John M. Woolsey Jr., US Lawyer At Nuremberg, 88

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John M. Woolsey Jr., a Boston, Massachusetts, lawyer for more than 50
years and an attorney for the United States during the Nuremberg
trials, died January 8, 2005, in Lawrence [Massachusetts] General
Hospital, at the age of 88.

"He was a reserved man, pretty quiet," said Mr. Woolsey's son Henry, of
Petersham. "Even though he was quiet, when he had something to say
people listened."

A longtime resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mr. Woolsey moved to a
retirement community in North Andover, Massachusetts, four years ago.

Born in New York, New York, Mr. Woolsey grew up in North Andover,
Massachusetts. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover and graduated
from Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1938. Mr. Woolsey
then entered Yale Law School, graduating in 1941.

During World War II, Mr. Woolsey served in the Office of Naval
Intelligence in Washington. As hostilities came to a close in Europe,
Mr. Woolsey was assigned to the staff of Justice Robert H. Jackson to
assist the United States in Nuremberg, Germany, where Nazi leaders were
tried.

Mr. Woolsey was coauthor of a subsequent article on the trials in the
Harvard Law Review. He later wrote a chapter on Nuremberg for ''Legal
Chowder: Lawyering and Judging in Massachusetts," a book edited by
Rudolph Kass, a former associate justice of the state Appeals Court.

Following the war, Mr. Woolsey was honorably discharged and joined the
Boston law firm of Herrick & Smith. Mr. Woolsey later joined the firm
of Palmer & Dodge, also of Boston.

In 1948, Mr. Woolsey met Ledlie Laughlin at a party. The two were
married later that year, and in 1949 the couple moved to Cambridge.

He served on the city's planning board for 30 years and was president
of the board of Shady Hill School.

For many years, Mr. Woolsey did land protection and environmental work,
much of it in the town of Petersham near the Quabbin Reservoir, where
his mother had settled in 1905.

>From 1977 to 1980, he served as president of the Trustees of
Reservations, a conservation group. Mr. Woolsey played a pivotal role
in land protection in Central Massachusetts.

In 1997, the Massachusetts Audubon Society awarded Mr. Woolsey its
Allen Morgan Prize for lifetime achievement in land conservation.

"He was not a man who called a lot of attention to himself, that wasn't
what he was in it for," said Laura Johnson, president of the
Massachusetts Audubon Society. "He was quiet, committed, and that made
him a great friend of many conservation efforts."

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Woolsey leaves another son, John
M. of Providence, Rhode Island [and Providence Plantations]; two
daughters, Alice Godfrey of Oak Park, Illinois, and Mary L. S. of Iowa
City, Iowa; two stepchildren, Hilary Loring of Andover and David Rodd
of Brookline, Massachusetts; and nine grandchildren.

Boston Globe