Dr. Karen Cummiskey, second from left, receives her father's award from, left to right, incoming State Bar President Anthony Jenkins, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly, and outgoing State Bar President Charles Toy.
By Cynthia Price
Legal News
John Cummiskey was beloved by both his immediate family and his extended legal professional family, so it was no surprise that his relatives and his Miller Johnson colleagues showed up en masse to see him receive posthumously the Michigan State Bar Foundation Founders Award at the State Bar awards banquet Sept. 29.
Dozens of people showed up to indicate their love and support for the towering individual who tirelessly promoted pro bono work and full access to justice, including his two daughters and two sons along with several of their family members.
Over 50 attendees were from the firm he helped found — administrative professionals as well as attorneys. Says Miller Johnson Managing Partner Craig Mutch, “This is a real reflection of how well thought of John continues to be. We’re obviously very proud of John’s accomplishments — he set the path for all of us.”
After Cummiskey’s death, the State Bar named its pro bono award after him, reflecting his non-stop advocacy that lawyers need to give back to their communities and to those less able to afford legal help.
The Legal Assistance Center was so much a product of Cummiskey’s hard work and vision that on its opening in 2002, it was dedicated to him, shortly before his death. At that time, attorney Jon Muth said of Cummiskey, “After more than 50 years of service to his profession, John Cummiskey’s voice is still the strongest in Michigan in support of legal services for the poor and for those of modest means... This Legal Assistance Center would not have happened without the forever youthful thinking from a still visionary mind.”
In fact, that is what is perhaps most impressive about John W. Cummiskey. His support for what he believed in was unflaggingly strong and lasted decades.
Cummiskey had already been president of the State Bar of Michigan (1956-1957) when he founded Miller Johnson Snell and Cummiskey in 1959. Fellow attorneys Robert J. Miller, Robert A. Johnson, Arthur R. Snell, Richard F. Hooker and James R. Hale, all formerly of McCobb, Heaney and Dunn, joined him.
When he took up the joint, related causes of promoting pro bono work and ensuring that people of all means had access to legal assistance, Cummiskey came into his own.
His name goes down in the annals of history along with those of Lewis Powell, later a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and Sargent Shriver as a successful advocate for Federal funding in support of Legal Aid centers across the U.S.
In the early 1960s, Cummiskey served on, and chaired, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants. He and a small group of people thought the situation through and decided that the U.S. government would need to put money behind Legal Aid centers to make them work. In 1967, Cummiskey and then-American-Bar-president Powell approached the Office of Economic Opportunity, headed by Shriver, about how to proceed. Those meetings resulted in Congress’s first funding of Legal Aid, which continues to the present.
Cummiskey is credited for his role in this in several published books and histories, and Powell remembered him always.
However, Cummiskey did not relish or dwell on such credit. Another of his salient traits was a modest down-playing of the role he had played. He once said, “You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit.”
But when Cummiskey put his formidable force behind something, it generally got done. He advocated with the State Bar to set up an Access to Justice (ATJ) Task Force, which he chaired in the mid-1990s — and of which he was eventually declared Chair Emeritus.
Linda Rexer, long-time Executive Director of the Michigan State Bar Foundation on which Cummiskey served, remembered in a tribute written shortly after his death that he went to the State Bar executive committee and told them that, not only should the Task Force be formed, but top officers should very visibly take part. To quote Rexer, “He said it was the profession's obligation to be out in front leading access to justice with the highest bar leaders visible so everyone knows it is a priority of the profession...”
In keeping with West Michigan tradition, Cummiskey was generous with his own funds, and those of his law firm, in support of the causes he espoused, and set a wonderful example for others. But it was not only his commitment, but his negotiating and persuasive skills in motivating others to take into account those of lower economic status.
Chief Justice Kelly repeated what is probably his best-known quote, “Access to justice is a dream. We must make it a reality,” uttered on the occasion of his 80th birthday, which he spent at an Access to Justice task force meeting. Cummiskey did not find it out of the ordinary to celebrate that way, and he continued working until his death at age 85.
All this makes it sound as if the bulk of Cummiskey’s time went into his advocacy work, but as Craig Mutch points out, he was also a “pioneer in labor law,” which continues to be a prime area of practice for Miller Johnson today. In fact, Cummiskey would probably have gotten more involved with the American Bar, but he felt at the time that his legal practice here was more pressing.
Mutch says that, at Miller Johnson, “We always focus on his involvement in community and pro bono activities, particularly with providing legal services for those who are unable to afford them, as goals that we all have to remember and ways we should conduct ourselves.”
Cummiskey’s daughter, Dr. Karen Cummiskey of Grand Rapids, accepted the award on her father’s behalf. Her dignified, compassionate acceptance speech demonstrated that she is indeed her father’s daughter. She said she hoped to be able to “channel” him as she spoke.
Dr. Cummiskey later said of her father, “Our dad was truly amazing and beloved. He had a profound belief, with his religion at the core of his morals, that gratitude for our blessings should make us want to give back.
“He had amazing energy, so even though he slowed down with age, he was still making a big difference. He had a way of making whatever person he was talking to feel very special, and he treated everybody graciously regardless of background.
“I think about him every day, his sense of humor, his humility, his contagious enthusiasm.
“It’s great to feel that he’s continuing to have such a great impact,” she concluded.
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