A prominent judge’s braided - and surprising - life of blindness and the law / Part 1

David Tatel - who retired recently from the U.S. Court of Appeals - has led what he calls a "braided life" that intertwines hardship and accomplishment. With his wife, Edie, he describes how he struggled to hide his gradual loss of sight from friends and colleagues alike - including tricks like counting rows and seats in a movie theater and following the clicks of high heels. Meanwhile, David became an accomplished lawyer who fought landmark civil rights cases. You can read their full story in David's new book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. David will return in Part 2 to take us behind the scenes of the second most important court in the nation.

Transcript

A prominent judge’s braided - and surprising - life of blindness and the law / Part 1

David S. Tatel - who retired recently from the U.S. Court of Appeals - has led what he calls a "braided life" that intertwines hardship and accomplishment. With his wife, Edie, he describes how he struggled to hide his gradual loss of sight from friends and colleagues alike - including tricks like counting rows and seats in a movie theater and following the clicks of high heels. Meanwhile, David became an accomplished lawyer who fought landmark civil rights cases. You can read their full story in David's new book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. David will return in Part 2 to take us behind the scenes of the second-most important court in the nation.

[Danny and Dave’s note: We’ve made minor edits to cut out some of our, and our guests’, stutters]

DAVID SHIPLER: Hi, I'm David Shipler. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And I'm Daniel Zwerdling. TWO REPORTERS start now. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Hi, Dave. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Hi, Danny. How are you doing? 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Great, thanks. And here's our mission today: We're going to talk with one of the most influential judges in America. He's also one of the most respected judges, although I suppose we should use the past tense because he recently retired from the court. And now this judge is going to take us behind the scenes and share details about the court - and he's going to share details about his life that most people have never heard before. David Tatel, welcome. 

DAVID TATEL: Thank you, good morning. My pleasure to be here. 

DAVID SHIPLER: So, David, before we talk more about your remarkable life and biography, a quick question. How's retirement? 

DAVID TATEL: It's good. It turns out that the time was just right for me. I loved my 30 years on the court. I actually enjoyed it right up to the end. But at the same time, after 30 years on the D.C. Circuit, I'm increasingly concerned about the courts. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And David, you've just published a remarkable book about all this and about much more. It's called Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. And you begin the book beautifully, really movingly. Would you please read just a bit from the opening passage? 

DAVID TATEL: Well, here, let me find it, Danny. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And maybe explain to our listeners what you're doing. You have a gizmo here on your lap. 

DAVID TATEL: Yeah, I work with a computer just like anybody else, but my computer, I run it with Braille keys – there are seven Braille keys - and I hear what I type. So, what I have in my computer here is several dozen excerpts from the book. And there's one in particular that I want to read to you here [clears throat]: 

“The two threads of this memoir have inverse trajectories. When I was coming of age, I was inspired by the role that lawyers and courts were playing in enforcing the guarantees of our great Constitution. But I was unwilling and unable to deal with my declining vision. Now, half a century later, I've made peace with my blindness. But I'm concerned about the Supreme Court's apparent disregard of the principles of judicial restraint that distinguish the unelected judiciary from the two elected branches of government, and about what that might mean for our planet and our democracy. Braided together, those two threads are my story.” 

DAVID SHIPLER: Well, that's a great way to sum it up. And one of the themes of your book is judicial restraint and how important that is. And we're going to get into that in a lot of detail as we go along. But I guess we need to give everybody some quick background.

David S. Tatel, as we've said, retired recently as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Legal specialists regard it as the second-most powerful court in the country after the Supreme Court, because it handles many cases involving federal agencies, big cases, important ones. And David and his fellow judges decided some of the most controversial and high-profile cases over the past 30 years. I should add, by the way, in the interest of full disclosure, that Danny and I are longtime friends of David. That's why we call him Judge Tatel. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: David, I should tell our listeners, I owe my life to you. 

DAVID TATEL: Yes, that's true, Danny, because when you were a second grader walking to Oakview Elementary School, I was the traffic patrol guard on the corner of your house. And I crossed you safely every day. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Clearly, you did a really good job, because here I am. We should also mention that before you became a federal judge roughly 30 years ago, you were one of the best-known civil rights lawyers in the country. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And Danny, before we get into David's memoir, which is really brilliant and beautifully written, by the way - unlike a lot of judges, David, you really write well. I love reading your opinions, I always have. You know, we see this book, I think, exactly the way you described it, which is what you call a “braided” memoir. Why a braided memoir? What do you mean by that? 

DAVID TATEL: There are quite a few themes running through my book. The two major ones, as you can tell from the subtitle, are blindness and justice. Here I was, a young man gradually losing his eyesight and trying to cover it up, but also excited about the potential of the law and what judges and lawyers could do. But now, as I said, 50 years later, I've become completely comfortable with my blindness. A lot of the book is about that and how it happened. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Let's go there for a while, if you're okay with that. So at the beginning, as I remember reading, you were about eight years old when you first kind of felt that something was wrong. 

DAVID TATEL: The - by the way, you said an interesting thing, Dave, you asked whether I'm comfortable talking about it. Five, six years ago, my answer probably would have been “no.” But making the decision to write this book, and writing it, has completely transformed my thinking about this. And now I find it completely comfortable to talk about it. 

So, the disease I have, the eye disease I have is called retinitis pigmentosa. And the very first signs of it are loss of night vision. And when I was a very small child, everybody noticed that little David had trouble seeing at night, and they all thought it was just, well, you know, some people see better at night, some people don't. My parents had me eat lots of carrots. 

[laughter]

I had huge numbers of carrots. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Do you like them to this day? 

