[TI] Anthony Alaimo

[Barbara Jenkins]

There is a photo at:
http://post-journal.com/page/content.detail/id/548111.html?nav=5009
Anthony A. Alaimo
A great man has left us, an American hero

POSTED: January 1, 2010
Article Photos
 Anthony A. Alaimo
Senior U.S. District Court Judge Anthony A. Alaimo, formerly from Jamestown, 
who passed away on Dec. 30, 2009, at age 89, would never have allowed or 
acknowledged such praise. ''I'm just doing my job, what's the big deal,'' he 
would have shrugged and moved on to the next case, the next ruling, the next 
challenge, even when that challenge became summoning the will to propel his 
frail and failing body in the months after the death of his beloved wife 
Jeanne in January 2009.
Life, for Anthony Alaimo was always inseparable from love of country, duty 
and fidelity to the law. He was fierce in his devotion to these guiding 
principles, and yet compassionate and generous of spirit. Renowned for his 
strict and baleful courtroom demeanor, at heart, Judge Alaimo was a gentle 
man, possessed of an unshakeable faith in his country, his fellow citizens, 
in the splendor of the American Dream, untouched by the never-ending panoply 
of human frailty, avarice and lawlessness that unfolded in his Brunswick, 
Ga., courtroom for more than three decades.
It was this faith that spurred him to confront and overcome innumerable 
challenges and inspired so many others who were privileged to know him.''He 
lived his life the way we all wish we had the courage to live ours,'' said 
U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Wood, one of Judge Alaimo's former law 
clerks.
That life began, as does the lives of so many Greatest Generation heroes, 
unremarked. Anthony Alaimo was born in Termini, Sicily, to illiterate and 
impoverished immigrants who arrived in Jamestown, in the second decade of 
the twentieth century. His mother, Santa, one of the touchstones of Alaimo's 
life, never stopped professing her faith in a merciful God and the value of 
education. Hard work was second nature to this family, as was 
overachievement.
As a boy, Alaimo shined shoes to help support his family. After graduating 
from Jamestown High School, he attended Ohio Northern University, where he 
worked as a barber, studied hard, ran up an undefeated record as a Golden 
Gloves boxer, and met the vivacious and beautiful Jeanne Loy, daughter of 
one of the university deans.
To Anthony Alaimo, citizenship meant more than economic opportunity and the 
possibility of a free and unfettered life; it was a privilege, a blessing 
that carried a never-ending obligation-to give of oneself, as long, as often 
and as deeply as his country demanded.
Alaimo put all his dreams on hold on Dec. 8, 1941, one day after the 
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, 
flew a B-26 bomber and was shot down with his entire squadron on his first 
mission over occupied Holland. The sole survivor of the fiery crash into the 
North Sea, Alaimo was captured by the Nazis and spent two years in POW 
camps. He took part in the famous Great Es-cape from Stalag Luft III - he 
pumped the makeshift bel-lows that provided air to the tunnelers - and 
unsuccessfully attempted to escape two more times before breaking out on his 
own and making his way to Switzerland disguised at a repatriating Italian 
laborer; a ploy which would have meant death were he captured.
''I wasn't someone who could sleep the war away,'' he later said. What he 
didn't say was that the war's end was just weeks away, but he'd sworn an 
oath to do anything in his power to disrupt and divert the enemy.
Typically, Alaimo never mentioned his wartime experiences. He arrived home, 
married Jeanne Loy, moved to Atlanta, graduated second in his class from 
Emory University law school, and began a successful career in Brunswick, 
Ga., as a trial lawyer. The white-shoe law firms in post-war Atlanta had no 
interest in hiring a Yankee "foreigner."
In 1971, former U.S. Attorney General Judge Griffin B. Bell became aware of 
a gantlet of groundless obstacles being thrown up to prevent Alaimo, then a 
Republican nominee for district court judge for the Southern District of 
Georgia, from being confirmed. Bell, a Democrat who'd risen from working 
class roots in rural Georgia, was outraged. He convinced the American Bar 
Association to conduct a second review which found Alaimo eminently 
qualified. Alaimo ascended to the bench in 1972.
Over the next 37 years, Judge Alaimo would establish himself as one of the 
most respected, least reversed and courageous judges in the United States. 
Certainly, his experiences as a POW influenced his immensely unpopular 
decision to order the clean up of the state prison in Reidsville, Ga., then 
a vile, murderous and uncontrollable dungeon that rivaled anything he'd 
experienced in Germany.
Though staunchly conservative in his interpretation of the Constitution, he 
was denounced in newspapers and the state legislature as ''Ayatollah 
Alaimo''; ironically the same institutions that would revere him a quarter 
century later for his even-handed administration of justice. Georgia's 
prisons are now a model for the nation.
Over the years, and in thousands of cases, Alaimo enforced civil rights 
legislation, cracked down on corporate environmental polluters, sent a dozen 
drug-dealing sheriffs to prison and still found the time to read every 
letter that arrived on his desk seeking redress of some alleged wrong or 
injustice. And there were thousands.
He presided over the 1993 volatile and racially charged Atlanta airport 
corruption trial that resulted in the conviction of former Atlanta City 
Councilman Ira Jackson and prominent businessman Dan Paradies. Privately, 
Alaimo believed the case was a precursor to the bribery and rampant 
corruption that would later define Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell's 
administration.
''Judge Alaimo was committed to doing what's right not just some of the 
time, but all the time,'' said James Bishop, Alaimo's former Brunswick law 
partner and close friend. ''He was the conscience of our community.''
To those of us privileged to know and yes, love Judge Alaimo, the world is 
now a bleaker, more uncivil place; it is far easier to praise and mourn a 
hero than to aspire in our own small ways to follow the paths he blazed for 
nearly a century, in war and peace, through trial and tribulation, and with 
such fidelity and joy.
Judge Alaimo is survived by his son, Philip and daughter-in-law, Pam Alaimo 
of Savannah, Ga.; daughter-in-law, Dawn Bischoff of Gatlinburg, Tenn.; 
granddaughters: Julie Medlin of Savannah, Nicole Bischoff Ellwood of 
Cincinnati, Ohio, Pamela Bischoff and Mindy Bischoff of Gatlinburg; 
grandson, Joseph Anthony Alaimo of Philadelphia; great-grandson, Kaiser 
Medlin, Savannah; sister, Josephine Curry of Cincinnati, and many beloved 
nieces and nephews including
The Honorable Joseph Gerace of Lakewood, Josephine Pasciullo of Saratoga 
Springs, Samuel P. Gerace of Pittsburgh, Marie Sheffield, Tina Trusso, 
Sheriff Joseph Gerace, Sgt. Vincent J. Gerace, Andrea Magnuson and Frances 
Carcione.
The Jamestown Bar Association will hold a memorial service at the Robert H. 
Jackson Center at 11 a.m., Friday, Jan. 15. Locally, the family requests 
that contributions be made to the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation for 
a memorial to Judge Alaimo.