A Tribute to the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo

• Publication year: 2004

A Tribute to

The Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo,

Senior Judge, United States

District Court for the

Southern District of Georgia*

December 4, 2003

R. Kirby Godsey, President and CEO,

Mercer University, Presiding

Processional.....Robert W. Parris University Organist

Welcome .....David E. Hudson, CLA '68 Member, Mercer University Board of Trustees

Invocation.....The Honorable W. Louis Sands, Law '74 Chief Judge, United States District Court Middle District of Georgia Member, Mercer University Board of Trustees

Remembrances .....The Honorable J. L. Edmondson Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit

Days as a Student .....The Honorable James C. Hill Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit

The Practice of Law .....James A. Bishop, Law '67 Chairman, Mercer University Board of Trustees

Service to the Court .....The Honorable Dudley Bowen Chief Judge, United States District Court Southern District of Georgia and The Honorable W. Terrell Hodges Judge, United States District Court Middle District of Florida

Service to the Nation .... The Honorable Gerald B. Tjoflat Judge, United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit

University Honors ..............The President and CEO of the University and The Honorable Griffin B. Bell, Law '48 Member, Mercer University Board of Trustees

Special Music"God Bless America" .....The Mercer Singers Stanley L. Roberts, CLA '84, Director

Benediction .........The Honorable M. Yvette Miller, Law '80 Judge, Court of Appeals of Georgia Member, Walter F. George School of Law Board of Visitors

Recessional ............... Robert W. Parris

The Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo

Senior Judge

United States District Court

Southern District of Georgia

Sea Island, Georgia

Early History

On March 29, 1929, Anthony A. Alaimo was born near Termini on the island of Sicily. His family immigrated to the United States when he was two years old. The Alaimo family was naturalized as United States citizens in 1928. Alaimo grew up in Jamestown, New York, and graduated from high school there in 1937. After high school, he attended Ohio Northern University at Ada, Ohio, and graduated in 1940. In college, he excelled in academics and athletics, specifically Golden Gloves boxing as a welterweight, while working his way through as a barber. While at Ohio Northern, he met and courted Jeanne Loy, the daughter of Frank Loy, Dean of the College of Education.

A fiercely patriotic Italian-American, Alaimo volunteered for active duty and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Force. He qualified and served as a B-26 bomber pilot, assigned to the 8th Air Force stationed in England. In the course of a low-level attack against German positions in which all eleven American planes were lost, Alaimo's plane was hit by flack and ditched in the North Sea. Seriously wounded, he was the only member of his crew of six to survive. He was picked up by a patrol boat and taken into German captivity.

During his imprisonment, Alaimo participated with fellow Americans in preparing the tunnel through which "The Great Escape" (from the movie title) took place. Prior to that escape, Alaimo was transferred to another stalag. After two unsuccessful escape attempts, for which he could have been shot, and two stints in solitary confinement, he finally did escape in February 1945. Blending in with and aided by forced laborers from France, Alaimo was able to eventually cross the Italian border and receive sanctuary from a sympathetic family in Milan. Alaimo has revealed in later years that during his hiding in Milan, he boldly, and perhaps foolishly, persuaded his host family to let him attend an opera performance, The Barber of Seville. Remarkably, he found himself seated at the performance next to a German SS colonel.

Thereafter, Alaimo crossed the Italian frontier into Switzerland. Once he convinced them that he was indeed an American Army officer and not an Italian refugee, he was transported to liberated France, and then flown back to the United States. After a short period of leave, he resumed training with a bomber unit for deployment to the Pacific. However, the war ended, and he married his beloved Jeanne in a ceremony conducted by his brother, Philip, a Methodist minister.

The Post-War Years

After marrying, Alaimo and his bride traveled south to Atlanta, where Emory had an opening in its law school class. Living in a war-surplus trailer and sustained by GI Bill benefits, Alaimo went on to finish second in his class, and his portrait is displayed there as one of the school's distinguished graduates. Upon graduation, he entered the practice of law in Atlanta.

