Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Monday, June 8, 1998
Page 1
Legal Community Remembers Yorty As a Passionate Fighter
By SCOTT C. SMITH, Staff Writer
Former Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, who died Friday morning at the age of 88, was remembered by members of Los Angeles' legal community as a generous man who was passionately devoted to the city he led from 1961 to 1973.
Yorty was a lawyer, but it is his political career that will go down in history. He died peacefully at Studio City home Friday morning, his family said.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Malcolm Mackey recalled that Yorty relied on community-based committees, panels he said may be seen as precursors to the various neighborhood council proposals being discussed today.
Mackey said it was through his work on a panel representing the Eagle Rock and Highland Park communities that he met Yorty.
The jurist, who lost races for the 14th Council District seat in 1961 and 1967, said he met frequently with the mayor throughout that decade, keeping him current on neighborhood problems.
Mackey got choked up reminiscing about Yorty. "He was a fighter....He was just a scrappy guy," the judge recalled, pointing out that Yorty evolved over his career from a "very liberal" stance to a more conservative one.
Mackey said Yorty lost his Democratic base when Tom Bradley beat him in the 1973 election, and recalled seeing the former mayor in his later years at events sponsored by conservative groups.
Robert Philibosian, a partner in Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, added a bit of history that he said other people might not remember.
"Sam Yorty will be remembered for mixed trash," he said.
Philibosian said one of Yorty's more popular policies was to do away with the separation of wet from dry garbage. People used to burn their dry trash in backyard incinerators, adding to the city's smog problem, he recalled.
Mixing trash "was kind of a gut issue" for Yorty, Philibosian said, adding that Yorty's "Kenny Hahn sort of approach" proved to be very popular.
It's an ironic twist, Philibosian added, that the city has now come full circle on trash mixing. Angelenos have long had to separate glass, plastic, metal, and paper recyclables, but "now, lo and behold, we have these big blue bins where we can mix the trash," he said, adding:
"Sam Yorty once again has been proven correct."
Philibosian, who was district attorney from 1982 to 1984, was a law student and later a deputy district attorney when Yorty was mayor.
Though Yorty was a Democrat for most of his time as mayor, Philibosian said his conservativism made "Republicans very fond of him as a mayor, as a moderate."
Yorty loved his city, Philibosian recounted. "He was steeped in the history and lore of Los Angeles."
Mildred Lillie, presiding justice of Div. Seven of this district's Court of Appeal, said, "I'm saddened to hear of his passing because we were good friends."
Lillie said she preferred to speak about Yorty as a friend rather than as a politician. "I admired Sam because he was a compassionate, generous man who was loyal to his friends," she said.
Lillie, a judge since 1947, said she met Yorty in the mid-1950s when he became an associate in the law practice of her late husband, Cameron L. Lillie.
The jurist recalled that she and her husband used to dine together with Yorty and his first wife, Elizabeth Yorty.
Former Los Angeles County Bar Association President Sheldon Sloan called Yorty "cantankerous," but said he had a good way of working with the City Council.
Sloan said the council "was different in those days, more like an old-boys' club, rather than the independent fiefdoms like it is now."
Sloan was a young lawyer when Yorty first came to office, and while he never worked directly for the mayor, he had law school classmates whom Yorty appointed as commissioners. "I got the feel of what was going on," he explained.
"The city was smaller and more manageable then," he said, adding:
"The mayor was a more significant, important part of the day-to-day."
Sloan said the power of the mayor's office has been "eroded dramatically over the years," especially in regards to commission appointees. The council in Yorty's time "didn't fool with his decisions," he claimed.
Members of the legal community said Yorty would be remembered more for his political instincts rather than his legal practice. After leaving the public eye, the boisterous politician had a talk show on Channel 13. He also failed in a 1981 bid to oust Bradley.
Samuel William Yorty was born in 1909 in Lincoln, Neb. He attended Southwestern University School of Law from 1927 to 1929, then continued his education at the University of Southern California. He was admitted to the State Bar in 1939.
After leaving politics, Yorty was "a rainmaker" for a couple of law firms with Republican backgrounds, Mackey recalled. But Lillie said she didn't think Yorty practiced law regularly after losing to Bradley.
In the mid-1980s, he kept an office in the same Beverly Hills building where Melvin Belli had an office. Newbury Park attorney Arnold Gross managed Belli's office there and said Yorty seemed to be semi-retired.
"We didn't see him all that much," Gross recalled.