Murray Comarow
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COMAROW MURRAY COMAROW (Age 91) Lawyer, public official, and professor, died
of cancer at his home in Bethesda on September 23, 2011 He spent more than
70 years and his entire professional life as a resident of the Washington,
D.C., area, serving two Presidents and playing a critical role in reshaping
the postal system and significant parts of the federal government. Born in
1920 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to Jewish immigrants from
Russia and Hungary, Murray Comarow spoke only Yiddish until he was five
years old. He graduated from Boys High during the Great Depression. Sixteen
percent of the labor force was still jobless, among them his father, a
furrier. The new graduate managed to find work sorting dirty diapers in a
commercial laundry, hefting iron ingots in a foundry, and hawking household
glue and personalized neckties in several small Pennsylvania cities as a
"demonstrator" for Woolworth 5 and 10 Cent Stores. A year of such jobs was
enough. He moved to Washington, D.C., where he thought his prospects would
be brighter, but he had only a high school diploma and a ferocious work
ethic to offer. His first job when he arrived in 1939 was as an assistant
messenger in the War Department, which paid $41.54-before taxes-every two
weeks. He began taking night classes at the National University School of
Law (later absorbed by George Washington University), enrolling during the
last year high school graduates in the District of Columbia were permitted
to go to law school, and graduated in 1942. Enlisting in the
<http://www.legacy.com/memorial-sites/army/?personid=153782714&affiliateID=6
00> Army that year, Comarow received reserve training and entered active
duty in the Army Air Corps at Warner Robins Field in Georgia. He was a drill
sergeant, and years later, men he had trained recalled the last quarter-mile
of their 25-mile hikes, when their pitiless drill instructor spurred them
into a full run into camp, wearing full packs and singing loudly. He went to
Officer Candidate School, was commissioned as a Captain, and served in a
judge advocate's office. Following World War Two he was an editor for the
Military Air Transport Service. In 1951 he moved to the Pentagon as a lawyer
in the general counsel's office of the Air Force and became an assistant
general counsel (as well as office touch football team quarterback,
nicknamed the Gray Ghost for his ability to sidestep onrushing opponents).
His problem-solving assignments involved bases around the world, from France
and Greece to Guyana and Libya. In 1965 Comarow was legal counsel to a
special committee charged with unearthing the roots of a major cheating
episode at the Air Force Academy. It was difficult for him to accept that
many young men at a service academy had routinely and systematically
cheated; he later called the investigation the most painful professional
experience of his life. In 1966 longtime friend Lee White, chairman of the
Federal Power Commission, named him executive director of the agency, which
at the time regulated interstate electric and gas utilities. (Comarow called
the appointment "pure nepotism.") The next year, President Lyndon Johnson
tapped him as executive director of the President's Commission on Postal
Reorganization, which a year later handed Congress a detailed blueprint for
a self-supporting, patronage-free federal corporation. Three years of
congressional deliberation culminated in the creation of the United States
Postal Service that resembled the commission's version; Comarow worried that
the differences could jeopardize its long-term viability. To be proven right
decades later did not bring him satisfaction. Following Richard Nixon's
election, Comarow joined the consulting firm Booz, Allen and Hamilton, where
he played a key role in the launch of a Washington, D.C.-based School of Law
for Antioch College. He was then drafted by the White House to run the
President's Advisory Council on Executive Organization. The council's
recommendations included new agencies such as the Environmental Protection
Administration. After a brief return to Booz-Allen, Comarow joined the
Postal Service as Senior Assistant Postmaster General, overseeing retail
operations and mail delivery. Teaching administrative law at Antioch in
1974, Comarow discovered the appeal of the classroom, and in 1975 he
accepted American University's offer to teach law-related subjects to
students majoring in political science and public administration. He was
distinguished adjunct professor in residence for 20 years, including one
year as acting dean of the College of Public and International Affairs. He
liked to inform his students in the first session that he didn't have a
college degree, let alone a Ph.D, so he was a "fake professor" or "fake
dean" who should never be addressed as "Dr. Comarow." In 1974, Comarow was
elected a Fellow and served as a director of the National Academy of Public
Administration. He participated in studies of intelligence activities and
prison reform, among others, consulted for the Brookings Institution and
other think tanks, and contributed two chapters on government in books
published by the Johns Hopkins University Press and NAPA. Comarow strongly
resented the routine denigration of government workers by politicians
looking for easy scapegoats. He felt that it discouraged top graduates and
highly talented people from seeking government careers, and he wrote and
lectured repeatedly on this issue. His Op-Ed pieces in the Washington Post
in 1981 decrying the "War on Civil Servants" were reprinted in the
Congressional Record by Sen. Patrick Moynihan and Rep. Patricia Schroeder.
His honors include commendations from Presidents Johnson and Nixon,
Distinguished Service Awards from the Department of the Air Force and the
Federal Power Commission, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Association for Postal Commerce. He was president of Temple Emanuel in
Kensington, MD, and later a board member of the Washington Hebrew
Congregation. He attended services at Sixth & I Synagogue and was a longtime
member of the Cosmos Club. And he took up tennis at age 59, laying down his
racquet more than 20 years later when his damaged rotator cuff could no
longer be repaired. His first wife, Dena Blitz, died in 1978. Survivors
include Donna Duhe, his wife of 31 years; a son, Avery, of Potomac, MD; a
daughter, Beth, of Reston, VA; stepchildren Mark Duhe of Kansas City, MO,
Marie Elaine Aronson of Virginia Beach, VA, and Elizabeth Stohr of Temple,
TX; a sister, Helen Lipson of Glen Oaks, NY; two grandchildren, two
step-grandchildren, and a great-grandson. Services will be held on
Wednesday, September 28, 10 a.m. at JOSEPH GAWLERS SONS CHAPEL, 5130
Wisconsin Ave., NW, Washington, DC. Interment private. In lieu of flowers,
donations may be made to the American University School of Public Affairs,
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington DC 20016-8060, to Montgomery
Hospice, 1355 Piccard Drive, Suite 100, Rockville, MD 20850, or to a
favorite charity.
Published in The Washington Post on September 25, 2011