The early years of his practice were not easy. Parochialism was strong, and someone who was both a "Yankee" and a "foreigner" was not readily accepted. Sensing better opportunities for his law practice, Alaimo moved to the southeast Georgia coast and established his home and law practice in Brunswick, Georgia. There he excelled as a tough, honest, sincere and extraordinarily effective plaintiff's lawyer. Always the champion of the disadvantaged, Alaimo could never suffer injustice in any quarter, by anyone.

Not content to serve his community through the practice of law alone, Alaimo also chose a path of public service and devoted his characteristic energy and prowess to it.

In 1965, he was elected to the Glynn County Board of Commissioners (the form of county government in Georgia) and served as its Chairman in 1966. He was the first Republican to serve on the Commission since Reconstruction. He also served as counsel to the Republican Party of Georgia.

He was appointed by the participating governments as a charter member of the Coastal Area Planning and Development Commission serving 26 Georgia coastal municipalities. He served on its board for 13 years and held its chairmanship from 1968 to 1971. He is the only person to have ever served as Chair for three terms.

Judicial Service

On December 20, 1971, Alaimo was appointed United States District Judge for the Southern District ofGeorgia. His was a new position. He joined the late Judge Alexander A. Lawrence as the district's second judge. Judge Alaimo became Chief Judge of the district on November 1, 1976, and held that status until March 28, 1990. Judge Alaimo took senior status in January 1991, but he has continued a workload in excess of most "active" judges.

Many judges across the country have rendered extraordinarily good service to the public. As a newly appointed judge in the Deep South, however, Judge Alaimo served at the expense of personal friendships and at the risk of physical danger and mental hardship. Those judges who upheld the law in the early days of school desegregation and civil rights litigation did so in the face of vindictiveness, vituperation, personal insult, and other abuses. The judges who have so served paid a dear price for any personal or professional satisfaction that they may have gleaned from the experience. Judge Alaimo is archetypical of those who enforced the law regardless of the consequences to himself and his family. Judge Alaimo heroically answered an immutable call for social change. Few outside our part of the country fully comprehend the personal sacrifice involved.

The personal courage that judge Alaimo exhibited as a young pilot and prisoner of war has been displayed throughout the course of his judicial service. During the 1970s, his work throughout the 43 counties of the district kept him on the road more than six months per year. A wiry, athletic man—given to no excess except duty—Judge Alaimo suffered a heart attack in 1974. After a strong recovery, he later underwent triple coronary artery bypass surgery in the fall of 1980. The same procedure was required again in subsequent years. On each occasion, it took Herculean efforts from family and colleagues to persuade him to set aside his judicial work long enough to receive the medical attention he needed, and then to recuperate long enough to recover. After each ordeal, he rushed his physicians to allow him to resume the full load of the district's business.

Another example of his courage occurred in 1979. Following the tragic murder of Judge John Wood of the Western District of Texas, a call went out to judges to volunteer to come to Texas in the uncertain atmosphere following the assassination. Judge Alaimo immediately accepted and served there with distinction. in fact, Judge Alaimo has volunteered to assist his colleagues in other districts throughout his tenure. On at least 30 occasions, he has served for days, weeks and even months in judicial districts of Texas, Ohio, Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and Pennsylvania.

Some of Judge Alaimo s judicial work has been groundbreaking. His opinion reorganizing election districts in Burke County, Georgia, correctly anticipated the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), and was affirmed in the enlightening opinion of Rogers v. Lodge, 458 U.S. 613 (1982). The Supreme Court's opinion and that of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals compliment the work of the trial judge.

Judge Alaimo transformed Georgia's penal system when he presided over a case involving the State Prison at Reidsville. Guthrie v. Evans, Case No. 3068 (1973-1983). After months of hearings, reams of writing and review, and years of pendency, Judge Alaimo's handling of this class action serves as a model of prison reform.

When the judges of the Northern District of Georgia were recused, it was Judge Alaimo who, in 1994, presided over the highly publicized and significant prosecutions of Atlanta government officials charged with bribery in connection with the operation of the Atlanta airport. Likewise, when a judge was needed for the obstruction of justice trial of Walter Leroy Moody, who bombed appeals court Judge Robert Vance, it was Judge Alaimo who presided.

Even though it was personally painful to do so, it was Judge Alaimo...