DAVID TATEL: I do, I love carrots. So, one of the very first signs I sensed, and also my dad did, was - we spent a lot of time together. He was a physicist and he was interested in astronomy and he built a telescope, which we had in our backyard. I don't remember whether you remember it, Danny. Maybe you came and looked through it some nights. And the memory I have is this one about the moons of Jupiter. Because, you know, my dad would tell us about Galileo and his discoveries, and we would look at various things through his telescope. And I remember one night he did point the telescope at Jupiter and said, There you see the moons? And I couldn't see them. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And then you tell in the book about how things would happen in school, like on the playground, on the sports field. 

DAVID TATEL: Right. The one that I remember the most - well, other than the moons of Jupiter – was, I was playing baseball at the elementary school, Oakview Elementary School, Danny, where we both went. And I was in the outfield and somebody hit, the batter hit a ball, and it hit me right in the head. And I did not see it coming. And at that point, even I thought, Gee, there's something wrong here. I don't think I told that to my parents. But they became increasingly concerned. And none of the eye doctors we went to had any idea what it was. People then didn't know what retinitis pigmentosa was. But when I was 15 years old, my mother took me to the National Institutes of Health. The ophthalmology department was on the first floor of a 10, 12-story building. It had the feel of a hospital, and I spent the morning and into the early afternoon having my eyes tested, with all kinds of equipment. And my mother and I went down to the cafeteria for lunch, came back up, waited. There was a lot of waiting during the day - and, you know, I was 15 years old, I wanted to be outside with my buddies. This was, I was not a happy camper this day. And then the doctor invited my mother in to talk to her. And she was in there for about a half hour. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Just your mother alone. 

DAVID TATEL: Which made me even more nervous. And then finally he called me and I went in, and the two of them were sitting there, and he said to me that I had an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa. He said, We don't know a whole lot about this disease. We know it's genetic and we know that over the years your eyesight will decline. Now, how fast it will decline and how far, we just don't know. But we do know that some people will lose their sight and some people won't lose your sight. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And what was going on in you when all that happened,  when he said that? 

DAVID TATEL: Danny, that was 68 years ago. I've - it's been so long, I sometimes look back on that 15-year-old - I sometimes call that 15-year-old boy “him,” because it's, it's hardly me anymore. So much has transpired in my life, I look back on 15-year-old David and wonder about his reaction to this pretty much as much as you do. I don't remember what was going through my head, but what I remember is he said, Your sight will slowly decline. There'll be plateaus - I remember him using the word “plateau” - so it may level off for a few years, but it will continue to decline and we just don't know how far. And, he said, you should continue to eat carrots and take vitamin A supplements. 

DAVID SHIPLER: So, David, you write in the book, and you talk about how you used some tricks to avoid disclosing your deteriorating vision. They’re  really compelling stories. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: You started honing strategies to keep your vision from your friends, like going to the movie theater, those tricks. 

DAVID TATEL: You know, we all went to the Flower Theater. It was, you know, in a little shopping center next to a delicatessen. And it was a movie theater that we all went to on Saturdays to watch movies. And of course, these were tricky for me because I couldn't see when they turned the lights out. I couldn't see - I could see the movie just fine, but I had a lot of trouble finding my seat. But instead of saying - if I was sitting next to you, Danny - instead of saying, Hey, Danny, you know it's dark in here, I have trouble seeing, would you get the popcorn? Instead of that, I would go get it. But the way I did it is, you know, I'd walk down the aisle and count the seats, what seat I was in. So, one, two, three, four, five, six. And when I got to the aisle, I knew I was the sixth seat in. And then it was easy to figure out which direction to go to get the popcorn because it was always up. And then I would count the rows going up to get the popcorn - so I'd count one, two, three, four or five, and then I'd get the popcorn. And then when I came back, I would count the rows back down - five, four, three, two, one. And I'd turn left and then count the seats and, boop, I'd find my seat. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Did you ever sit in somebody else's lap by mistake? 

DAVID TATEL: Never. I was very good at this. There's no school for this, by the way. You don't go to some class where you're prepared to hide your - to learn the tricks for hiding blindness. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So, it sounds from this book,  and from what I know of you growing up, that you revered your father. You went to college in engineering at first, but very quickly you started getting excited by the idea of public service. 

DAVID TATEL: I was captured by the 1960s. I started at the University of Michigan in 1959, and by 1960,’61, the civil rights struggles in the South were at their height. Every day, the paper was full of stories about freedom rides and sit-ins. And the University of Michigan was, you know, a politically active campus. There were demonstrators, and people collecting money for the Freedom Riders. And our professors talked about the civil rights movement. And, you know, that's the first time in my life I started becoming a regular - reading something in the newspaper beyond the sports pages. And so, suddenly, I was exposed to this, to the real world - and I was deeply influenced by the Kennedy administration. The president and the attorney general, they were enthusiastic about public service and about young people in public service. And they captured me. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: In fact, you went to work as one of the first summer interns in this new program started by President John F. Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general, Bobby Kennedy. 

DAVID TATEL: I've seen very little reference, very few references to the program that the President started in 1961. The Kennedy administration invited thousands and thousands of college students from all over the country to come to Washington for the summer, and they gave us real jobs. I was a GS-5 economist in the Department of Labor - which was ridiculous because, you know, I did a lot of Xeroxing and … 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: I would just say, GS-5 is a designation for a federal employee. 

DAVID TATEL: Yes, it's a low-level federal employee. But it paid us, we were actually paid. And the summer began at the White House. We were all invited to the White House, where President Kennedy greeted us on the South Lawn and talked to us about the importance of public service. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And I want to add that we're going to play some historical news clips during our chat to illustrate what we're talking about. And here is President Kennedy talking to interns like you. 

JFK: This is the most challenging career that could possibly be for any American. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: We've edited him for length. 

JFK: And while the compensation may not be as great, the immediate financial compensation, nevertheless the rewards are unlimited. And those of you have the advantage of college educations and work here, I think, can represent the best kind of civil servant or politician. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And in 1963, you went to the March on Washington. 

