Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

 

Page 1

 

Services Today for Judge Lang, Once  Headed Los Angeles Municipal Court

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Services are scheduled today for retired Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Xenophon F. Lang Sr., who died Thursday at age 85.

Lang, who was the court’s presiding judge in 1980, was the father of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Xenophon F. Lang Jr., who sits in Compton.

A native of Little Rock, Ark., the elder Lang graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans in 1940 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Discharged as a corporal, he took pre-dental courses at Compton College before turning his attention to legal studies.

He graduated from Southwestern University Law School in 1951 and practiced in Los Angeles until then-Gov. Pat Brown appointed him to the bench in 1966.

In addition to his private practice, he served for a time as legal advisor to the NAACP and was president of the Langston Bar Association for two years. He also served on the board of the Southeast Child Care Center.

On the bench, he served as assistant presiding judge in 1979 and as presiding judge in 1980, and had the rare opportunity to sit at the same time as his son.

The younger Lang became a Compton Municipal Court commissioner in 1981 and a judge of that court—by appointment of then-Gov. George Deukmejian—in 1984, two years before his father retired from the Los Angeles court. It was not always easy to grow up in the shadows of a well-known judge, he once told a reporter, describing his father as “a fine man, a sensitive man, a good judge.”

Today’s services are scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Congregational Church of Christian Fellowship, 2085 S. Hobart Blvd., near Western and Washington. The church’s phone number is (323) 731-8869.

 

Copyright 2003, Metropolitan News Company