William O. Douglas - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

William O. Douglas was born on October 16, 1898 in Maine, Minnesota. He attended Walt Whitman College, graduating in 1920 with a B.A. in English and economics. He taught English and Latin at Yakima High Schools for the next two years. After graduating from Columbia Law School he went to work at the prestigious New York firm of Cravath, DeGersdorff, Swaine & Wood. Douglas quit the Cravath firm after four months. After one year, he moved back to Yakima, but soon regretted the move and never actually practiced law there. After a time of unemployment and another months-long stint at Cravath, he went to teach at Columbia Law School. He later joined the faculty of Yale Law School. In 1934 he was nominated by President Franklin Roosevelt for a seat on the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1939 Justice Louis Brandeis resigned from the U. S. Supreme Court and on March 20, 1939, President Roosevelt nominated Douglas to replace Brandeis. On April 4, 1939, William O. Douglas was confirmed by the Senate and was sworn in as an Associate Justice on April 17, 1939. During his tenure on the high court, Douglas was known as a strong advocate of First Amendment rights. With fellow Justice Hugo Black, Douglas argued for a "literalist" interpretation of the First Amendment, insisting that the First Amendment's command that "no law" shall restrict freedom of speech should be interpreted literally. The most high profile case to come before Justice Douglas involved Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. On June 16, 1953, Douglas granted a temporary stay of execution to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been convicted of selling the plans for the atomic bomb to the Russians. The basis for the stay was that the Rosenbergs had been sentenced to die by Judge Irving Kaufman without the consent of the jury. While this was permissible under the Espionage Act of 1917, which the Rosenberg’s were tried under, a later law, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, held that only the jury could pronounce the death penalty. Since at the time the stay was granted the Supreme Court was out of session, it meant that the Rosenberg’s could expect to wait at least six months before the case was heard. When Attorney General Herbert Brownell heard about the stay, however, he immediately took his objection to Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who took the unprecedented step of reconvening the Court before the appointed date and set aside Douglas's stay. Because of opposition to his decision, Justice Douglas briefly faced impeachment proceeding in Congress, but all attempts to remove him from the High Court went nowhere. Justice William O. Douglas retired from the Supreme Court on November 12, 1975 after serving for 39-years and 209 days. Justice Douglas retired as the longest serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court. Justice Douglas died on January 19, 1980 and is resting in Section 5 – Lot 7004 in Arlington National Cemetery.

Source/Credit: (visit link)

Description: William O. Douglas was born in Maine, Minnesota on October 16, 1898, and raised in Washington State. When he was three, he contracted polio, and his mother, Julia Bickford, daily massaged his legs until Douglas was able to walk again. His father, William, was a Presbyterian minister who died from complications after surgery when William O. Douglas was six. Douglas's family was left impoverished after a family friend lost the family's remaining money in a failed investment. Douglas was academically gifted, and received a scholarship to Whitman (Wash.) College. Even so, he worked several jobs during college to make ends meet. He graduated in 1920. Douglas taught school for two years, and then rode the rails (that is, he didn't buy a seat, but hopped on trains) to New York City, where he attended Columbia Law School. He was a brilliant student at Columbia, but was wounded for years that he failed to secure a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, a former Columbia Law School Professor and Dean. (Douglas would later serve on the Court with Stone.) After working at a large New York law firm, and following a brief sojourn back to Washington, Douglas returned to Columbia as a professor. In 1928, he moved to Yale Law School, where he remained for six years. Douglas, like many others of his generation, was captivated by FDR's New Deal, and left Yale formally in 1934 to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), created by FDR in his First Hundred Days in 1933. Its chairman was Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy left the SEC in 1936, he managed Douglas's nomination as a member of the SEC. Within a year and a half, Douglas was named Chairman of the SEC. After the retirement of Louis D. Brandeis in 1939, Douglas's loyalty to the New Deal led FDR to nominate him to the Court. He was 40 years old, one of the youngest appointees ever to the Court. Douglas served on the Court longer than any other Justice, 36 years and 7 months, eclipsing the record of Stephen Field. On December 31, 1974, Douglas suffered a massive stroke while vacationing in Nassau, The Bahamas. President Gerald Ford, who as House minority leader in 1970 had filed impeachment papers against Douglas, sent a military aircraft to the Bahamas to fly Douglas back to the United States. Although he remained determined to return to full health and stay on the Court, Douglas's ill health caused him to retire on November 18, 1975. Douglas was strongly libertarian in his opinions, distrustful of establishments of all types, and considered himself a voice for the voiceless and powerless. Along with Justice Hugo Black, he was an absolutist on the Bill of Rights. He was well versed in corporate law (including antitrust) matters, which was his specialty as a law professor. He wrote his opinions quickly, which sometimes meant they were poorly crafted. Douglas was married four times. He married Mildred Riddle in 1923. They had two children, Mildred and William Jr. (nicknamed Bumble). He divorced her in 1954. That same year, Douglas married Mercedes Hester, from whom he was divorced in 1963. His third marriage, to Joan Martin, lasted three years, from 1963 to 1966, and also ended in divorce. His last marriage was to Cathleen Heffernan, and took place in 1966. Douglas died on January 19, 1980. Date of birth: 10/16/1898 Date of death: 01/19/1980 Area of notoriety: Politics Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Daily - 8 a.m to 5 p.m. Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

Visit Instructions:
To post a visit log for waymarks in this category, you must have personally visited the waymark location. When logging your visit, please provide a note describing your visit experience, along with any additional information about the waymark or the surrounding area that you think others may find interesting.

We especially encourage you to include any pictures that you took during your visit to the waymark. However, only respectful photographs are allowed. Logs which include photographs representing any form of disrespectful behavior (including those showing personal items placed on or near the grave location) will be subject to deletion.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   03/26/2022 Don.Morfe visited it 07/11/2016 rockymountainranger visited it

View all visits/logs