Mr. Cornelius Bryant Kennedy

Cornelius (Neal) Bryant Kennedy, “Lawyer, Sailor, Adventurer,” passed away peacefully at home in Charlottesville, Virginia on June 7, 2014. Neal was born in Evanston, Illinois on April 13, 1921, and grew up in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs. After graduation from Andover and then Yale, where he earned a B.A. in Interdepartmental Studies, he moved on to M.I.T. and postgraduate studies in physics. After service in the Army Air Corps during World War II, he obtained his JD at the Harvard Law School and returned to Chicago where he practiced law with a large law firm until a call came from Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen in Washington, and Neal accepted his offer to serve as Legal Counsel for the Minority Leader, but only for one year. However, it stretched into six years, and his final assignment from both the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate was to draft legislation which the Senate and House could pass and President Johnson signed into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Neal returned to private practice of law, this time in Washington, D.C., and also served as a member of the President’s Conference on Administrative Law, as Chairman of the Section of Administrative and Regulatory Law of the American Bar Associate and as a member of the American Law Institute. His outside activities included Commodore of the Sailing Club of the Chesapeake and President of the Board of St. John’s Child Development Center. He was also a member of the Chevy Chase Club (Maryland) and the Hillsboro Club (Florida). Neal was also a member of the Explorers Club and the Adventurers Club and his travels as a young man took him to countries all over the world, often by unusual routes, hitchhiking from Cairo to Cape Town, South Africa, across the Congo and to Timbuktu, through Afghanistan, across Asia to Singapore and Bali with side excursions to the Karakorum mountain range northwest of Tibet. A lifelong sailor, Neal took up windsurfing at the age of 60. Neal and his wife, Anne Reynolds Kennedy, who grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, were married for 44 wonderful and active years during which she focused her interests on facilities for handicapped children and on Wolf Trap, the National Park for the Performing Arts, until her death in 2003. Neal is survived by two daughters, Anne Talbot Kennedy, a horsewoman, of Reston, Virginia, and Lauren Kennedy Mayle, a successful business owner in Richmond, Virginia and two granddaughters, Katherine and Stephanie. After his wife died, friends who live in Charlottesville urged him to consider this area as a wonderful place to relocate. Of all the places he looked at in the area, he chose University Village because in addition to the view, he liked both the residents he met and the concept of ownership. He is sure he made the right choice. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in the name of Cornelius Bryant Kennedy to the Supreme Court Historical Society. . A memorial service to celebrate Neal’s life and legacy will be held at University Village in Charlottesville, Virginia on July 12 2014 at 1:00 P.M.