EAST LANSING, MI – Last week some of Michigan’s most powerful figures assembled to pay tribute to a former state official who died last winter and hasn’t held office since 1998.
Why?
Because there has never been anyone like former Michigan Attorney General Frank J. Kelley, a cheerful Irishman with a million good stories (some of them even true) who actually invented the office in its modern form, crusaded to protect consumers, minorities and the environment, and was godfather to countless careers.
He told me once that he had toyed with going to Florida as a young man to become an entertainment lawyer, and he always loved being around celebrities. But instead, he stayed in Michigan, eventually became attorney general, and held that job for an astonishing 37 years, longer than anyone ever had anywhere.
“Instead of making vast wealth, I think I made a difference,” he said. He did indeed, and the roster of those who spoke at his memorial Sept. 9 showed that.
They included Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose mother had worked for Frank, who had known and encouraged the future governor since she was a tiny girl. There was ambassador and former Gov. James Blanchard, who like so many others, got his start as a young assistant attorney general.
Dan Loepp, the president and CEO of Blue Cross/Blue Shield once worked for Frank Kelley. U.S. Senator Carl Levin, who died in July, also was hired by the “eternal general,” as was Larry Glazer, a respected retired federal judge who was the master of ceremonies.
They all spoke that day except, of course, for the late senator. There was also one other less distinguished speaker — me. For I knew Frank J. Kelley in a different way; I was his biographer.
Ten years ago, we wrote his autobiography, The People’s Lawyer: The Life and Times of Frank J. Kelley, the Nation’s Longest-Serving Attorney General. (Wayne State Press, 2015)
When you write or ghost-write a book with someone, you become their father confessor and alter ego.
I felt I perhaps knew Frank better in some ways than he did himself. He was such an entertaining character, with so many enchanting stories that it was easy to focus on his personality.
But what really mattered was what he actually accomplished. Before he was appointed in 1961, the office of attorney general was a fairly sleepy one. Attorneys general and their assistants mostly just defended the state and its officials against lawsuits, or supplied legal opinions to the governor and legislature.
No Michigan attorney general ever stayed in the job for more than five years. Mostly, they tried to use it to get appointed to the state Supreme Court or as a springboard for another position.
Kelley was different. As soon as he took office, he started revamping the way things were done and creating a progressive, proactive court. In his first months in office, he stunned observers by personally taking on the case of Grady Little, a young black man from Detroit who had been stabbed together by a white man.
The local prosecutor and police wanted to ignore the case, but Kelley insisted on charging the stabber with murder. He lost the case, argued before an all-white jury. But he won the hearts of the overwhelming majority of the state’s blacks, who enthusiastically voted for him every time he ran.
Frank Kelley didn’t stop there. He started what was either the first or one of the first divisions devoted to consumer protection, and another for environmental law. He hired far more women and minorities than any of his predecessors, and got his budget and the number of assistants he was allowed to hire greatly expanded.
He took no prisoners. He went after General Motors for illegally putting Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobile cars. He went after utilities for what he considered consumer-gouging rate increases.
Once, acting on a tip, he had a cow killed, left it out in the open, and then went after a meat-packing operation that illegally was going to butcher and try to sell the carcass.
The public loved him. A strong Democrat, he was reelected ten times. In good Republican years, he might get 57 percent of the vote; in strong Democratic ones, closer to 70 percent. He tried for higher office once, when he ran for the U.S. Senate.
That was in 1972, when the state was being torn apart by the school busing issue. Frank Kelley was opposed to busing to achieve integration, and said so. But when he was asked if he would comply with orders to permit busing if ordered to by the courts, he had to respond that he would. That doomed him in November.
“Best thing that ever happened to me,” he told me long after. “I would have been bored in the Senate. So I made a career of this.”
When he was 74, he finally bowed out. He co-founded a lobbying firm, Kelley Cawthorne, and made good money for the first time. He moved to Florida not long before he died last March, at 96.
Part of the reason he was so successful was that he tried to work with everybody. John Engler, who was elected governor in 1990, was solidly opposed to almost everything Kelley stood for.
“But I knew we had to work together. So we tried to find common ground. We did. We both opposed capital punishment and we both hated gambling. That was something,” he said.
Most Democrats openly hated Mr. Engler, and vice-versa, but while they often disagreed, Kelley and Engler always treated each other with respect.
Somehow I feel Lansing, Washington, and all of us would be a lot better off if we had more of that spirit today. I miss you, Frank.
Lots of us do.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