MLK: Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And, of course, that was Martin Luther King Jr.’s legendary speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Where I also went. And what were your impressions, David? I mean, I have mine, but I'd love to hear your impressions of that day. 

DAVID TATEL: Yes, I had marched with the huge crowd from the Capitol. We walked down Constitution Avenue and it was hot, and by the time we got there, my friend and I, we were - I was there with a friend - we worked our way down to the Reflecting Pool, and sat on the edge with our feet in the water. It was a really hot day. 

MLK: But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. 

DAVID TATEL: And I remember, the event was memorable for me. Being there with the hundreds of thousands of people, hearing these great speeches, we felt part of history. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And I wonder if there were echoes from your childhood that also played into all of that, which is that you and I both grew up in a very pleasant suburb. It's where a lot of federal government workers live, it's just a couple of miles from Washington, D.C. - Silver Spring. But it was a very white suburb. You grew up with segregation all around you. 

DAVID TATEL: I was unaware of it, except - I don't remember being particularly aware of the fact that our schools were virtually all white. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: The only black people we knew growing up in Silver Spring were what we called the black “maids,” who cleaned our houses. 

DAVID TATEL: And the janitors in the school. Really, the two things that really brought it home to me was, we had friends of the family who lived in Arlington and Fairfax on the other side of the river, in Virginia. And I distinctly remember “whites only” signs on restaurants. I had never seen that before. So just crossing the river into Virginia brought home the fact that this was segregation. And then, of course - you probably remember this, too, Danny - one of our favorite places to go was Glen Echo, an amusement park. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: I loved going to that place, there was  aa roller coaster. 

DAVID TATEL: And they had this wonderful pool, a swimming pool that we loved. It was segregated - whites only. And when I was in high school, I think it was students from Howard University started picketing. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And my brother Tim was one of the pickets. 

DAVID TATEL: Yeah. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And so then, how do you make the transition from that kind of sensitivity to the sort of ugly segregation that you saw as you were growing up, and the law? What about the law became a kind of tool for you that attracted you to deal with these issues? 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Why’d you want to go to law school? You sort of left engineering behind, and went to law school. 

DAVID TATEL: It was reading about the lawyers in the Civil Rights Division and the lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and what they were accomplishing. You know, the newspapers, The New York Times, covered it extensively. I remember the pictures of John Doar in Mississippi, confronting mobs …

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Who was John Doar? 

DAVID TATEL: John Doar was the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. I remember the pictures of the demonstrations and the Freedom Riders’ buses being burned, and people at lunch counters being clubbed. They were vivid to me as a young college student, as were the lawyers who were - now, why did I connect to the lawyers? I think it was only because I read about them. And that just became more and more what I wanted to do. 

DAVID SHIPLER: This is a great illustration of how the civil rights movement stirred the conscience of the entire country. 

DAVID TATEL: It certainly stirred the conscience of David Tatel, yes. And it also shows dramatically what a good university does for its students. I mean, here I am: I came in with one idea, and through that great university and what it taught, and the people who were there, I was exposed to new ideas and went in a completely different direction. That's what great universities are supposed to do. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Just to remind everyone, we're talking with David Tatel, a former judge, about his book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So David, you go to law school at the University of Chicago - and now we bring in another person who has played a huge role in your life story. Edie, welcome. 

EDIE TATEL: Thank you. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And Edie, of course, is David's wife. So, Edie, tell us how you met. 

EDIE TATEL: We met on a blind date and we both were in Chicago. David was at the University of Chicago finishing his second year of law school, I was at Northwestern University finishing a master's degree, and one of our many, many mutual friends had given David my name - and he finally got around to calling me. And we went on one date, and that was it. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: It says something about your relationship and maybe, David, your feeling about yourself, that you can now call it a “blind date.” 

EDIE TATEL: It's what we used to call it. 

DAVID TATEL: Well, Edie and I have always called it a blind date. I - five years ago, I probably would not have used the word in an interview with you, Danny. [Laughter]

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So, Edie, here you are with a young, bright law student:  What did he tell you about his vision? 

EDIE TATEL: It was not on the first date, and it was just a couple of dates later when he said, I need to tell you something. And I actually had not particularly noticed it. David functioned and appeared completely as a sighted person. I realized that he usually took notes with a big black pen and a yellow legal pad, but I thought that was just clever and unique. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: You mentioned in your book something about going for a walk? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes, we went for a walk on the point in Hyde Park. It's a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan, where - what would you call it, Edie? - it was like a pier. And they had these giant stone benches that you could sit on and listen to the waves and look at the boats on the lake. And I said, Edie, I have something I need to tell you. And I told her what I knew and what I had learned at NIH - that is, that they thought that my sight would slowly decline. And whether I would lose my sight or not, they just didn't know. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And Edie, what was your reaction to this? How did that figure in your thoughts? 

EDIE TATEL: I think I was really open, interested and neutral. I was in love, and it was just another aspect of him. I talked to my parents about it and they were not worried or alarmed. So, I think that it wasn't an issue. It really wasn't an issue. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Love is a powerful engine, as those of us who have been in love know very well. So now it's 1968. It's a momentous year for the country, for both of you, personally. Robert Kennedy was assassinated. 

NEWS CLIP: This is a CBS News special report. The body of Senator Robert Kennedy is now in the air, in a jet furnished by the White House and the Air Force, heading for New York. 

DAVID SHIPLER: The infamous riot triggered by the Democratic convention in Chicago occurred, and you were in Chicago. The Vietnam War, of course, was raging with lots of protests. And Edie, you deliver, Rebecca, your first child, literally during another riot. Low-income blacks on the west side of Chicago reacted after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

NEWS CLIP: It began with a broken window and looters like swarms ... 

EDIE TATEL: It was terrible. But at the same time, we were pregnant with our first child. And I went into labor, and I went into the University of Chicago Lying-in Hospital - where those people with private doctors were in the east wing, and those people without private doctors were in the west wing, which now seems quite astonishing. But our beautiful little first child was born, and so we could be in our little hospital room and see around us the smoke rising from fires and looting. 

