Judge Is Eulogized for Reasoned Rulings

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert S. Vance, killed by a mailed pipe bomb, was remembered Wednesday as a man whose goal was “to resolve disputes reasonably and peacefully.”

The judge was killed last Saturday by the first of four pipe bombs mailed to individuals, the appeals court and the NAACP in a wave of terror the FBI says may be the work of racists.

Saying he was “outraged” by the judge’s death, a friend and fellow judge, R. Clifford Fulford, told the 700 mourners at a memorial service that Vance “stood up for the underdog and the oppressed.”

“No wonder his assassins could not stand such a man in their presence.”

Vance, 58, was the third federal judge to be murdered this century and the first whose death may be related to the struggle for civil rights that left a legacy of blood across the Southeast in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh and FBI Director William S. Sessions were among the judges, lawyers and friends who filled the heavily guarded St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.

A small army of uniformed police guarded the church outside while federal agents kept watch inside. Explosives-sniffing dogs searched the building before the service and delivery services were prevented from bringing packages into the neighborhood and flowers into the church, where a single bouquet adorned the Spartan altar.

Vance’s wife, Helen, who was injured in the attack, watched the service on television from her room at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where she is in serious condition.

Monday, Savannah, Ga., lawyer and Alderman Robert Robinson, 41, was killed when a similar bomb, also sent through the mail, exploded in his hands.

He was remembered at an informal, outdoor service today by 60 people who sang hymns and civil rights songs and recited the “Lord’s Prayer.”

Two other bombs were found before they exploded. One was discovered Monday at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta and one was found Tuesday at the NAACP office in Jacksonville, Fla.

The bombings have served to revive long-buried memories of the violence-torn civil rights marches and attacks by white supremacists groups in the 1950s and the early 1960s.

Vance, a former leader of the Democratic Party in Alabama, had actively fought white supremacists before being appointed to the federal bench by former President Jimmy Carter.

Federal officials have said that one possible link between the bombing targets is their involvement in desegregation litigation. Vance has ruled on several cases, including a recent one filed by the NAACP that involved desegregating Jacksonville schools.

Robinson, one of the first blacks to attend Savannah High School, recently participated in litigation involving further desegregation of Savannah’s schools.