That baby: Justice Jackson's writings about a grandchild, and vice versa.

• Author: Loftus, Thomas A., III
• Position: Testimonial

As Justice Jackson's ("Grampa's") oldest grandchild (born in March 1946), I was able to observe him from a perspective that most people did not--from a crib, or from under the dining table, for example. Seriously, my younger brother Bob and I were fortunate to spend a good bit of time with him, and at his Hickory Hill home in McLean, Virginia, because my family lived nearby from 1949 until his death in October 1954. Of course, he was the chief inspiration for my legal career.

Grampa mused about becoming a grandfather, upon hearing in a letter from his daughter Mary--our mother--that she was expecting (me). He wrote back to her on the West Coast in September 1945, when he was en route to Nuremburg to prepare for the International Military Tribunal.

Your atom bomb dropped on the house while I was at home and I am very glad to hear that I am to be a grand pappy. Of course it makes me feel a little ancient, but I have the feel anyway, so I might as well have the perquisite of old age--grandchildren. I know you have too much sense to get your heart set on a particular sex for the infant--just want what you get and be happy about it. Also don't let every damned hysterical old maid scare you about it. There is nothing to fear except fear itself as F.D.R. would say. (1) Grampa added that if our father, Tom Loftus, M.D., who was in the Navy, was ordered to the Pacific before the blessed event:

I shall try to substitute as well as my age and enfeebled condition will permit. I can walk the floor and worry as well as ever and confinement is really much more of an ordeal for a pa than for a ma--she knows what's going on and he conjures up the worst. Seriously I expect the Nuremburg trials to be over by that time but in any event I shall choose to be here if it is at all possible and if Tom can not be. Of course I shall spoil the discipline--just as my mother did yours. (2) The trials he conducted would not end, however, until more than four months after I was born and our father was in the Pacific for the event too, courtesy of the Navy.

In May 1946, in a letter to his sister Helen from Nuremburg, Grampa noted reports about me and displayed his keenly skeptical legal mind.

I hear great reports [about] Tommy Loftus III. I expect to get a letter from him any day now, for I gather from the modest accounts that he is bright enough to write any time. Great that every mother feels that way. Irene [his wife, my grandmother] and Mary seem to be having their own...