NEWS CLIP: By 4:00 Friday afternoon, huge portions of the West Side were aflame …

DAVID TATEL: And the whole south and west side of Chicago was on fire. You know, there were sirens - we would stand in her room, holding our baby, looking out the window, seeing our city burning. And then when I would leave to go back to our apartment, I remember putting a handkerchief over my mouth because the smoke was so thick. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And soon after the riots, you got involved in the Chicago Mayor's Commission to investigate what triggered the riots. And you talk about, in your book, you toured low-income black neighborhoods. And could you talk about that, please, and how it affected you? 

DAVID TATEL: So, when I graduated from law school, I went to work as a young associate, a young lawyer in a big Chicago law firm which was then called Sidley Austin Burgess and Smith. And the mayor created a commission to explore what caused the riots, and how did the city react to it, and to come up with recommendations. And Sidley asked if I'd be interested. They knew I was interested in civil rights and I snapped it up. I thought this would be really interesting. And so, my brief was the schools, also small business, but mostly the schools. And I spent maybe six weeks traveling all around the south and west sides, interviewing teachers, principals, students, community leaders, trying to understand what went on during the riots. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Were you stunned, surprised, outraged by what you were finding? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. It was, as one might say, for me an eye-opener. I learned a huge amount. You and I, we grew up in all-white, completely peaceful, but very mediocre schools - at least I thought they were mediocre, as I look back on it. So, suddenly I'm exposed to a world I knew nothing about - slum neighborhoods. And these are neighborhoods that had been severely damaged in the riots - burned-out houses, burned-out businesses. What was I, 22 years old then? This was - this was a dramatic experience for that young lawyer at the time. I mean, it changed him dramatically. 

DAVID SHIPLER: So then, tell us how this translated into legal work later. I mean, you founded lots of very important organizations, or ran some of them. And then, to be honest, even though I've known you for decades, there's a lot in this book that I did not know, actually. 

DAVID TATEL: You know, as I say, you know, timing is everything. And as I look back on my life writing this book, I realize how important timing was. Things seemed to happen at the right time for me. And the right people showed up in my life - the right role models and mentors were always there. 

So, I finished my work for the commission and I'm back at my law firm, perfectly happy, but very restless. Very restless. I want to be a civil rights lawyer. Fortunately for me, an organization called the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law decided to open up a Chicago office. Now, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law - just to continue on these connections in one’s life - was created at the request of President John Kennedy. In 1963, he called to the White House hundreds of lawyers around the country who were leaders of the bar, and said to them, We need lawyers in the South. You know, where are all the lawyers? Civil rights workers need lawyers. Everybody in the movement needs lawyers. And he called on them to create an organization to send lawyers to the South, which they did. 

And in ‘61, ‘62, it sent hundreds of volunteer lawyers from law firms to the South. So, flash forward to the late ‘60s: The country is wracked with urban riots. And now the President of the United States is Lyndon Johnson, and he calls on the Lawyers Committee to do nationally what it was doing in Mississippi. He said to the Lawyers Committee, Yes, you're doing a great job in Mississippi and Alabama, but Los Angeles needs lawyers. The communities in Detroit and in Chicago need lawyers. So, the Lawyers Committee opened up in 12 cities around the country, fortunately for me including Chicago. And I fortunately was offered the job to be the first director of the Chicago Lawyers Committee, summer of 1969. 

DAVID SHIPLER: What were a few cases that you thought were the most important that you worked on? 

DAVID TATEL: Well, the way the Lawyers Committee worked, it connected lawyers in law firms to civil rights cases. And so here I am, what, 27, 28 years old, now finally living the life that I viewed from a distance as a college student - and seeing the results. You know, we were, they were winning these civil rights cases. They were desegregating schools. They were winning orders against the police department and the fire department to hire more blacks. So, you know, this was a great laboratory for me, because I was seeing the results of how effective lawyers were, and how important the courts were, in the civil rights movement. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Can you remember just one case which really grabbed you? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes, I can. The most significant case, for both me and the Lawyers Committee, was in December 1969. The police raided an apartment on the west side of Chicago, and ended up shooting and killing the head of the Chicago Black Panther Party - a man named Fred Hampton, a very charismatic local leader. In fact, there was a movie made of this a few years ago. 

FILM CLIP: I am the Revolution! I am the Revolution! I am the Revolution! 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And the Black Panthers were - remind people. 

DAVID TATEL: The Black Panthers was one of the more radical political organizations. They were interested in black power - they weren't interested in school desegregation - and they were much more aggressive than the regular civil rights movement. 

DAVID SHIPLER: I would say the Panthers were more posturing than threatening. They ran breakfast programs for kids. They did a lot of social things that were pretty good, and so ... 

DAVID TATEL: As you just said, Dave, in the community they had a huge amount of credibility, and they provided very, very valuable services. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So, one night, Fred Hampton and his comrades are in their apartment sleeping, and the police said, Well, the reason there are more than 100 bullet holes in his apartment was because there was a big shootout. The Black Panthers started shooting at us and we had to respond. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Yes, but actually, as I recall, only two bullets were fired by the Panthers. Isn't that right? I mean, it was really a massacre by the police. 

DAVID TATEL: Yeah. We played a role in that because the day after the assassination, we called an emergency meeting of the Lawyers Committee. Now, the interesting thing about this is that – or, one of the many interesting things about this is that - the Board of the Lawyers Committee were most of the prominent lawyers in Chicago. I mean, these were big-deal lawyers whose names were in the names of their law firms, and they were all white except for Allison Davis. They were all white, and wealthy, and lived in all-white communities. And I guarantee you, there wasn't one member of that committee who had any particular sympathy for the Black Panther Party. But what they were deeply offended by, as lawyers, was what looked like a political assassination. Nobody at that point believed the police story. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So, you personally, I'm guessing, didn't agree with them. They were armed with guns, they ... 

