Celebrate our Founding Honorees
of the C|M|LAW Hall of Fame Class of 2017
This year's 120 Hall of Fame honorees are in three categories and are listed at the link below. Please join us at the October 19 Celebration where all 120 honorees will be inducted.
- Founding Honorees (1897-1945)
- Commemorated Honorees (after 1945)
- Living Legends
Our
Founding Honorees are extraordinary individuals who laid the foundation for the Cleveland legal profession and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
As part of our 120th anniversary, we celebrate these outstanding individuals who graduated from or made significant contributions to Cleveland Law School and/or John Marshall School of Law.
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Judge Joseph A. Artl
Class of 1922 (1893-1970)
Joseph Artl served the citizens of Cuyahoga County for over four decades and was one of its most respected public officials.
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Mayor Newton D. Baker
(1871-1937)
Newton Baker
was
one of our most prominent trustees when Cleveland Law School opened its doors in 1897. He served two terms as Mayor of Cleveland, was President Wilson's Secretary of War, and co-founded BakerHostetler.
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(1879-1973)
Alfred Benesch was one of the three principal founders of John Marshall School of Law, where he taught Municipal Law, as well as a founding member of the Cleveland firm Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff.
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Dean Charles S. Bentley
(1846-1929)
Charles Bentley was a founder and the first dean of Cleveland Law School at its inception in 1897.
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Judge Jean Murrell Capers
Class of 1945 (1913-2017)
Jean Murrell Capers was the first African-American woman elected to Cleveland City Council in 1949. She was appointed to the Cleveland Municipal Court bench, then was elected and re-elected until Ohio's 70-year-old age limit for judges required her retirement in 1985. She continued to practice law until 2011 and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from C|M|LAW in 2009.
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Class of 1926 (1903-1987)
Charles Carr, the grandson of a slave and a powerhouse in the fight for equal rights for African-Americans, earned his undergraduate degree at Fisk University in Nashville before graduating from John Marshall School of Law in 1926.
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State Representative William H. Clifford
Class of 1902 (1862-1929)
William Clifford worked for several years at the Woodruff Palace Car Company before obtaining a job in the Cuyahoga County Clerk's Office in 1888. At that time, he was the highest-ever paid African-American man in local, county, or state government.
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Judge Genevieve Cline
Class of 1921 (1877-1959)
Like most of the early women graduates of the law school, Genevieve Cline was active in local and national suffrage organizations. "There is no gender in the law," she once declared.
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Judge James C. Connell
Class of 1918 (1897-1973)
James Connell worked for two decades in both private practice and as a city and county prosecutor before being named to the Common Pleas Bench in 1941 by Governor John Bricker.
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William J. Corrigan
Class of 1915 (1886-1961)
William Corrigan graduated from Cleveland Law School in 1915 and became an assistant prosecutor for Cuyahoga County the same year. In 1920 he decided to go into private practice.
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Frank T. Cullitan
Class of 1906 (1880-1957)
Frank Cullitan, a 1906
magna cum laude graduate of Cleveland Law School, was one of the founders of John Marshall Law School of Law in 1916 along with David C. Meck Sr. (1913) and Alfred Benesch.
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Abe H. Dudnik
Class of 1927 (1906-1963)
Abe Dudnik worked three sales jobs while attending night school at John Marshall School of Law. Known as a fearsome trial lawyer, he specialized in personal injury cases and founded the A.H. Dudnik Law Firm, which later became Nurenberg, Plevin (now Paris), Heller & McCarthy.
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Judge Eleanor Farina
Class of 1925 (1896-1989)
Eleanor Farina was the first female deputy sheriff in Cuyahoga County and quite possibly in the state of Ohio. In the 1930s, she worked in the office of the Cleveland Police Prosecutor during prohibition, issuing warrants for bootleg raids.
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Isadore Fred Freiberger
Class of 1904 (1879-1969)
Isadore Freiberger was a banker who served as chairman of the board of the Cleveland Trust Co., president and board chairman of Forest City Publishing Company and publisher of
The Plain Dealer and
The Cleveland News.
