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? Harry Specter, Arlen Specter?s father, was born in 1892 in Batchkurina, a village about 160 miles from Kiev. The Specters ? Harry, his parents, his seven brothers and one sister ? were the only Jewish family in Batchkurina, ?a convenient target for the villagers? slurs and the Cossacks? sport.?? In 1910 at age 18, Harry walked ?across the entire European continent,?alone, uneducated, and destitute? to sail to America, where his brother Joseph lived in New York City.? Meeting up with Joe, the brothers soon moved to Philadelphia, where Harry worked for a tailor and eventually was able to purchase a Model-T, in which he traveled West ?to learn English and see America.?
????Senator Arlen Specter found his father?s village on a 1982 trip to the Soviet Union.? None of the villagers, including the mayor, said they had heard of the Specter family.? Even the oldest person in the village had no knowledge until, as the senator would later write, ?It dawned on me to tell him that my father?s family had been the only Jewish family in the village.? The man looked up and said, ?Oh! Avram the Jew.?? Avram was my grandfather?s name, but I had not mentioned it.? That?s what it was like being a Jew in Russia.? My grandfather had died in the famine of 1922, sixty years earlier, but this man still remembered Avram the Jew.?
?? In 1916, Harry Specter found himself in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he met a shopkeeper named Freida Shanin.? Harry began keeping company with Freida?s eldest daughter, 16-year old Lillie.? They soon became engaged.? Following military service with the 355 Infantry Company in France (in which he was wounded), Harry and Lillie were married. They would have four children: Morton (born 1920 in St. Joseph), Hilda (born 1921 in Philadelphia), Shirley (born 1927 in St. Joseph) and Arlen, who was?? born on February 12, 1930 in Wichita.? Part of the reason for their moving around was in the nature of how Harry made his living: ?He drove a truck in the Scranton coal fields, sold blankets to farmers in the winter in Nebraska, and peddled cantaloupes door-to-door in small Midwestern towns in the summer.?
??In his 2000 autobiography A Passion for Truth: From Finding JFK?s Single Bullet to Questioning Anita Hill to Impeaching Clinton, Specter noted that at his birth, his parents announced that they were going to name him ?Abraham? after Lillie?s paternal grandfather ?Avram.?? Lillie?s sister Rose ? who was living in Wichita at the time ? protested, ?Oh, you?re not going to do that to this poor little baby.?? She then suggested they name him??Arlen? after Richard Arlen, her favorite movie star. As a child, Arlen?s nickname was ?Boozy Boy.?? As the senator explained in his autobiography, ?A close family friend had given his son . . . born sixteen months before me the nickname ?Sonny Boy? after the Al Jolson song of that title, and my father adopted the variation ?Boozy Boy? for me.?
???Shortly after the birth of their fourth child, the Specter family moved to Russell, Kansas, the same tiny farming community in which future senator ? and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole was born and raised.? When Arlen was age 4, Harry took him to meet the Wichita sheriff, ?who asked me what I would like to see or do in his office.? I replied I?d like to hold the pistol I saw in his holster. No, he said, but he would make me a deputy sheriff, and he pinned his badge to my overalls for a picture.? My proud father sent the photo to ?Ripley?s Believe It or Not.?? On June 18, 1934, Ripley?s carried my picture with the caption that I was the youngest deputy sheriff in history.? Over the years I saw my father take that clipping from his wallet again and again to proudly show it to his friends, until it literally disintegrated in his hands from the folding and handling.?