DAVID TATEL: They, you know, the Black Panthers - you know, the leaders who I followed were Martin Luther King, and the NAACP, and Thurgood Marshall. To me, the Black Panthers were radicals. But even if you're a radical - here, you know, there's a rule of law. The government can't assassinate people. If the Black Panthers were committing crimes, they should have been indicted and tried, not assassinated – it’s about as basic as you can get. But what we decided to do was to call on the Attorney General of the United States and the chief judge of the criminal courts in Chicago to convene a grand jury. That's the way lawyers think of issues. You know, grand juries are wonderful investigative bodies. And we sent a telegram to the Attorney General, who was then John Mitchell. This is the Nixon Administration. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: No friend of civil rights. 

DAVID TATEL: No, no friend at all. But here he gets a telegram from the top 12 lawyers in Chicago. And within a week, the Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney, called on the courts in Chicago, created a special grand jury - and the federal grand jury reported after doing an investigation that, as we suspected, the police were lying and that all of these shots came from the police, not from the Black Panthers. And that it was, as everybody suspected, basically a political assassination. 

And, you know, this was Chicago. So, was anybody held accountable? Well, there was a civil suit filed, which 15 years later produced a judgment for the Fred Hampton family. And several of the police officers were indicted, but never tried. The only justice that really came out of our efforts was that the Cook County attorney who led the raid, it pretty much ended his career. And it was really important for the Lawyers Committee, because this brand-new organization, which was just feeling its way, suddenly realized, Wait, we really have influence here. We can use our role as prominent lawyers in Chicago to bring about change. There's a lot we could accomplish. 

It was a critical moment in the early life of the Lawyers Committee in Chicago, which just a few years ago celebrated its 50th anniversary. Imagine that. [laughter]

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And over the next half dozen years, you had all kinds of jobs, not just that one in the field of civil rights law. Dave, want to tick off a few? 

DAVID SHIPLER: You became director of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. You ran a pro bono program for Hogan and Hartson, the law firm in Washington, where you specialized in civil rights again and became an expert on school desegregation issues. And you then became one of the heads -  well, I don’t know if “then,” the chronology may be a little off here, but one of the heads - of the Legal Services Corporation, which Congress had created to help fight for the rights of low-income people. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And didn't Ronald Reagan, the President back then, hate Legal Services? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. 

DAVID SHIPLER: There's another important case you were involved in, involving the NAACP, which organized a boycott of white-owned Mississippi businesses that discriminated against blacks. It was a very crucial case, wasn't it? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. The NAACP had organized boycotts of white merchants throughout the state because the white businesses, the grocery stores, the gas stations, they wanted black people to buy but they wouldn't hire them. And so, the NAACP organized boycotts all around the state. Well, the white merchants responded by filing in state court an antitrust lawsuit against the NAACP and the demonstrators. And they argued that these boycotts were an illegal restraint of trade. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: One of the groups that helped support that lawsuit was the White Citizens Council. 

DAVID TATEL: The White Citizens Council, which is basically the country club version of the Ku Klux Klan. And they picked one little town to do this in - a little place called Port Gibson, Mississippi, which is, in the ‘60s, just like every other Mississippi town: rigidly segregated, the black community’s poor. And so, they picked Port Gibson and they filed this antitrust suit against the NAACP and about 130 or so individual boycotters. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And let me summarize a bit what happened next. The judge ruled that the NAACP and the boycotters had to pay the white businesses more than $1 million. 

DAVID TATEL: Well, they won, as we expected they would. The judge was a white judge, just like all the state judges were in Mississippi. And he grew up in segregated Mississippi, and his friends were all the same country-club whites in Port Gibson.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And wait, it gets worse. The state law says that if the NAACP and the boycotters want to appeal his ruling, and of course, they do want to appeal it … 

DAVID SHIPLER: They have to put more than $1,000,000 in escrow or get a bond, which would cost even more. 

DAVID TATEL: This is what the case is about. Now, this is early 1970s. What's $1,000,000 worth today? So, it's a huge judgment. The NAACP did not have $1,000,000 and the boycotters certainly didn't have it. So, because of Mississippi law, it faced a situation where it couldn't appeal. And according to the NAACP accountants, it would have bankrupted the association, would have been the end of the NAACP. So, the question was then, what do we do? 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And the answer was, and I'm really condensing here: You and your colleagues appealed this case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, right? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: I mean, you argued that Mississippi was violating the boycotters’ First Amendment right to free speech, because a peaceful boycott or a demonstration is a kind of free speech. And three years later, the NAACP and the boycotters won. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And this is a famous Supreme Court decision now, right? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Which, by the way, is known as Claiborne Hardware. That was the name of one of the white businesses. 

DAVID TATEL: And it stands as one of the most important civil rights cases, one of the most important Supreme Court decisions dealing with boycotts. People who boycott now, or who demonstrate, are doing it under the protection of NAACP versus Claiborne Hardware. 

