Deval Patrick, 37, has a taste for adventure, challenge and change. That’s why he’s swapping the good life in Massachusetts for the rat race in Washington. But for the assistant attorney general for civil rights, two things remain the same--his commitment to family . . . : And Justice for All

The new assistant attorney general for civil rights had sailed through his confirmation hearings, earning swift and unanimous approval. And with the scrutiny of the U.S. Senate fresh behind him, 37-year-old Deval L. Patrick could finally relax for a moment and admit that while Washington’s ritual inquisition was nobody’s idea of fun, it wasn’t the toughest hurdle he had ever encountered, either.

A dozen years ago, Patrick said with the kind of smile that meant he was about to tell a story on himself, there was the obstacle course Diane Bemus put him through before she would even think about going out with him. There he was, a newcomer in L.A., green out of Harvard Law and clerking for Circuit Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt. The young woman in question was a first-year associate at O’Melveny & Myers with a definite distaste for blind dates.

Mutual friends screened Patrick, and at last she agreed to meet him, “but only in a crowd.”

Patrick nearly balked at the next hurdle, an invitation to a Halloween costume party. He protested that he had no costume. But his friends were firm: No costume, no introduction.

So Patrick, who had lived for a time in Nigeria and the Sudan, decked himself out in full tribal regalia.

“And, of course, I was the only one in costume,” Patrick said. “I think Diane was wearing a black silk pants suit.”

From the opposite end of the couch in the grand old house that they renovated themselves, Diane Bemus Patrick quickly defended herself. With a laugh, she insisted: “I was not in on this cruel joke.”

Within a year, the two attorneys were married and renting author Alice Walker’s house in Brooklyn. Diane Patrick was opening O’Melveny’s office in New York; Deval Patrick was working with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, specializing in death penalty appeals and voting rights cases.

*

Patrick, so self-effacing that when he talks about his college reunion he does not mention that his college was Harvard, remembers this period as “a great life. She had money, I had a great job.”

When the Patricks moved to the Boston area soon after their first daughter, Sarah, now 8, was born, this comfortable pattern continued. Diane Patrick, whose specialty is labor and employment law, became associate vice president for human resources at Harvard University. Deval Patrick swiftly rose to partner at Hill & Barlow, a law firm that is as much a part of the Boston landscape as Beacon Hill. Of this venerable legal institution, David Place, himself a longtime Boston attorney, said, “That firm is a palace. It looks like Valhalla.”

So why give it up? Why throw yourself into the rat race of Washington? Why transplant a family--two daughters and a wife who will need to find a new job? Why plunge into a position where controversy is served up daily, along with lunch?

Here comes another of Deval Patrick’s easy smiles. Only this time it is smart, smooth and measured, revealing exactly as much as Patrick chooses.

“I like our lives here,” he said, stretching his arms behind his head. “But I also like adventure and challenge and change.”

Patrick paused. “And I think that’s what this is,” he went on. “In spades.”

Certainly the post of assistant attorney general for civil rights has received more attention than many sub-Cabinet jobs. President Clinton’s first nominee, University of Pennsylvania law professor Lani Guinier, was forced to withdraw when her writings were attacked by conservatives. Ten months passed before Patrick, whose wife went to high school with Guinier, was named to the position.

The delay in filling the job left the Clinton Administration prey to criticism that civil rights were not a high priority. With the recent turnover in top-level aides to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, the vacancy also added to an image of a Justice Department in some disarray.

But Patrick discounted such depictions. “I think the reports of its chaos are exaggerated,” he said of the department he moved into eight days after his March 22 confirmation.

As an academic, Guinier was known as a civil rights theorist. Patrick, a litigator who leaves no paper trail of writings--controversial or otherwise--is more the civil rights practitioner. Still, comparisons were apparently inevitable. The one loud note of criticism accompanying Patrick’s nomination came from conservative activist Clint Bolick, who dubbed Patrick “a stealth Guinier.”

Regardless of who occupies the position, Patrick said, the civil rights job “has always been a lightning-rod post.” Meaning, he said, that “the issues that come before it are always a source of great uplift and great division in the history of our nation.”

If that kind of statement sounds as if it has gone through a political vacuum cleaner--just to make sure it has no trace of substance to it--Patrick can elaborate. One of the major tasks ahead of him is “to make sure that citizenship in this country is as it should be for everybody,” Patrick said, because “civil rights is as important as the notion of an inclusive democracy itself.”

Different constituencies pop up every day to clamor for a spot on the civil rights soapbox, Patrick conceded--and properly so.

“I think civil rights are those fundamental rights and obligations that American citizens have that assure them their participation in the society is as full and as meaningful as possible--and that the participation is equal,” he said. Such rights “should evolve” in an evolving democracy, he went on, so that “different kinds of protection must be afforded different groups.”