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Bell Greve
Class of 1918 (1894-1957)
Bell Greve, an international pioneer in rehabilitative and reform services, left behind a legacy of compassionate concern for disabled children and adults and zealous advocacy for those whose lives were devastated by war or natural disasters.
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Judge Mary Grossman
Class of 1912 (1879-1977)
Mary Grossman, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, left her job as a stenographer to study law at Cleveland Law School. In 1923, she became the first woman in America elected to a municipal court bench.
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Joseph C. Hostetler
(1885-1958)
Joseph Hostetler, a founding member of the BakerHostetler firm, was an enthusiastic supporter of Cleveland Law School, where he taught for many years.
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Jane Edna Hunter
Class of 1925 (1882-1971)
Jane Edna Hunter established the Phyllis Wheatley Association of Cleveland, which provided safe living quarters and educational support for African-American girls and women.
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Ferdinand Jirsa
Class of 1921 (1893-1971)
Ferdinand Jirsa was awarded the Order of the White Lion, the highest order of the Czech Republic, for his contributions to Czechoslovakia and the promotion of its cultural ties to the United States.
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U.S. Senator Frank J. Lausche
Class of 1921 (1895-1990)
Frank Lausche played amateur baseball and served in the U.S. Army during World War I before earning his law degree, graduating second in his class from John Marshall School of Law in 1921. He served in many capacities as a judge on the Cleveland Municipal Court and the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, Mayor of Cleveland, Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator.
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State Senator Margaret A. Mahoney
Class of 1929 (1895-1981)
Margaret Mahoney repeatedly broke through gender barriers to establish herself as an exceptional legislator and community leader. During her lifetime, she served in both chambers of the Ohio General Assembly.
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Grace Doering McCord
Class of 1925 (1890-1983)
Grace Doering McCord graduated from Cleveland Law School with the highest GPA ever achieved in the school's history at the time.
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Judge George J. McMonagle
Class of 1930 (1906-2002)
George McMonagle served the judiciary of Ohio for over 30 years as an elected and visiting Common Pleas Court Judge. He graduated from Cathedral Latin High School and worked in his uncle's construction company before entering law school.
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Dean David C. Meck, Sr.
Class of 1913 (1863-1939)
In 1916, David Meck Sr., along with several other attorneys, founded John Marshall School of Law. He served as a member of the faculty, teaching Contracts and Bailments & Carriers, and as dean, until his death in 1939.
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Dean David C. Meck, Jr.
(1906-1955)
David Meck Jr. began practicing law in 1935, embarking upon an outstanding record of public service. He served as assistant police prosecutor for the city of Cleveland from 1935-1938, assistant city law director from 1938-1941, and regional supervisor of the Federal Security Agency from 1942-1944.
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Norman S. Minor
Class of 1927 (1901-1968)
Norman Minor was a legendary African-American trial lawyer whose mentoring of a generation of black civil rights attorneys helped transform the justice system.
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Congressman William Edwin Minshall, Jr.
Class of 1938 (1911-1990)
William Minshall served two years in the Ohio Legislature prior to World War II. He enlisted in 1940, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was an assistant state attorney general and general counsel for the Federal Maritime Administration before being elected to the U.S. Congress.
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Lawrence O. Payne
Class of 1923 (1892-1956)
Lawrence Payne left an indelible mark on the city of Cleveland and the struggle for equal rights for all Americans. He was named the city's first African-American assistant police prosecutor. In 1949 he joined with William Otis Walker in forming the city's most influential African-American newspaper, the
Call and Post.
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Franklin A. Polk
Class of 1939 (1911-1991)
Franklin Polk was the youngest member elected to the Cleveland School Board, the youngest president of the Cuyahoga County Bar Association, and the latter's first delegate to the American Bar Association House of Delegates.
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Louise Johnson Pridgeon
Class of 1918 (1891-1932)
Louise Pridgeon, Cleveland's first African-American woman lawyer, studied social science at Western Reserve University, Northwestern University and Ohio University. In Cleveland, she worked for two community organizations.