??Following his high school graduation in 1947, Arlen Specter entered the University of Oklahoma, because ?there were no Jewish fraternities at the University of Kansas.? He joined Pi Lamda Phi.? However, in the Spring of 1948 Specter writes, ?we Pi Lams were reminded we were Jewish when a huge swastika was painted on our front sidewalk.? In the Fall of that year he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania; his decision was made even easier, because his family was now living in Philadelphia. ?While at a dance during his sophomore year at Penn, Specter met a local high school student named Joan Lois Levy; they were married in 1953.? Joan has had a varied career.? According to a 1998 White House press release at the time of her appointment to the National Council on the Arts:
??Ms. Joan Specter, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has balanced successful careers in both business and public service. Initially, she founded three cooking schools, became a Food Columnist and Radio Consumer Reporter. She then started and built a wholesale frozen pie company, with distributors in thirty states that supplied pies to a major restaurant chain. Ms. Specter also served as Philadelphia City Councilwoman At-Large for sixteen years. While with the City Council, she was on the Finance Committee, initiated a major program on "Art In City Hall", and was a major supporter of turning South Broad Street into the "Avenue of the Arts". Ms. Specter was also deeply involved in community health and education issues. Ms. Specter serves on the boards of the Jefferson Bank, Chestnut Hill College, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She is a former member of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
????The Specters?would have?two sons: Shanin and Steven.? Shanin, who was born in 1957, is a highly regarded malpractice attorney with the Philadelphia firm Kline and Specter.? Steve , born in 1960, has both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in nutrition.? At his death, Specter had granddaughters: Hatti, Lilli, Perri and Silvi.
??Arlen Specter graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, Phi Beta Kappa in 1951; he wrote his senior thesis on U.S.-Soviet relations.? He then spent the next two years (1951-53) in the United States Air Force. ?Returning from military service, he attended Yale Law School, where he edited the law journal. Graduating with his LL.B. in 1956, he moved back to Philadelphia, where he spent three years in private practice with Barnes, Dechert, Price, Myers and Rhoads, a top firm. In 1959, he was appointed an assistant in the office of the Democratic District Attorney, Victor Hugo Blanc. At his initial interview, Blanc?s assistant wanted to know ?why a guy who had been Phi Beta Kappa at Penn and had helped edit the law journal at Yale wanted to leave a top firm and become an assistant DA.? My academic background was a rarity at the Philadelphia DA?s office.?? All he could do was explain that he felt the call to public service.? During his four years in the DA?s office, he made a name for himself as a tough prosecutor, winning numerous convictions against corrupt Teamsters Union officials. ?On March 1, 1961, D.A. Vic Blanc was elevated to the bench and replaced with James C. Crumlish.
????Following the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, Specter resigned from the district attorney's office and moved to Washington, D.C., in order to take a position as an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, the fact?finding body charged with investigating the president?s murder. When the Commission concluded that a single bullet had killed President Kennedy and wounded Texas Governor John Connally, Specter suddenly found himself the subject of both celebrity and notoriety. He had been the ?chief architect and staunch defender of the commission's . . . so?called single bullet theory.? ?Interviewed by U.S. News & World Report, Specter said, ?the evidence is overwhelming that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy.? Specter's role in the Warren Commission investigation was immortalized in filmmaker Oliver Stone's blockbuster movie Kennedy.? In that film, Stone identified Specter by name and called him a liar in reference to the ?Single Bullet Conclusion.?? Specter came close to suing Stone for libel.? After consulting ?an ace Philadelphia litigator? about suing Stone, Specter decided against it.? ?The trial,? he explained in 2000, ?would have involved the whole Warren Commission story, which would have been fine with me.? But I had too much on my plate at the time . . . . Besides, I didn?t need a movie company.? In the end I let it go.?
