By Steve Thorpe
Detroit Legal News
Even a brief life can cast a long shadow. Eve August was only 24 when she was shot and killed during a 1982 attack on the Detroit law office where she worked as a summer intern. This Saturday she will be remembered by family, friends, legal professionals who worked on the case and academics involved in the scholarship that bears her name. They will share memories of a young law student whose life was cut short before she could realize her seemingly limitless potential.
At 11:15 a.m. on June 11, 1982, a disgruntled insurance salesman named Robert Harrington launched an attack on the law offices of Edward Bell and Lester Hudson in the Buhl Building in downtown Detroit. Harrington was armed with a shotgun, pistol and a jar of gasoline as he demanded a check he hadn’t received. When he didn’t like the reply, he started shooting, beginning a 90-minute rampage that left Eve August dead and dozens injured from gunfire or the fire that followed. Harrington was eventually sentenced to life in prison.
Judge Timothy Kenny, who will participate in the memorial, was a young attorney when the attack occurred and ended up prosecuting the case.
“I remember standing in front of the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day,” Kenny says. “You could see the smoke billowing up from the Buhl Building. At the time, I was a prosecutor and was assigned to a special felony murder squad. I remember getting a page from the unit I worked for saying that they had been assigned to the case. I was told it was at Ed Bell’s law firm and that at least one person had been killed. My work on the case (as prosecutor) began at that moment.”
That “one person” was Eve August, who had the misfortune to be in the line of fire when Harrington erupted. She had nothing to do with his dispute with the law firm.
Eve’s younger brother, Lou, remembers receiving the shocking news
“I was working at IBM in Florida,” he says. “A friend who worked at a downtown Detroit law firm called me and said, ‘Something’s happened at the firm where your sister is working.’ She had no idea that Eve had died. I immediately called my father at his office and he said he had also heard something had happened and that he was headed there. I left my office for lunch, having no idea what was going on. When I returned, an IBM HR person was standing in the foyer and handed me an airline ticket for Detroit. I’ll always remember IBM because of what they did for me.”
Their younger brother Alex August was only 14 at the time and was playing tennis when a neighbor located him and told him he needed to return home immediately.
“Based on the alarm in her voice I knew something terrible had happened, but what she was about to tell me was so much worse than I could have ever imagined,” he says. “I was stunned to hear the news of my sister’s death, and was in shock on the car ride home with her. Reality began to set in once I got home when my father immediately hugged me like he had never hugged me before and began crying. There was a loss and sense of devastation in my family like I had never felt before or since. There was nobody to lean on since we were all experiencing the same devastating grief and loss.”
Both brothers remember Eve fondly — her fierce, fearless and competitive side as well as her gentle one.
“Eve was a little more than a year older than I was,” says Lou. “As her younger brother, she was the center of my life. Who I was seemed very dependent on who she was. We played together as children and fought together as siblings. We had a friendly, but competitive relationship. You would almost think it was your older brother. She was on both the high school tennis and ski teams. I remember, at a ski resort, Eve going fearlessly down a steep slope called ‘Big Risky’ while I stared at it and said ‘Whoa!’ ”
Alex, being so much younger, tended to see more of the nurturing side of Eve.
“Eve was 10 years older than me and therefore spent a lot of time watching me as I was growing up,” he says. “Due to our age difference she was another mother figure in many ways. I always felt that Eve (and my brother Louis) genuinely enjoyed spending time with me and, of course, as a wide-eyed younger brother, I loved spending time with them. In addition to the love and sense of inclusion I always felt from Eve, I will always remember my sister’s determination. She lived at home during her law school years at (Detroit College of Law), so I was able to witness the tremendous efforts she put forth toward her legal education. Eve had a strong sense of justice and purpose coupled with great compassion for others.
Becoming an attorney provided her the best path to make a difference in this world and we all believe she would have.”
Lou also remembers Eve’s drive and commitment, once she had decided on a course of action.
“Eve was always very driven and focused,” he says. “She also had a strong work ethic. I remember nights in our house with my parents tutoring her and her never giving up on things that were hard to understand.“
And her decision on a law career came at an earlier age than those sorts of plans come to most of us.
“I would say Eve was probably 13 when she decided on the law as a career,” Lou says. “Eve also became an aggressive debater. She was on the school debate team and went to the state finals. My sister was always incredible verbally. I never stood a chance in any kind of argument. My father and Eve, from my earliest memory, would debate and argue about everything. My father shared with me recently his memory of the first time he realized Eve had him licked.”
Eve also had a political side and her undergraduate degree at U-M was in political science. She was very active in the Democratic Party and at the age of 18 was a delegate at the national convention in 1980.
But it was never all work and no play for Eve. In addition to sports, both brothers remember her love of dance and how it evolved into professional involvement with that art.
“We grew up back in the disco era and Eve had a big passion for dance,” says Lou. “We were both attending U-M and by that time we each had out own sets of friends. But we would frequently cross paths at the dance clubs around Detroit and Ann Arbor. She just loved to dance. Eve took dance a lot more seriously than I did and ended up in ballet. I guess you could say she was a professional ballerina because when the famous large ballet troupes would come to town, they would always hire local dancers for some of the parts because they didn’t travel with the entire group. She got a lot of those roles.”
Alex remembers Eve dancing in the Nutcracker Ballet with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1979. But, for a young boy like Alex, not everything about her dance preparation was pleasant.
“I remember her tirelessly practicing in her room at home, listening to that annoying music (from the point of view of a 10-year-old), wearing those uncomfortable looking toe shoes and practicing her Plié’,” he jokes.
Judge Kenny got to know quite a bit about Eve during the murder investigation and was impressed by what he found.
“I never had the pleasure of meeting Eve August,” he says. “Everything I learned about her during the course of the case led me to conclude that she was a warm and caring individual. Eve was also very bright and had an unlimited future ahead of her.”
The family is looking forward to the formal memorial event and the opportunity to share their remembrances of Eve. But they have kept her vividly alive in their own memories since the day she died.
“I think about her every day,” says Lou. “Soon after her death, everything in my life changed. I ended up quitting my job. I found myself searching for what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. The pain was staggering. There was an unimaginable void. As a young man in my early 20s, I just wanted it to go away. It took me years to realize that it doesn’t ever go away.”
Despite that pain, the family tends not to focus on the tragedy of Eve’s death, but prefers to remember the good times spent with the daughter or sister they loved.
“Surprisingly, I have not dwelled on the ‘wrong place wrong time’ aspect of her death or harbored hatred toward her assailant,” Alex says. “Eve was such a warm, kind, open hearted, loving, determined, inspired, optimistic young woman. Her loss, to me, far overshadowed anything else I could possibly feel about the circumstances of her death. To this day, I still feel that same great sense of loss and love for and from my sister. She was an incredible person.”
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