Donna Marie Murasky

Donna Marie Murasky, age 79, died May 8 at Georgetown University Hospital of complications from a long illness. As a young girl Donna idolized President John F. Kennedy, and took from him the idea that public service and government could be a force for progress. From a reading of Clarence Darrow for the Defense she concluded lawyers could be agents of help to people in trouble. Although challenged by her education and life experiences, these convictions never left Donna and much of her life was guided by them. From early adolescence she dreamed of being a lawyer and she lived that dream to the fullest. She took great pride, in addition, in being a woman lawyer.

Donna was born in 1947 in Detroit, Michigan to Margaret Catherine McCabe and George Frank Murasky. Donna was very proud of the fact her father was a veteran of 29 missions (2 on D-Day, which she always commemorated) as a flight engineer and top turret gunner on a B-17. He instilled a commitment to family, patriotism, honest labor, and pinocle to his large family, in which Donna was the eldest girl. She attended the Royal Oak public schools, which recognized her unique aptitude in math, allowing her to proceed at her own pace, completing the elementary and junior high school math curricula years early. She then was given special tutoring to channel her abundant energy and math skills. In high school Donna attended the Michigan State math and science summer program for talented students from across the country, where she made numerous friends hailing from New York to California. As a senior her results in the Michigan state test of mathematical skills scored her as one of the top 100 math students in the state. Donna was also selected, although she did not attend, for the Interlachen Summer Music Festival as a talented student of the viola. No surprise, she was also a lifelong fan of Motown music.

Donna's experience at Michigan State broadened her horizons and led her to Barnard College in New York City, where her focus shifted to civil liberties and politics. She experienced the events at Columbia University in 1968 with her future husband, Craig Dean, a Russian history graduate student whom she eventually converted to the law. They married in 1970. Her Barnard senior thesis criticizing the response of the legal profession to the federal loyalty-security programs under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations used private materials entrusted to her by an early leader of the ACLU and uncovered new information about a important topic. Donna also worked, first as an intern and subsequently as a paid staff member, in the New York office of Senator Bobby Kennedy, Sr. Following his assassination she co-managed the Oakland County Michigan Democratic campaign office during the 1968 election. She graduated from Barnard in 1969.

At the beginning of her legal training at the University of Chicago School of Law she experienced an insult common to early women law students when she was told by a classmate her role should not be law but gourmet cooking for her husband. Instead she won prizes for her legal research and writing, served on the law review, won the Hinton Moot Court competition, arguing before three sitting or future Justices of the Supreme Court, and was a member of the Order of the Coif academic honor society.

She remained at the law school as a Bigelow Teaching Fellow for a year after graduation (JD 1972) and worked on civil rights issues for Businessmen in the Public Interest, a Chicago advocacy group.

Donna was unyielding in her conviction that women lawyers were at least the equal of men. Despite her accomplishments she encountered situations of blatant discrimination. The law school barred a prominent Chicago law firm from recruiting for a year at the law school after she reported that a partner stated openly he had no interest in interviewing her "because she is a woman."

During 1973-1975 Donna clerked for Judge Wade H. Mccree on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and taught at the Detroit College of Law. Finally, a highlight of her legal career was clerking for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court during October Term 1976.

Following her clerkship Donna joined the Washington firm of Covington and Burling, where she practiced antitrust and media law. She represented several reporters and news organizations, and assisted the League of Women Voters in issues arising over the Presidential debates. She left Covington temporarily at the request of David Tatel to take a position under him at the U.S. Department of HEW, Office for Civil Rights, implementing aspects of the newly passed Title IX prohibiting sexual discrimination in educational programs receiving federal funding. Donna left Covington to teach media law and constitutional law at the American University School of Law. She had previously published the then-definitive article on the journalist's privilege (Texas Law Review, May 1974).

Donna finally found the perfect arena for her skills as an appellate advocate and her desire for public service in representing the District of Columbia in appellate cases. She served for over 30 years handling appeals involving the District on such disparate topics as KKK marches and other political demonstrations, police procedures, gun control, DC's taxation of institutions such as the World Bank, and ERISA preemption of DC's pension rules (the last before the Supreme Court) as well as many other subjects. Donna took great pleasure in mentoring young attorneys into successful appellate advocates, and she eventually took a management role in the office as the Deputy Solicitor General. She received many accolades for the comprehensiveness of her preparation, the quality of her arguments, and her responsiveness to the court's questions.

Donna's strong devotion to family led her for many years to organize an annual vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware for her parents and far flung siblings and their families She also got particular pleasure helping some in their educations by counseling them on investment strategies for funds that she had contributed,

Donna is survived by her husband Craig Dean and by her siblings Thomas Murasky, Diane Dickson, Deborah Tatters, Doreen Murasky, Matthew Murasky, and Mark Murasky, their spouses, and numerous nieces and nephews, as well as members of Craig's family, to whom she was the popular and always helpful and entertaining aunt Donna.

Donations to Georgetown University Hospital Lombardy Cancer Center, So Others May Eat, and My Sisters Place.