DAVID SHIPLER: In fact, you worked on a lot of landmark cases when you were a civil rights lawyer, David. And we want to touch on one more of them. In the early 1980s, a lower court ordered officials in Saint Louis to integrate their schools. 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. St. Louis was a typical southern big city. By the time we got to the 1980s, when I got into this case, St. Louis was under a court order to desegregate, like most big-city school systems in the South. And like most big-city school systems in the South, the city had become predominantly black, because there had been a huge amount of white flight to the suburbs. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: But as I understand it, there was a big obstacle to integrating the schools, which was: The Supreme Court had issued a controversial decision a few years earlier that essentially said, Hey, if you're a city official and you want to integrate your black school system, you can't force the suburbs to help integrate it by sharing their white kids. Although the Supreme Court did make an exception. 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. Correct. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And here's the exception: The Supreme Court said, If you can prove that officials in the suburbs or in the state government had actively helped to segregate the school systems in the first place, well, in that case, the suburbs have to help desegregate them, and integrate them. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: As I understand it, you and your colleagues did a huge amount of research. You went into all kinds of archives and you found overwhelming evidence that the suburbs had tried very hard to be segregated - whites only, for the most part … 

DAVID TATEL: Well, it wasn't just the suburbs. The evidence we discovered also showed the state of Missouri was, largely, also responsible for the segregation between the city and the suburbs. So, we had a huge amount of evidence - and we had a sympathetic judge. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And you had a few weeks of tough negotiations. And in the end, as I understand it, you helped get officials to hammer out a historic integration plan. The state paid for black students to bus to suburban schools, and it funded special magnet programs in the city, to attract white kids from the suburbs. 

DAVID TATEL: But it was all voluntary. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And this was a landmark decision of sorts, wasn't it? 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. It ended up being the nation's major and largest voluntary inter-district transfer program. At the height of the program, 11,000 students were participating. Thousands of students - both black and white, who had been attending overwhelmingly one-race schools - were for the first time going to integrated schools. But it was all voluntary. And the results were dramatic. 

I’ll tell you a funny little story. Last year, one morning, I was having breakfast with law students and one of them came up to afterward and said that he had grown up in St Louis. He was a black kid and he had gone to school in the suburbs under this plan.  It was very wonderful. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Can I just ask, David, at this point in your life, you're now what, around 30?  And you write that you've become totally blind at that age. 

DAVID TATEL: Mmm, more like 33 or -4. 

DAVID SHIPLER: So, at this point, how are you coping with this? What were you doing to navigate your way through your work? And you said you were also trying to hide it. 

DAVID TATEL: Well, I was in - I was doing everything I could to cover it up. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And you weren't using a cane at that point? 

DAVID TATEL: No. No.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: In fact, you write that you refused to use a cane. 

DAVID TATEL: Well, using a cane was a dramatic acceptance of blindness that I wasn't prepared to make for a very long time. I developed tricks that fit the need of where I was. Now, some people knew, like my secretary, because by this time I couldn't read myself. So, she would read to me or she would put things on cassette tapes. Should I say what a cassette tape is? [Laughter]

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Can I tell you how I knew? I house sat for you and Edie - we lived near each other - and you guys were on a trip. And on your bed stand, there was a pile of books, How to Read Braille. 

DAVID TATEL: Really? Huh. I should have interviewed you for the book. That's interesting. So, whenever I went anywhere new, I had to go with someone, and I would just hold onto their elbow and they would hold on to me. And I would never go into the elevator until someone else was there. And then I'd walk in after that person and I'd say, Would you please hit 7? Because people say that all the time. My favorite trick for finding my way around, particularly in office buildings and out on the street - if I went into a building and was trying to find the elevators or if I was walking down the street - one of my favorite and most reliable techniques was to drop behind a woman wearing high heeled shoes, because the clicking was perfect for me to hear and follow. And I did that for many years. And as far as I know, no one thought I was weird or anything. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Edie?

EDIE TATEL: Actually I, in the writing of this book, I learned about that. I did not realize that. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Really?

EDIE TATEL: Absolutely. In fact, in the writing of this book, I've learned a number of his strategies that I didn't know about. And I am a pretty observant person. I'm a pretty empathetic, sympathetic person. And so, I - the writing of this book has been an adventure for us both. 

DAVID SHIPLER: And one of his strategies, as I recall, was about taking the bus from work. Want to tell us about that, either of you? 

EDIE TATEL: Yeah. In the writing of this book, I learned what I had never actually known - which was that he would often, particularly in the winter, delay coming home from work. Because, it turns out, he couldn't actually identify, from the signs on the buses, which bus to get on. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So, as I understand it from your book, it was pretty easy, easy-ish, for you to take the right bus in the morning to work - because there's a little bus terminal, and it's clear where the bus that you needed to be on leaves from. 

DAVID TATEL: Yes, the L7 was always at the same spot. So, I would get on the bus at that spot. It was easy. I knew exactly where it was. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: But coming home was more complicated. 

DAVID TATEL: Because the buses all came - the L7, the L2, the L5 - all of them came to the same bus stop at Connecticut and K. So, in order to know which bus to get on, I had to be able to read the destination label above where the driver sits. You know, the ... 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: You mean the bus signs above the windows? 

DAVID TATEL: Yeah. And during the day, when it was light, I couldn't see them. But once it got a little darker and the bus drivers turned on their lights, those signs were illuminated. So, I could read L7 that way. So, you know, sometimes if it was, you know, if it was 5:30 and the sun was setting, I might wait half an hour to come home till it got a little darker. 

EDIE TATEL: I think that sometimes it was an hour, hour and a half later. 

DAVID TATEL: So that I knew I could see the sign without having to ask someone about it. 

EDIE TATEL: He’d come home at 7, 7:30, and when you have little kids and they go to bed at 7:30 or 8, that's late. I thought he was at work because he had so much to do. And the idea, as I learned, that he was actually staying at work in order to compensate for the inconvenience and embarrassment of how would he ever get home, made me pretty annoyed - I would say pretty angry, because it really meant that he was missing a lot of time with the kids, missing dinner as a family. And as I wrote in the book, as we wrote in the book - as he wrote in the book - first, I began to simmer when I learned this. And then I did boil over. 

DAVID TATEL: It was one of those moments when the writing of the book paused for several days. [Laughter]

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So, it's kind of like therapy. 

DAVID TATEL: That's your word. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Or maybe the opposite. And it didn't seem to restrain your writing, though, David, because the book is just fascinating - and full of all kinds of revelations about you personally, and the law, and your judging, and all of that.  Which we're going to get into. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: One thing it raises, though: You've said, Edie, it was in writing the book that you learned some of these things about David that you hadn't known for decades. So, what was the process that allowed you to learn things about your own husband that you hadn't known before? 