???Following his stint with the Warren Commission, Specter returned to Philadelphia, where he sought the Democratic nomination for district attorney. Rebuffed by the Democratic machine that had controlled Philadelphia politics for a generation or more, Specter accepted the Republicans' offer to become their candidate for the office. Running as a reform candidate with the backing of both the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and moderate Republicans like Governor William W. Scranton (1917- ) and Senator Hugh Scott (1900-1994), Specter pulled off an upset victory over his former boss James C. Crumlish (1920-1972). With his better than 36,000-vote victory, Specter became the first Republican to capture a citywide Philadelphia election in more than a dozen years.? What made his victory all the more remarkable was that throughout the campaign, Arlen Specter was saying kaddish thrice daily for his father, who had suddenly passed away while he and Lillie were visiting Israel.? He was 73. Receiving a call at 5:30 A.M.?on Monday, November 2, Arlen and his sister Hilda were in Israel for their father?s funeral within 24 hours.? Harry Specter was buried in the Holon Cemetery.? Lillie returned with her children to the United States and settled with Shirley and her family in Phoenix. ?Diagnosed with stomach cancer in her early seventies, she underwent a ?painful but potentially lifesaving operation,? from which she made ?a reasonable recovery.?? She then moved with Shirley and her family to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she passed away in 1974 at age 73.? She is buried in the Specter family plot in ?a suburban Philadelphia Jewish cemetery,? thousands and thousands of miles away from Harry, to whom she had been married for 45 years. ?
??Arlen Specter would?spend eight years as district attorney, overseeing more than 250,000 cases. He was a different kind of D.A. than the people of Philadelphia were accustomed to; he was truculent, pugnacious, and unafraid to take on anyone and everyone from the mayor to the police commissioner. Following his first year in office, he ran for mayor, losing to incumbent, James H. Tate by just 10,954 votes out of some 700,000?cast. It was the city's closest mayoral contest in more than thirty years.? In looking back on that race, Specter would conclude that he lost because ?they (i.e. the people of Philadelphia) wanted me to remain their district attorney.?? Interestingly, Specter believed he lost some of the Jewish vote from people ?who worried that any shortcomings on my part would tar Jews at large.??
??Returning to his duties as D.A., Specter gained added notoriety by adopting ?an unorthodox method of defusing explosive tensions among rival teenage street gangs by hiring two warring gang leaders to work in a ?consulting capacity in his office.? He also helped restore death-penalty statutes in Pennsylvania and prosecuted innumerable cases involving consumer fraud. He was easily reelected for a second four?year term in 1969. Specter was fast becoming the darling of the Republican Party.
???In the early 1970s, smarting from the tangled web of Watergate, Republicans began losing elections in droves. Despite his personal popularity with the people of Philadelphia, Specter became a victim of this anti?Republican trend, and?was defeated for reelection in 1973. Following his defeat, he returned to private practice, quickly becoming one of Philadelphia's highest-paid attorneys. Over the next several years, he would run?unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate (1976), losing to Representative? H(enry) John ?Heinz III, and two years later, for? Pennsylvania Governor, losing the nomination to then U.S. Attorney (and future United States Attorney General) Richard Thornburgh.?
???In 1980, when Senator Richard S. Schweiker (1926- ) announced his retirement, Specter quickly jumped into the race. This time he emerged victorious, easily defeating former Pittsburgh Mayor Peter F. Flaherty (1924-2005). Specter ran on a traditional Republican platform of lower taxes and reduced federal regulation. Some found it remarkable that a man would leave a $ 250,000-a-year law practice to take a seat in the United States Senate, which in 1980 paid $ 60,662.50. Specter's explanation was characteristically straightforward: ?You can do a lot more in the U.S. Senate than you can in a Philadelphia skyscraper charging $ 300 an hour.?
??Once in the Senate, Specter devoted a tremendous amount of time seeing to the needs of his constituents. As a Jewish Republican elected from a largely non?Jewish, industrial state, he had but little choice. Ever the unorthodox, battling district attorney, Specter soon gained a reputation for being one of the Senate's most combative members. As chair of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Juvenile Justice, Specter held hearings on his ?big four? subjects: kids, sex, drugs, and violence. During the hearings, Specter paraded before the cameras such unusual witnesses as ?former porno star Linda Lovelace, the children's television host Captain Kangaroo and some of the jurors who had sat in judgment on John Hinckley, the man convicted of attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.? One Specter biographer noted, ?The media loved it, but some of Specter's colleagues in the Senate clearly did not. Many observers wondered just what Linda Lovelace, Captain Kangaroo and a bunch of former jurors had to do with juvenile justice.
???When Specter sought to hold hearings on the whereabouts of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi ?Angel of Death,? Judiciary Committee chair Strom Thurmond refused to offer official committee sanction. Specter persisted, hounding Thurmond until the aged North Carolinian finally relented. Specter held two hearings before Thurmond pulled the plug. When the Pennsylvania Senator could not get Thurmond?s permission for a third set of hearings, he defied Senate custom and held them anyway. Through actions such as these, Specter became one of the least?liked members of the Senate. Undaunted, he continued to hew to an independent line.
??During the Reagan years (1980-88), Specter achieved the dubious distinction of voting against the administration more often ? upwards of 40 percent ? than any other Senate Republican. As a fiscal conservative, he called for cuts in the defense budget and a radical overhaul of such politically sensitive subsidies as farm price supports for tobacco, sugar, and peanuts. As a social and foreign policy liberal, Specter voted against prayer in the public schools, aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, and cuts in funding for abortion. Although his voting record did not sit well with either the White House or his senate colleagues, the people of Pennsylvania found much to like; Specter was reelected for a second term in 1986, easily defeating 7 District Representative Robert William (Bob) Edgar.
??During his second six?year term, Specter remained in the public spotlight through positions on both the Judiciary Committee and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An intrepid interrogator, Specter's pointed questions during the Iran?Contra hearings led him to conclude that the American intelligence establishment needed a major overhaul. The?single piece of legislation to result from these hearings was a Specter proposal creating an independent CIA inspector general. The bill also provided for ?presidential disclosure of covert activities, jail sentences for officials who lie to congressional committees, and a division of the powers of the director of the CIA into two positions: one heading the CIA, the other acting as a presidential adviser.?
??It was from his position on the Judiciary Committee that Specter first came to the attention of a national audience. In 1987, he was one of the key players in the committee's hearings on President Reagan's nomination of conservative judge Robert H. Bork for a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Following several rounds of pointed, incisive questions, Specter, resisting tremendous pressure from both the White House and his Republican colleagues came out against the Bork nomination. In a statement to the press, Senator Specter explained, ?I reluctantly decided to vote against him because I had substantial doubts about what he would do with fundamental minority rights, about equal protection of the law, and freedom of speech.?? (In 2012, Bork serves as a legal advisor for presidential candidate Mitt Romney.)
?If the Bork hearings brought the Senator's name before the public, the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas made it a household word. During the hearings, Specter challenged Anita Hill, a University of Oklahoma Law School professor (and former student of, ironically, Robert Bork), about her alleged affair with the Supreme Court nominee. His hard?bitten questioning of the demure Professor caused a cloudburst of invective from some of the most prominent women in America. Notwithstanding his?liberal positions on women's issues, Specter became a pariah to?American feminists.? As a partial result, Specter's margin of victory in his 1992 reelection?was an anemic?49%-46% against an unknown, first-time candidate,?millionaire Lynn Yaekel, the Director of Women's Studies at Drexel University's College of Medicine.
??With the extreme rightward turn of the Republican Party in the post?Reagan/Bush years,?Specter once again went on the offensive. In 1994, he created the Big Tent Political Action Committee, based on his view that ?the ?Far Right? represents a danger to the [Republican] party and to America.? Outlining the Big Tent's philosophy, Specter wrote?
????We believe that the conscience of the individual, not the power of the state, should be paramount on questions such as a woman's right to choose, pray in schools, the teaching of creationism, and other issues recently imposed into the governmental arena. We reject litmus tests, intolerance, bigotry, anti-Semitism and extremism and reaffirm our Party's deep commitment to tolerance, civil rights and the equal protection of the law. . . . We are also working to eliminate the anti?choice plank from the 1996 Republican platform because this issue of conscience has done more to divide our party than to unite it.?
???In essence, this became a major plank in Specter's platform in his abortive 1995 run for the White House. Unable to find a sympathetic audience within the ranks of Republican regulars and frustrated by an inability to raise significant funds, Specter dropped out of the race before the first caucus or primary. Asked whether his being Jewish had anything to do with the negligible, even hostile, reception his candidacy has received, Specter said simply, ?No, not at all.?
???Specter?s 1998 race for reelection was as easy and lopsided as 1992 had been difficult and nerve-racking.? Specter defeated longtime state Representative William R. Lloyd by nearly 800,000 votes.? Within days of?reelection, Specter published an op-ed piece in the New York Times exhorting his Republican colleagues to reconsider their campaign to impeach President Clinton.? Rather than pursuing impeachment, Specter reasoned, the Senate should work out a deal with the President: encourage him to resign from office in exchange for keeping his pension, his freedom and his license to practice law.? Specter further argued that if the President refused to resign, he would thereby be liable to criminal prosecution once he left office.? Although Specter?s article was widely discussed in the media, the White House chose not to issue a response.
??In 2004, Specter barely survived a primary challenge from then-Representative Pat Toomey.? Specter?s margin of victory was a scant 17, 146 votes out of more than 1.4 million cast.? Toomey (1961- ), a representative from the Lehigh Valley received a significant portion of his funding from the conservative ?Club For Growth,? which advocated ?limited government, lower taxes, less government spending, free trade, and economic freedom.??The group also invented and popularized the term RINO ? a pejorative acronym for ?Republican in Name Only? ? of which Arlen Specter, they claimed,?was a prime example.? RINO or no, Specter had more than $ 15 million plus the backing ? and campaign appearances ? of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative Senator Rick Santorum. After narrowly defeating Toomey, Specter then went on to defeat Montgomery county-based Representative Joe Hoeffel (1950- ) by nearly 600,000 votes in the general election.? In cruising to his 53%-42% victory, Specter outspent Hoeffel $ 20.3 million to $ 4.5 million.? On April 15, 2009, Toomey announced that he would once again challenge Arlen Specter in the Republican primary.? Less than two weeks later, Specter announced his change of party affiliation.?
??In 2005, despite protests from many of his Republican colleagues who tried in vain to deny him the post, Arlen Specter became chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.?? At first, Specter ?warned? the White House ?not to nominate judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade,? the decision that legalized abortion.? At this point abortion foes protested his appointment, and then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist ?pointedly refrained from endorsing him.?? Then, the Bush White House weighed in on Specter?s behalf, along with all Judiciary Committee Republicans.? In the end, Specter issued a statement?which said,??I have not and would not use a litmus test to deny confirmation to pro-life nominees.?? Specter would then go on to?successfully marshal through two of George W. Bush?s Supreme Court nominees: conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito.?
??He has also brought a legalistic approach to foreign policy issues.? When Congress was debating military action in post-9/11 Iraq, Specter expressed doubts about ?whether Congress can delegate such authority to the president,? but nonetheless voted for the resolution.? In 2007, he called for President Bush to ?share? the decision-making power in Iraq, and ?respectfully suggested to the president that he is not the sole decider.?? He also supported engagement with Syria, and defended Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she went to Damascus in April 2007.? Later that year Specter himself went to Damascus along with Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy and ?offered to assist in negotiations between Syria and Israel.?
???Over many years, Arlen Specter dealt with serious medical issues: in January 1979, he was told he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), ?Lou Gerhig?s disease,? by ?a preeminent neurosurgeon.?? Months later it turned out to be untrue.? In June 1993, Specter began feeling ?slight pains running down the sides of my head and a tightness in my shirt collars.?? An MRI showed a ?tumor the size of a golf ball? embedded between his brain and skull.? The doctor told him it was malignant and that he had three to six weeks to live.? Specter took the MRI film to another doctor who told him it was ?unclear whether the tumor was benign or malignant.?? An operation was performed during which the surgeon ?used a power saw to cut a 2? by 2? incision into my skull.?? The doctor then removed the cut-out skull, removed the tumor, put the displaced portion of the skull back into its original position, and then sewed it up.? A post-surgical pathological examination on a frozen section of the tumor ? a meningioma ? showed that it was benign.
??Then, in 2005, Specter was diagnosed with stage IV-B Hodgkin?s lymphoma, for which he underwent two separate chemotherapy protocols; in 2005 and again in 2008.? Amazingly, despite losing hair, weight and energy, Specter did not miss a single session of the United States Senate.? In 2008 Specter wrote and published a book on the subject entitled Never Give In: Battling Cancer ? and Politicians in the Senate. As a result of his various medical issues, Specter, along with Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, guided the process of doubling the budget for the National Institutes of Health over five years from 1999 to 2004.? Understandably, Specter was a major backer of increased federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.? During the 2008 presidential election, Senator Specter criticized his fellow Republicans for ?not reflecting fellow Republican nominee John McCain?s support for such research? in the party platform.? For the majority of Republicans, the use of these excess embryonic stem cells was inconsistent with a ?pro-life? point of view.
??With the election of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and an overwhelmingly Democratic House and Senate, Arlen Specter?s lack of Republican orthodoxy became ?even more apparent.?? Specter voted for Eric Holder for Attorney General and against Timothy Geithner for Treasury Secretary.? He was but one of three Republicans ? along with Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snow ? to vote for the president?s $ 787 billion stimulus bill.? At the time of the vote Specter said, ?I believe that my duty is to follow my conscience and vote what I think is in the best interest of the country.? And the political risks will have to abide.?
?When Pennsylvania polls began showing Specter barely winning 30% of the vote in a hypothetical primary matchup with Pat Toomey, he began investigating what options he truly had.? After rejecting the idea of running as an independent, Specter ? the longest-serving senator in Pennsylvania history ? decided to switch parties and, after close to a half-century, return to the Democratic fold.? At first, it appeared that he would be permitted to maintain his Senate seniority, meaning that he would be number 2 on Judiciary, Appropriations and Veterans? Affairs.? However, the Senate Democratic Caucus refused to honor his seniority.? Ironically, he was consigned to the junior-most seat on the Judiciary Committee ? a panel he had once chaired.
?? Arlen Specter's 30-year senate career came to an end on May 18, 2010, when, despite?many major endorsements ? including Barack Obama ? and overwhelming name recognition,?he was defeated in the Democratic primary by two-term Representative Joe Sestak.? Sestak, the highest-ranking military?official ever elected to Congress (he was a Navy Admiral with a Harvard PhD)?won the primary by a 53.8%-46.2% margin.? In the November general election, Sestak was defeated by Representative Toomey by a margin of 51%-49%.?
?Following?Specter's death this past Sunday, President Obama ordered U.S. flags to be lowered to half-staff at?public and military bases in Washington D.C. and the rest of the country.? At the time of?his death,?one writer opined that Specter ? the longest-serving?senator in Pennsylvania's history ? ". . .?may have done more for the state than anyone else, with the possible exception of Benjamin Franklin.? Services for Senator Specter were held Har Zion Temple in Narbeth, a Philadelphia suburb.? Eulogizing his former?senate colleague, Vice President Joe Biden said, "I've never seen as much undaunted courage as Arlen had ? both physically and politically. He believed he could change the world, if he just worked hard enough at it . . ."?
Early in his senate career, Specter bristled when he heard North Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings refer to Ohioan Howard Metzenbaum as ?the Senator from B?nai Brith? during floor debate.? Specter was surprised that Metzenbaum did not comment.? Speaking on the record, Specter said that Hollings? comments were ?terribly out of line.? Then-Majority Leader Howard Baker asked Specter to join with Hollings and Metzenbaum in agreeing to delete the colloquy from the Congressional Record. As Specter later explained, ?Very reluctantly I agreed to strike the exchange, but only on the condition that the Congressional Record note there had been a deletion without any indication of what it was.??
??It was the act of a man who was both ?aggressive? and ?tenacious,? ?blunt? and ?one tough hombre.?
?2010, 2012 Kurt F. Stone
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