Arthur B. Kramer, Lawyer And Brother Of Playwright Larry Kramer, 81
DGH
Arthur B. Kramer, Lawyer and Brother of Playwright Larry Kramer, Dies
at 81
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS [New York TImes]
Arthur B. Kramer, who built a small New York [New York] law firm into
one with international reach and whose fraught relationship with his
brother, Larry Kramer, the playwright and gay rights advocate, helped
inspire a benchmark play of the 1980s, died on Saturday [January 26,
2008]. He was 81 and lived in Stamford, Connecticut.
The cause was a stroke, his wife, Alice, said. Mr. Kramer had been ill
since January 13 [2008], when a ski patrol in Sun Valley, Idaho, found
him alone and apparently lost and disoriented while skiing, his
brother said.
The independent spirit that compelled Mr. Kramer to ski at 81 was
present when he and two friends, Maurice Nessen and Foster Bam,
founded a law firm in the early 1960s that they intended as an
alternative to New York's white-shoe firms. The firm, which evolved
into what is now Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, has more than 300
lawyers and offices in Paris and New York.
Mr. Kramer, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1953, helped start
the firm after finding that opportunities for Jewish lawyers, even
those who were Ivy League educated, were limited at large firms, said
Charlotte Moses Fischman, general counsel at Kramer Levin.
The firm was determined to compete, and when Cravath, Swaine & Moore
announced in the late 1960s that it was doubling the salary of first-
year associates to about $15,000, Mr. Kramer's firm promptly matched
it, Ms. Fischman said.
Early on, the firm set a nontraditional course, bringing in a
psychiatrist to help lawyers deal with stress and encouraging
associates to write annual critiques of partners, a practice that
participants described as often brutal, but therapeutic. (It has been
discontinued.)
Outside legal circles, Mr. Kramer was perhaps best known as the
inspiration for the character of Ben Weeks in "The Normal Heart," the
autobiographical 1985 play written by his younger brother, Larry,
which used the theater to bring attention to the AIDS crisis. In the
play, Ben is painfully ambivalent about his brother's homosexuality.
In real life, Arthur ultimately came to accept Larry as a gay man, a
reconciliation that was the subject of a front-page article in The New
York Times in 2006.
Five years earlier, Arthur Kramer gave Yale University a $1 million
grant to create the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay
Studies. His influence also led his law firm to become active, on a
pro bono basis, in causes like marriage rights for gay couples.
Besides his brother, of Manhattan [New York], Mr. Kramer is survived
by his wife; their children, Liza, of Berkeley, California; Rebecca,
of Manhattan; and Andrew, of Sands Point, New York; another daughter,
Andrea McNicol, of Manhattan; and four grandchildren.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/nyregion/31kramer.html?ref=obituaries
Hyfler/Rosner
"DGH" <peri...@eudoramail.com> wrote in message
news:ff412e92-0430-4294...@q21g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
> -
>
> Arthur B. Kramer, Lawyer and Brother of Playwright Larry
> Kramer, Dies
> at 81
>
> By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS [New York TImes]
>
>
> is survived
> by his wife; their children, Liza, of Berkeley,
> California; Rebecca,
> of Manhattan; and Andrew, of Sands Point, New York;
> another daughter,
> Andrea McNicol, of Manhattan; and four grandchildren.
Why is she "another daughter" set off from the others?
Brad Ferguson
<rel...@rcn.com> wrote:
My guess is that Andrea wasn't included with "their children" because
she's Arthur's but not Alice's. Google is not helpful.
BTW, there's this: