The LA Times editorial hits exactly the right note about the exceptionally bright, exceptionally decent Warren Christopher, who died on Friday night at 85.
I was just thinking again about the man when rereading parts of the Christopher Commission report a few weeks ago on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the beating of Rodney King. All these years later, I was struck by the no-punches-pulled clarity of that document. Admittedly, the report took a while to make its voice heard. But it was eventually heard, and the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles, are far better because of it.
Yet that report is just one way that Warren Christopher affected the LA landscape—and eventually the national and even international landscape—for the better.
Anyway, here’s how the Times’ obit opens:
The leaders of modern Los Angeles tend to come in types: There are those whose influence derives from their money, others from their position or their fame. Eli Broad and David Geffen, for example, have shaped the cultural landscape through the strategic use of their philanthropy. Tom Bradley and Richard Riordan re-imagined the city’s inclusiveness and safety from the mayor’s office. Cardinal Roger Mahony influenced events and leaders from the pulpit.
Then there was Warren M. Christopher. A working lawyer from a small town in Nebraska, Christopher was wealthy, to be sure, but not rich in the fashion of L.A.’s leading philanthropists. He never sought or held elective public office. Unlike Broad or Geffen, Riordan or Bradley, his name does not grace any major civic institution or public building.
And yet, the Los Angeles landscape is profoundly different for his life, which ended late Friday night.
(And, yes, my internet connection did just go back up a few minutes ago.)