A tribute to Dick Thornburgh.

With the passing of former US Attorney General and Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh, we want to take a moment to pay tribute to this extraordinary public servant and leader in the civil justice reform movement. 

Many years ago, he came to Michigan to help us launch our statewide civil justice reform effort. He did several radio interviews on our behalf and shared poignant facts and stories that we still use to this day, but we will remember him mostly because of a touching moment involving a tragedy that happened shortly before his visit.

After we had scheduled his trip to Michigan, we learned that he would be turning 65 on the day he arrived. We wanted to give him a gift but couldn’t decide on what would be appropriate. Then, a few weeks before our events, the sponsor of a large luncheon at which the governor would speak while here was killed during a vacation in Florida. While reeling from this shock, her family told us that she would still want the luncheon to be held. They also said that she liked to collect bells, so we created a beautiful glass bell and award in her honor and presented it to Governor Thornburgh at the lunch.

The governor had never met the woman and had no idea he would be receiving this gift, but with her family sitting in the audience, he graciously accepted the bell and, without hesitation, commented on how receiving this beautiful gift reminded him of his old friend, the beloved actor Jimmy Stewart. Thornburgh and Stewart had gone to the same high school in Pennsylvania 22 years apart and later in life became quite close. The governor looked at the family, talked about his old friend, and said that just as Stewart had declared in the movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, that an angel gets its wings every time a bell rings, he was sure their daughter had gotten her wings for all the great things he had heard about her. As the bell began to ring, there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience.

While many will remember Dick Thornburgh for carefully guiding Pennsylvania through the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, for cracking down on corporate corruption, or for skillfully leading the Justice Department after the Iran-Contra affair, we will also remember him as a tireless advocate for civil justice reform. He spent years giving a voice to victims of lawsuit abuse and working to enact common sense tort reform.