EDIE TATEL: Well, the process was that in the writing of the book, David - and I - really wanted him to use this occasion to be open and honest about the fact of his blindness, the process of his blindness, the strategies of living with blindness. And in the process of excavating what was going on, details came out that we hadn't thought about. When you're living a very busy life, you just don't even notice these things. When you're living your life together and you've got little kids running around, you just overlook anything that's inconvenient and move on. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So, would David write a draft and then show it to you for your comments, critique, whatever?

EDIE TATEL: Yeah, pretty much. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And can you remember the moment that you learned about the bus strategy? 

EDIE TATEL: There were quite a few moments when I learned about quite a few things. 

DAVID TATEL: And I learned a lot about Edie. I didn't know about the two boyfriends when we first started dating. That was totally new to me. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: What boyfriends? 

DAVID TATEL: When we first started dating, she had two other boyfriends, and I didn't know that - until we wrote this book. So, but to be fair here, I shared more about my life during the writing in this book than I ever had before. In fact, frankly, I, if I - if you had told me when we first started this book that I would go into this amount of detail, I would have said, No way. You two have both known me for a very long time. And I - you obviously realize that this is a discussion we would not have had five years ago. But the more I worked on it, and the more Edie and I talked about it, and the more my editor and others asked me hard questions, the more I realized that first, I really had to do it if I was going to write a book that people would find interesting and honest. And number two, I got more comfortable with it. This book has kind of liberated me. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Edie, as your longtime friends, both Danny and I have marveled at how beautifully and skillfully you guided David through his life and many situations. I remember your coming into our house and other social gatherings, and David came right up to me and said, Hello, Dave, and shook my hand as if he could see me. Part of his coping mechanism, thanks to you. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And I think it's important to add that a lot of people, including some of our friends who met you at parties, one reason a lot of people had no idea that you were blind is because your eyes look like the eyes of a seeing person. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Talk about it from your standpoint, would you? How did you see your role and how did you adjust to what David needed? 

EDIE TATEL: Well, I think that all close relationships, whether they're friendships or marriages or siblings, or - when you live closely with another person and care very much about them, and care about your relationship, you figure out ways of making it easy for you both, or for you all. And so, it just became second nature to us to be able to anticipate the kinds of information that would make an interaction easy. 

For example, we just returned from a brunch that we were all in, with our neighbors where we live here - and we know most of them - but A, it was a crowd, and B, some people still just, it's just not familiar to them to say, Hi, it's Lena. Whereas other people will come in and say, Hi, it's Lena, and then off you go. So, if people don't identify themselves, to make it comfortable for all of us - and to be an easy conversation - I’ll whisper to David, Here come Lena and Mike, or whatever. Or I will say, Two steps forward and there's a step down. Or I will say,  A stack of steps going up. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And Dave, Debby Shipler, your wife, wrote a beautiful passage about how Edie and David would come into a party or another setting together, and how ... 

DAVID SHIPLER: We were at dinner - Debby, my wife, who died in January - we were at dinner when you were working on this book, and Debby made some comments about how wonderfully Edie would guide you into situations where, I remember, you would come into a party or something and you'd go right up to me and say, Hi, David. And so you asked Debby to write this up, and she did. And here it is in your book: “When you see David and Edie walking toward you in a crowd, they step easily together, greeting friends. You see David greeting others by name. When you get closer, if you look carefully, you can see the quiet whisper that he hears. When you join them on an outing, David puts on his coat and walks to the door. If you're still looking carefully, you can see Edie’s quiet hand on his back. When they walk down the steps, if you are very near, you might hear a whispered caution. But you must pay attention to see this lovely dance. It barely shows, yet happens most likely a thousand times a day. 

DAVID TATEL: Every time I hear that quote, I choke up. I just love it. It's such - nobody has ever described it to me that well. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Speaking of the dance that Debby Shipler wrote about you and Edie doing together, one of the things that comes out in this book, and that Dave and I both witnessed over the years, is how there was also a dance of a different sort between you and your children. 

DAVID TATEL: Right, definitely. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Your blindness obviously created huge problems in your family, but it also brought you and your kids together in a really remarkable way. Could you talk about that a little bit? 

DAVID TATEL: I mean, the children -  we have four children. By the time our oldest was three or four years old, she was aware that her dad had trouble seeing. We never really talked about it. First of all, growing up with a dad with a visual disability, that's what they knew. They didn't know if - we had the children each write a memo as we wrote this book. We sent them a questionnaire, actually. 

And, you know, because I couldn't see, Edie drove all the time. And one of the children wrote, You know, we were stunned when we went out with our friends and their dads drove. We didn't think dads drove. [Laughter] We didn't think dads drove. It was just natural for the children, whenever we went anywhere, to take my arm. It’s, just, that's the way we walked. The children referred to it among themselves as a “dad walk.” A quote, “dad walk.” And, you know, how do I see the world? I see the world through people's descriptions of it. And the children will automatically tell me, Hey, Dad, you know, let me describe the cloud that's over us or - Dad, the flowers next to the road are yellow, and they've got this and that. They're great, they're great describers. The best describer anywhere is my wife Edie. But the children learned it from her. 

EDIE TATEL: And I would also say that why I'm pretty adept at descriptions is because it's nice, if you're with someone, to be able to share and to see the same things. And I can describe it in words. And then in that same sense, we are seeing the same things. 

DAVID TATEL: She did so much of this last night at this party. Edie, describe the flowers, and  these people. 

EDIE TATEL: We were at an extraordinary event last night, a birthday party celebrating a 40-year-old who had been extremely ill as a baby. And so, this party was a joyous celebration of life. And it was huge. And the parents and family who gave the party had transformed an enormous space into a garden, into a funhouse, into a ball. It was so great, and so it was important to describe to David so that I could share my awe. There were topiaries, and there were shrubberies and all of them were studded with yellow flowers. 