The umbrella of civil rights continues to expand, he said, summoning up an image that was popular at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund of civil rights as “a relay race for justice.”

So “what used to be a black-white question is now African American, Asian American, Native American, glass ceiling--pertaining to issues about work and education as they relate to the experience of women--and so on,” Patrick said. Under this interpretation, “you can’t limit your thinking about civil rights in this post to black-white and do your job responsibly.”

Nevertheless, he stressed, “I do think it’s important to remember that the issues of the civil rights of African Americans are not solved.”

That position comes as no surprise to Ruth Batson, the grande dame of Boston’s African American community. As a board member of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Batson knew Patrick from the time he began working there, infusing the organization with what Batson called “a nice openness, and a whole new spirit.”

Mostly, Batson said, Patrick proved himself to be “really strong on racial issues.” While Patrick is no ideologue, Batson said she is optimistic that he will make an impact in his new job.

“If he’s allowed to, I think we’ll see a lot of change under his leadership,” Batson said.

Henry Hampton, head of Blackside Productions and producer of “Eyes on the Prize,” an award-winning television series about civil rights, echoed: “He’s not going to back down on things. Deval is smart, and he is deceptively tough.”

*

While it may be buried beneath a honey-smooth voice and manners to make your mother swoon, Patrick comes by that toughness honestly. He was raised in Chicago. His father was a jazz saxophonist, and when Deval was just 4, Pat Patrick abandoned the family to play with Sun Ra, leader of a popular jazz band from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Left to raise Deval and his sister on her own, Emily Patrick fell onto the welfare rolls for several months. Deval Patrick’s break came when his eighth-grade teacher urged him to apply for a scholarship at an eastern prep school through a program called “A Better Chance.” He was accepted at Milton Academy, one of the country’s most prestigious schools. The experience meant so much to him that when he became a father, Patrick was adamant that daughters Sarah and Katherine, almost 5, would attend Milton as well.

The same man who can make fun of himself for showing up at Los Angeles dinner party in tribal attire is also not above remembering how his humble roots influenced his early days at prep school. One of Patrick’s favorite stories, said fellow Milton Academy Trustee Elizabeth Gilmore, is about “how he packed from this equipment list that he was sent. When it said ‘jacket,’ he thought they meant a Windbreaker”--as opposed to Milton’s idea of something more formal, with buttons.

In his work on long-range planning for their alma mater, Patrick “has done a spectacular job,” Gilmore said. “He’s a good listener, and he’s good at considering many points of view. He doesn’t have to grandstand about his own point of view.”

*

His background has given Patrick a comfort level that allows him to fit easily into new situations, said Boston civil rights litigator Judy Forkner. “He crosses a lot of bridges that other people do not.”

One situation that attorney Place, an adviser on judicial appointments to Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, hoped Patrick would move into was either a state Cabinet position, a state judgeship or even a run for Congress. But Patrick politely declined the entreaties of Weld and Place, who are Republicans.

“He felt it wasn’t time for him to go into a state position,” Place said.

Place said he and his wife, Susanna, would miss socializing with the Patricks. “They give great parties with lots of good music and food”--much of it prepared by Deval Patrick himself, Susanna Place said.

Bill Stuart, a wine merchant who frequently supplies the libations for the Patricks’ parties, said that often when he arrives with a delivery, he finds the host sitting in the kitchen, reading stories to his girls. When one of them acts up, Stuart said, Patrick just hoists her up on his shoulders and carries her around till she calms down.

In fact, this longtime Republican quipped, knowing Deval Patrick is almost enough to turn him into a Democrat. “Sure, I’m losing a good customer,” Stuart said. “But that’s beside the point. If he goes down to Washington and does good things, that’s what counts.”

But in the Patrick household, “going down to Washington” remains an occasionally daunting prospect. Although child care is no problem--Deval’s mother lives with them and looks after the girls--there are still schools to select and housing to find. Diane Patrick has only begun to explore her own employment possibilities.

She said she had avoided thinking about all the complications of uprooting a family until her husband had Senate confirmation. Every time someone would call to offer congratulations, she would remind them: “Well, we’re not there yet.” Then the day after he was confirmed, she woke up at dawn and realized: “Omigod, we’re there.”

Fortunately, “we’re a real team,” Diane Patrick said. “We’ve done all these things together. We’ve moved together, we’ve worked together and we’ve raised our kids together.”

Since her own job has been “more than full time for the last year and a half,” her husband has taken the girls off for vacations during school breaks, Diane Patrick said, leaving her to hunker down and get her work done.

“We always try to keep the balance,” Deval Patrick interjected.

The Patricks plan to rent out their house in Milton; Washington, they are well aware, is seldom a permanent proposition.

But somehow, they are confident, things will shake down.

“We don’t know how it’s going to work,” Diane Patrick said. “But we know it will work.”