– Photos by John Meiu
PHOTO #1: Joseph Lujan (right), last year’s Purple Sport Coat Award recipient, helps this year’s honoree, Wayne County Circuit Judge David Allen, with the coveted jacket in honor of the late Kaye “Chach” Tertzag.
PHOTO #2: Kara Tertzag Lividini (second from right) greeted some 300 well-wishers to honor her late father at the third annual Kaye Tertzag Tribute Dinner in Dearborn. With her at the dinner are (from left) 40th District Court Judge Joseph Craigen Oster, Don Fresard and Sante Fratarcangeli.
By John Minnis
Legal News
Some 300 attendees gathered recently to honor a late beloved colleague at the third annual Tertzag Tribute Dinner and Purple Sport Coat Award ceremony in Dearborn.
“When we started this three years ago,” said Mike Butler, a member of the Tertzag Tribute Dinner Committee who first came up with the idea to honor the late Judge Kaye “Chach” Tertzag, who died Feb. 4, 2009, “we wanted this to be a Detroit tradition. I think we’ve succeeded by the attendance here tonight. I believe we have a sellout crowd.”
Among those in attendance were some two dozen sitting judges and another half a dozen retired judges.
The tribute dinner is an opportunity to honor the former Wayne County Circuit judge who went into alternative dispute resolution following his retirement from the bench. He was known for his civility and fairness and his “’Be’attitudes”: “Be prompt. Be prepared. Be polite.” Acknowledging the snowstorm warnings that night, Butler said the speakers would try to adhere to
Tertzag’s fourth “Be”attitude: “Be brief.”
Tertzag was also known for his colorful wardrobe, including a purple sport coat that Butler suggested as an annual award (akin to the Master’s green jacket in the golfing world) to those most exemplify Tertzag’s fairness, civility and “Be”attitudes.
“Many of us didn’t know until he retired from the bench that he wore colorful, and some say ‘frightening’ attire,” Butler said. “Purple was actually one if his more subdued colors.”
This year’s Purple Sport Coat Award honoree was Wayne County Circuit Judge David Allen, a protégé and friend of Tertzag. Past Purple Sport Coat recipients are retired Judge James Rashid and attorney Joseph Lujan, who presented Allen with the coveted jacket.
Whether ironic or on purpose, this year’s keynote speaker, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, was an appropriate choice.
Recommended by Sens. Levin and Debbie Stabenow and nominated by President Barach Obama, Allen withdrew his name after waiting nearly two years for action by the U.S. Senate.
“While I appreciate and am honored by your joint recommendation to the president for this position,” Allen wrote the senators in December 2010, “the almost two year delay (with the prospect of further delay in a much changed Congress come January) in the process has been long enough. I am ready to get back to my personal life and respected state court career, both of which have been on hold far too long.”
“The fact he didn’t get his nomination to the federal judge had nothing to do with him but with the messed up system in Washington,” Levin told the crowd in Dearborn. “If I told anyone what you go through to get someone appointed, I would ruin your dinner. Thanks again for honoring David Allen.”
Levin said he spent a week looking for a purple tie because he was told everyone wearing something purple would be entered into a drawing for a $100 gift certificate to Andiamo’s.
“No one offered me a ticket,” the senator said. “I think it’s fixed. I feel at home!”
Levin compared Tertzag to his uncle, Theodore Levin, the longtime U.S. District Court after whom federal courthouse in Detroit is named.
They both cared deeply for people and understood human shortcomings. They both sought “to do justice,” Levin said, even if it meant possibly being overturned.
“If the higher court reversed, that was their business,” Levin said. “The important thing was to reach justice. Chach, or Kaye, had all those qualities. David Allen has all those qualities.”
In the Criminal Division of the Third Circuit Court, Allen has presided over thousands of felony cases in Wayne County. He is a 1993 summa cum laude graduate of the Detroit College of Law, after earning Bachelor and Master’s of Arts Degrees from University of Michigan.
Allen is an adjunct professor of law at the Thomas M. Cooley and University of Detroit Mercy Schools of Law.
He is on the boards of several organizations, including YMCA, ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic & Social Services), American Constitution Society, Royal Oak Youth
Football League and Boll Family Downtown YMCA. A Detroit resident, he is married to Colleen with three sons.
In presenting the Purple Sport Coat, Lujan, along with Rashid, said Allen was chosen this year because he exhibits the qualities for which Tertzag is honored. “We are honored to award David the Purple Sport Coat, which carries, as I mentioned last year, a great obligation,” Lujan said.
Concerning Allen’s not being appointed to the federal bench, Lujan said, “That’s their loss as far as I’m concerned.”
In receiving the sport coat, Allen made two confessions. One, he used to have a lot of hair, as an early photo of him with Tertzag attests, and, two, he is “wardrobe challenged” and still takes hand-me-downs from his brothers.
“So when the Purple Sport Coat committee called with the good news that I was selected to receive the award this year,” Allen said, “my first thought wasn’t necessarily the great honor of the award, but rather how cool that I was finally going to get some new threads and that the coat was purple and a Versace. Better yet, it was free and like nothing else I’ve got in my closet.” He said he draws the line at purple pants and shoes: “I’ll leave that look to my colleague Judge Craig Strong.”
He thanked fellow members of the Tertzag Tribute Dinner Committee — wife, Kathy Tertzag; daughter, Kara Tertzag Lividini; son, Kyle; Wayne County Circuit Judge Gregory Bill; Butler; Robert Cassar; Anthony Guerriero; Lance E. Mermel and Norm Tucker — as wells as his family, court staff and the Tertzag family.
Allen thanked Levin for his recommendation for a federal judge nomination and his efforts to try to get it through the Senate. “Win, lose or draw, you won’t find a better person at your side when it really counts,” Allen said of Levin.
Concerning Tertzag's “Be”attitudes, Allen said, “Kaye expected these of himself and others and certainly was all of that and then some. … Despite all his success and power, Kaye always made you feel like the most important person in the room.”
Tertzag also knew how to have fun. “He was human,” Allen said of Tertzag, “and like all of us, he had his faults and weaknesses. In fact, I had some of the best times of my life sharing my faults and weaknesses with a man 30 years my senior.”
Tertzag’s daughter, Kara, an attorney at Ford Motor Co., said she has a photo displayed in her office of her father working as janitor at Ford — which is how he put himself through college as an undergrad.
As she did at previous dinners, she related a lesson from her father. She told of a fourth-grade social studies project in which her father refused to help her. While she got an “A,” as did another student with obvious parental involvement, she was nevertheless disappointed because the other student’s project was so much better.
Even her dad’s observation that the other student could not take credit for the “A” did not console her. However, his remark that a “smart girl” would not require a man to do the job for her, struck home.
“That talk with my dad that day really shaped my life, and continues to even as I speak to you today,” she said. “And I try to live out that lesson to this day, even when it isn’t easy,”
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
https://legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
