Gerald Marvin Feder

Gerry met his life-long partner and wife, Loretta “Lolly” Feder at a social event sponsored by their local synagogue, when the pair were young teens. They married on April 28, 1956 during Gerry’s period of service in the U.S. Army (from 1955 to 1957) where he was responsible for evaluating officer qualification exams. He was accepted to the Julliard School of Music with a composing scholarship, earned his bachelor’s degree from Bates College, and went on to study law, earning his Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School of in Manhattan, New York, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law and won the 1964 Moot Court Brief Prize. The couple moved to suburban Maryland and Gerry began work in the United States Senate as an associate counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Labor during the Nixon Administration. There, Gerry was instrumental in drafting a series of federal laws guarding the safety of American workers, beginning with the Construction Safety Act of 1969 and the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, and culminating in what is now widely known as OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Then, as the Subcommittee’s chief counsel, he was responsible for drafting the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980, and an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Later, and throughout the rest of his career in private practice, he continued to champion the rights of the American worker by guiding the proper administration of union-sponsored employee health and pension benefit plans. Gerry and Lolly retired to Florida in 2001.

Gerry is survived by his wife Lolly, his brother, Chaim (Irith), his children Adam (Karen) and Elan (Francie), and his grandchildren, Ian, Bess, Rhys, Avi, and Pace. He is preceded by his parents Louis and Pauline Feder and his brother Rabbi Avraham Feder.

A military honors and service for Gerry will be held Thursday, December 9, 2021, at 12:30 pm, at Sarasota National Cemetery, 9810 State Rd. 72, Sarasota, FL 34241. Attendance will be limited but services can be viewed online by accessing https://youtu.be/c04_KqvXWDw