Alan Nevas: A Friend’s Son Remembers

Douglass Davidoff writes:

I am in tears for our loss of Judge Alan Nevas. I did not know him well, and yet Alan has been a constant positive presence in my life for most of my 67 years, ever since my parents moved to Westport in 1959 when I was 2 years old.

My father, Jerry Davidoff (1926-2009), was 2 years older than Alan. From the moment my dad set up a law office on Church Lane in downtown Westport in 1959 he had a deep respect, admiration and collegial attitude about Alan Nevas.

Back during the 1960s there were only about 30 attorneys in Westport. They all knew each other. Dad talked about his colleagues often at the dinner table, so we learned about people like Ned Dimes, Steve Tate, Ed Capasse, Larry Weisman and Alan Nevas.

I think Alan and my father had a similar approach to the practice of law in Westport. They were also politically competitive. Alan was a Republican at a time when Republicans ran things in Westport, and Dad was a Democrat working to win elections whenever possible. They liked each other a lot, and I think they stayed out of each other‘s way in politics.

Alan Nevas

Dad ran for the Connecticut House of Representatives and lost. He later served on the Westport Board of Education and Representative Town Meeting. Alan won local elections. He served on the Board of Finance, and represented Westport in the Connecticut House of Representatives.

Since Dad has been dead for 16 years, I don’t think there’s any harm in reporting for posterity that he tried a couple of times to secure a state judgeship during the years that Democrats ran things at the State Capitol. Dad did not succeed in this dream — a disappointment.

But Alan succeeded in the same pursuit. He served his state and his nation as the US attorney for Connecticut, and then as a federal judge. Every single one of us is better off for Alan‘s contribution to jurisprudence in Connecticut and the nation.

That’s not me talking. That’s my father Jerry talking through me, to remember his friend.

Jerry Davidoff and his wife Denny.  (Photo/copyright Nancy Pierce)

For me, one episode stands out. About 7 years ago, when I began researching my family history on Ancestry.com, I found a news clipping from the Westport correspondent for the Bridgeport Post-Telegram providing a report on the spring 1969 Vietnam War protest in Westport. This was a day of events, when people gathered together to protest our government’s war in Southeast Asia.

I was a student at Long Lots Junior High School. Students at Staples High School secured permission from the principal and superintendent to march from Staples to the afternoon protest in downtown Westport, at the corner of State Street (Post Road East) and Main Street.

No such permission was granted to junior high school students. But there were hundreds of like-minded junior high school students, so just before the event the principals and the superintendent acquiesced and sanctioned marches to downtown by students from Long Lots, Coleytown and Bedford Junior Highs.

In splendid weather we converged on downtown, where many hundreds of adults also gathered. From the steps of the old YMCA (now Anthropologie), there were speakers arrayed against the war. A keynote address was given by a member of Congress, recruited to come to Westport to speak against the war.

A view from the steps of the YMCA (now Anthropologie) of the Vietnam protest downtown. Photo/Adrian Hlynka)

That night, in what became one of my strongest memories growing up in Westport, about 500 townspeople crowded into the sanctuary at The Unitarian Church in Westport for a candlelight vigil. The names of 500 Connecticut military war dead were read aloud.

After each small batch of names was read aloud in the darkened sanctuary, another row of townspeople in the pews was invited to light their candles. Slowly, the sanctuary became illuminated by candlelight. Paul Newman spoke, and we all know how rare it was for Paul Newman to speak publicly in Westport.

What I learned only recently from that newspaper clipping is that this day of townwide protest and prayer was the deep planning work of Alan Nevas and my father, along with a strong group of lawyers, physicians and clergy in the town.

They organized the program for the protest downtown. They organized the vigil that night. They were from the tight-knit group of local professional leaders in Westport — people like Drs. Jack Schiller and Paul Beres; clergy like the Revs. Ed Lane of the Unitarian Church, Ted Hoskins of the Saugatuck Congregational Church and Rabbi Byron T. Rubenstein of Temple Israel — and attorneys like Alan Nevas and my dad.

When I came across these names in the Bridgeport paper, none meant more to me than to see that Alan Nevas had collaborated with my dad on this effort.

Alan Nevas (Photo courtesy of WestportNow)

If he were alive today at age 99, my dad would be weeping for the loss of his friend, his admired colleague for 4 decades in the practice of law and service to clients and to justice in Westport and Connecticut, a man aligned with the opposite party but so closely aligned with my dad in core values and mutual respect for the law, and for the town and its citizens whom they both loved with so much heart.

Alan Nevas was a pillar of our community. As I said much earlier, I did not know him well but he was such a treasured friend and colleague for my dad that it is hard to describe what a strong presence Alan was nonetheless for me.

My prayers today and during services tomorrow are for the Nevas family, and for the cause of justice in Westport, in Connecticut, and in the federal courts of the United States, now and forever more.

Goodbye, Alan. Farewell.

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