who stood
and fought with him who began as strangers,
who were brought in with a Kung Fu grip
and soon became lifelong friends.
But grandpa wasn't afraid to take bold action,
inspiring others to join him and they did
because they knew he was fighting the good fight.
He was a good man and he would never, never, ever quit.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
(somber trumpet music)
- [Narrator] In his last days, Harry knew his work was done.
That it was time for others to carry on his legacy.
His message was we have to make this world a better place.
We have to leave it in better shape than when we entered it.
"God puts us here to take care of each other," he once said.
And I really believe that.
(soft piano music)
(audience applauding)
- I grew up in East LA.
It was a wonderful place.
In my high school,
the students' parents came from
over 50 countries
around the world.
You know, we all got along.
We were like brothers and sisters.
People worked together, they respected each other.
I've looked at people that way, that they're all
important.
That they all have so much goodness within them.
It's been a great journey for me, it's not finished.
(audience applauds)
I guess that means I should sit down.
(audience laughs)
But I just want to say this.
As a country,
we have a great future.
We have great strength, we have great resources.
But we need to come together.
We need to embrace each other as brothers and sisters
and we need
to devote so much of our resources
to educating our children and the parents of our children.
Every child that is here today, every child born here
and every child who is brought here
is a precious asset
and the wealth of our country is in the minds of our people.
The other thing I want to say, and I'll
probably get half the people in this room mad at me but
I feel very good about the future
of our country, and you know why?
Because the women are gonna take over and run it.
(audience applauds)
- Good ending.
(relaxed trumpet music)