The Mother Court

Robert Morris Morgenthau was born in Manhattan on July 31, 1919. His grandfather, the real estate tycoon Henry Morgenthau Sr., was President Wilson¿s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Robert¿s father, Henry Jr., was Roosevelt¿s treasury secretary from 1934 to 1945, and his mother, Elinor (Fatman) Morgenthau, was a niece of Herbert H. Lehman, the New York Democratic governor and United States senator. Robert grew up in New York City and on the family¿s farm in upstate East Fishkill, N.Y. He was also part of the privileged world of estates, private schools and social connections, notably with the Kennedys of Boston and Hyannis Port, Mass., and the Roosevelts of Hyde Park, N.Y. He graduated from Amherst College in 1941 with high honors and a political science degree. After graduation he went on active duty as an ensign in the Navy. An officer aboard three destroyers and a minesweeper during World War II, he survived enemy attacks and won decorations for bravery under fire.

After the Navy he enrolled in Yale Law School, graduated in 1948 and joined the New York law firm Patterson, Belknap & Webb and became the personal assistant to the senior partner, Robert P. Patterson, who had been President Harry S. Truman¿s secretary of war.

After practicing law for 12 years, Mr. Morgenthau, who had dabbled in Democratic politics in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he lived, jumped on the Kennedy bandwagon in 1960 and became chairman of Bronx Citizens for Kennedy. His reward was appointment in 1961 as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, embracing Manhattan, the Bronx and six upstate counties. . Some of his more publicized cases were the subway vigilante Bernard Goetz; the Central Park preppy killer, Robert Chambers; and John Lennon¿s assassin, Mark David Chapman. He also created the office¿s first special unit to investigate Wall Street.

Robert M. Morgenthau passed away on July 21, 2019 at the age of 99 afte