DAVID TATEL: We would go from place to place and Edie would, you know, take my hand and say, Here, you won't believe what I'm looking at here. And then she would describe it in detail - the colors, the flowers. [Laughter] You know, the funniest thing was, she walked in to this room where there were these giant portraits, you know, big picture frames. And then she says, There’s these huge pictures and, and - the pictures in the frames are people. And so, she described all this to me. And I was just, you know, I know exactly what we were seeing because of Edie's descriptions. 

DAVID SHIPLER: I feel as if I'd been there. 

EDIE TATEL: I think, though, that the bigger point, really, is the same point as people saying, I read the book or I listened to the book. Reading and seeing, actually, both occur in the brain, and most people get their information visually. But there are lots of ways to see. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Speaking of “there are lots of ways to see” - David, when people read this book, it will blow their minds that you love hiking and you love skiing in the Rocky Mountains and other places. Edie, don't you go crazy when David is out on the slopes skiing down a mountain? 

EDIE TATEL: I'm a pretty relaxed person, and I had total confidence. I fall down when I'm skiing sometimes. David falls down. So, what can you - you know, so you fall down. You pick yourself up. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: David, our listeners will have to read your book to find out how you did it. Well, before we go, it's time to introduce one more member of your family: Vixen. 

DAVID TATEL: Yes. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Your guide dog. 

DAVID TATEL: Hey, Vixen, Come here. 

DAVID SHIPLER: Vixen. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Beautiful. You describe Vixen, please.

DAVID TATEL: Vixen is a 70-pound - here she is, come here - Vixen is a 70-pound German shepherd female, a fully-trained guide dog. She smells especially good today because she had a bath yesterday. [Laughter]

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And she's beautiful. 

DAVID TATEL: And she’s a beautiful dog. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: David Tatel, you've talked throughout this whole conversation about struggling with accepting your blindness. And here, just a few years ago, when you were already, you know, you were in your late seventies, you finally decided, I'm going to get a seeing eye dog. What changed? 

DAVID TATEL: I'd say two things simultaneously. One is, and I've never been able to explain this [laughter]: Here I am 77 years old and I'm kind of yearning for more independence than I had. I was doing really well with the cane, but cane travel was more complicated in Washington. The city was more complicated, the traffic was worse, there were more places that are hard to get around. And I spent a lot of time each day planning who's going to be at the Metro. 

You know, like to go to the Y in the morning, where I got off where I swam - I could get to the Y with my cane, but coming back was just too complicated. So they'd meet me. So, I did this lovely 10, 15-minute walk with my law clerk back to the courthouse. Those were fun, but still I felt dependent. If I'm meeting someone for lunch, is it a restaurant I've been to before? Do I need to get a law clerk to go with me? You know, and when I wanted to come home, I'd have to call Edie and say, Okay, I'm going to take the Metro in 10 minutes, we should be there in 35 minutes. She would come across. Whenever I wanted to go for a walk, I had to say, Hey, Edie, let's go for a walk. And she almost always said okay, but she might have had other things to do. And I felt the need for more independence. 

And at the same time, at the same time, we discovered that you can get a guide dog without having to spend a month living at the facility to learn to use the dog - that there were some programs who would bring the dog to where you live. And when we discovered that a guide dog might be possible for me was the same time when I was feeling more and more that I would like more independence. Those two things came together at the same time. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: David writes in his book that when Vixen first came, it was hard for you emotionally, not just because you were worried that Vixen might not be up to the task of protecting David - but there was another person sharing your home. 

EDIE TATEL: Yeah, it is an adjustment having somebody new into, at that point, it was probably a 55-year marriage or something like that. And someone had already warned me - someone who's the wife of another dog user who had gotten the guide dog - she'd warned me, You won't be top dog anymore. And I understood that. But I think that, that I just loved Vixen from the moment that I saw her, and it was spectacular to see David build a relationship with her. And learning to trust a dog is pretty scary. But he did it and I was able to watch that, and that was very, very special. And both of us, I think, take for granted the daily acts of courage that are involved in his life. 

DAVID SHIPLER: There are certain things that Vixen does now that you don't have to do. How does that make you feel? Was there an adjustment on your part when that happened? 

EDIE TATEL: Just as I got more comfortable - once the trainer let David go on his own with the trainer still present, and I realized David would be fine - the trainer left. 

And so, the first day David went to work without the trainer around and without me, he was going to leave our apartment and cross with the lights and go to the Metro. But I left 10 minutes early, and I went to a place where I could see him do this. I could see Vixen guiding him, and I watched as he emerged on the other side of the street. I could see him and Vixen wait till the light turned. I could see him step off the sidewalk into the street. I could see Vixen guiding him below me and taking him to the top of the Metro escalator. I could see him launch onto the escalator and disappear from view.

And then I burst into tears. 

Of relief. 

[Music] 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: David Tatel’s book, with a lot of help from Edie Tatel, is called Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. 

DAVID SHIPLER: It's beautifully written, a braided memoir of the loss of vision and the gain of legal and judicial expertise. 

DAVID TATEL: Good questions, guys. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Thanks for being so candid. 

EDIE TATEL: It's a pleasure. Thanks so much. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: David's going to come back next episode and we're going to hear about the call that transformed his life, another transformation: President Clinton named you to the U.S. Court of Appeal. And we will hear about your life and work on the court. 

DAVID TATEL: Enjoyed it very much. Thank you. 

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And that's it for this episode of TWO REPORTERS.

DAVID SHIPLER: You'll find us on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, or pretty much any leading podcast site. And we hope you'll check out more of our work at tworeporters.org. I'm David Shipler.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: And I'm Daniel Zwerdling. Please join us again soon for another episode of TWO REPORTERS. Bye bye.