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Max Ratner
Class of 1929 (1907-1995)
Max Ratner
was a legendary businessman and community leader. He went to law school at night and worked in the family lumber business during the day. He practiced law briefly and then decided to focus on his family's lumber business which grew into Forest City Enterprises (now Forest City) where he served as president and later as chairman of the Board.
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Edwin C. Reminger
Class of 1922 (1895-1977)
Edwin Reminger was a World War I veteran, transportation law expert, and senior member of the Reminger & Reminger law firm,
founded by his son
Richard T. Reminger
'57
. During World War II, Reminger was office manager of the joint information office of common, contract, and private carriers and served on a Selective Services Advisory Committee.
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Judge Samuel H. Silbert
Class of 1907 (1884-1976)
Samuel Silbert was appointed assistant police prosecutor by Mayor Newton D. Baker in 1911, four years after graduating with honors from night school at Cleveland Law School.
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Dean Lee E. Skeel
Class of 1912 (1888-1968)
Lee Skeel immediately began practicing law upon his graduation from Cleveland Law School in 1912, but his practice was interrupted by a period of service with the 322nd Machine Gun Battalion in France during World War I.
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J. Helen Slough
Class of 1929 (1908-1999)
J. Helen Slough, one of the first women to join the Cleveland Bar Association, was an international patent lawyer who served as president of the National Association of Woman Lawyers and Cleveland Patent Lawyers Association.
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Justice Leonard Stern
Class of 1926 (1904-1988)
Leonard Stern managed his father's grocery store as he attended Cleveland Law School. He graduated in 1926 and went into private practice before serving as a bailiff for the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas
and eventually a Justice on the Ohio Supreme Court..
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Elsie Tarcai & Violet Tarcai
Class of 1942 (1909-1997) & Class of 1943 (1916-2000)
The Tarcai sisters were the daughters of Hungarian immigrants who met on a citizens' rights protest line in their native country. Graduating in 1942, Elsie
was the second woman ever to argue a case in the state Court of Appeals. Violet, a union advocate, practiced labor law.
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Class of 1921 (1895-1976)
Frances Tetlak, the daughter of Polish immigrants, lived her entire life in the Tremont area of Cleveland. As a young woman, she worked in the Scranton-Clark Branch of the Cleveland Public Library and practiced law in an office on Tremont's Professor Street.
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Willis Vickery was influential in the founding of Cleveland Law School and became dean upon Charles Bentley's passing in 1914. In 1909, he was elected to the bench of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas and in 1918 he won a seat on the Ohio Court of Appeals.
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Class of 1919 (1889-1980)
Hazel Mountain Walker was Cleveland's first African-American female school principal and one of the first black women admitted to the bar. She pursued her law degree not, she said, to practice law, but to "prove that black women could earn law degrees."
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Class of 1926 (1905-1992)
Maurice Weltman graduated from John Marshall School of Law in 1926. He joined the firm of Gardner & Spilka and became a partner in the mid-1950s, thereby changing the name of the firm to Gardner, Spilka and Weltman.
In 2005, his son Robert Weltman established the Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Endowed Scholarship Fund at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in honor of his father.
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Judge Lillian M. Westropp
Class of 1915 (1884-1968)
Lillian Westropp, together with her sister Clara, founded this country's first savings bank run by and for women in 1922, which was later reorganized as the Women's Federal Savings and Loan Association.
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Class of 1908 (1871-1920)
Elizabeth Williams graduated from Cleveland Law School in 1908 and is believed to be the school's first female graduate. She was admitted to the bar in the state of Ohio that same year
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Class of 1926 (1885-1982)
Marie Remington Wing, the daughter of Cleveland Law School founding faculty member Judge F.J. Wing of the District Court, Northern District of Ohio, was involved in fighting for gender equality all of her adult life.
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If you have news or a story you'd like included in this newsletter, please send an email to
Lee Fisher, C|M|LAW Interim Dean and Visiting Professor of Law
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