Someone You Should Know

John Whitcomb, Senior Attorney

John W. Whitcomb is soft-spoken, with an understated demeanor that belies his passions for his work, his family and his consuming pursuits outside of the office. Since joining Equip for Equality as a Senior Attorney in January 2000, he has distinguished himself with major successes in areas of disability law involving employment and public transportation discrimination, deinstitutionalization, guardianship and custody matters - the latter two being a special niche.

John Whitcomb, EFE Senior Attorney

John grew up in Normal, Ill., the younger of two children. Intellectual excellence is a hallmark of his background. His father, a World War II veteran who saw action in Japan, was a gifted linguist who originally studied organic chemistry before switching to German and French. Although he never studied Japanese formally, he took over as translator when the official translator in his platoon was killed. Eventually, he became chairman of the foreign language department at Illinois State University and also taught at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.

John's mother worked at the Illinois State University Library in Normal as the head of interlibrary loans, a career she embarked on to help pay college tuition for her children. Originally from Middlebury, Vt., she met his father at Stanford University while she was working on her master's degree and he was getting his Ph.D. John's sister, Katharine, who is five years his senior, is a published poet. She has taught at Stanford and Gettysburg College and is currently on the faculty at Iowa State University.

A precocious student, John found an early affinity for Sherlock Holmes, first read to him by his mother. When he was 9, he began collecting Holmes memorabilia, which has mushroomed into a whopping 5,000 items. The astounding collection includes the early Holmes radio shows dating from 1932, 3,000 books, sculptures, paintings and hand-carved canes. The collection got a major boost from a member of a Sherlock Holmes group that met in Peoria (John was the only kid and attended conferences all around the country as part of a quiz team), who bequeathed some early radio shows to him.

John's zeal for the theater also had early roots. Each summer, the Illinois Shakespeare Festival played in his home town. The initial exposure flourished during his junior year at Oberlin College, which was spent in London, where he attended productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Later when he lived and worked in Vermont for three years, he saw all kinds of plays at Middlebury College - for $1 a ticket. He considers Chicago to be a Mecca for fine theater, especially the Chicago Shakespeare Theater to which he became a subscriber in 1990.

Armed with a B.A. in English and history from Oberlin and a J.D. from Tulane Law School, John set out to find a job that would reflect his core beliefs. Here he offers some insights about his education that set the scene for his career path:

"Oberlin was very political and I learned how to think there. We discussed how to solve problems involving poverty and civil rights, which is why I decided to go to law school. At Tulane, I learned how to fight for my beliefs in a very conservative environment, although the Dean of the Law School was one of the architects of Johnson's Great Society. Nobody thought like me. I was at constant odds with professors and classmates about what the world should look like. Our philosophies were polar opposites. My core belief is that everyone is entitled to equal opportunity under the law."

While at Tulane, John worked for a year at an environmental law clinic, where he represented a Vietnamese fisherman in a hazardous waste case and had his first experience in court. There he met up with an opposing attorney who said, "I don't need white trash from up North to handle our gook problems down here."

His experiences at the law clinic in New Orleans gave rise to the article "Environmental Ethics and Political Ethics Go Hand in Hand," written for the Citizen's Guide to Environmental Activism in Louisiana (1991). During the summers, John worked for legal aid groups in Ann Arbor, Mich., and in Chicago, and applied for a permanent job after graduation to legal aid groups all across the country, settling on the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAF) because of its national reputation in poverty law. He remained there from 1990-1997, leaving "because I felt hamstrung that I could no longer do systemic work." In 1996, Congress had eliminated the ability of legal service organizations to convert cases into class actions and the right to collect attorneys' fees because of welfare issues.

During his tenure at LAF, John was twice awarded that organization's prestigious Equal Justice Award, once for his outstanding individual effort on behalf of his clients, and the other time for his work in representing homeless children in a successful class action brought to ensure that a change in housing does not deny a child the right to an equal education in the public schools. Before coming to EFE in 2000, John's last career move was to a private law firm in Middlebury, Vt., which was the county seat and specialized in plaintiff environmental work. There he had the opportunity to do a lot of pro bono disability work representing individuals with mental illness and HIV on custody and guardianship issues, Social Security claims, housing issues and probate matters.

"I had a major break at this firm because, in Middlebury, there were 40 attorneys for the 7,000 residents," said John. "Since I was the new kid on the block, the judges appointed me to do the pro bono work, and I was the only one doing it. It offered me opportunities to do exciting disability work at the Court's request."

Although John was offered a partnership, he decided to return to Chicago because his new bride, Lish, also an attorney, was unhappy with her job in Vermont and wanted to return to legal services. So John joined EFE, and Lish went to work for LAF, where Wallace Winter, who had been John's co-counsel on several disability trials and appeals, was now the disability director. "It's ironic," says John, "that Lish landed literally in the office I had occupied."

About working at EFE, John says, "Here I can do class action, impact litigation and collect attorneys' fees. The case selection from the impoverished disability population throughout Illinois involves all areas of the law, and anyone working here needs to know it all. The learning curve at first was steep."

But according to Legal Advocacy Director Barry Taylor, "Hiring John was like getting two attorneys. He works long hours, handles a large caseload and has achieved many significant victories for our clients. He was a key member of the litigation team in our case against the CTA and took the lead in converting the case into a class action.

"His expertise in guardianship matters makes him sought after to train lawyers, medical and social work personnel and individuals on the subject, including how to prepare an appropriate and successful defense to a guardianship petition. We are extremely fortunate to have John at EFE."

John's consuming legal interest at present is to energetically work toward moving people with disabilities out of state-operated institutions and integrating them into the community by using the Supreme Court's decision in Olmstead (which held that unnecessary segregation of individuals with disabilities in institutions may constitute discrimination based on disability and that the ADA may require states to provide community-based services rather than institutional placements for individuals with disabilities).

John and Lish recently moved to Evanston into a house built in 1850 with additions from every time period to the present. John says, "It is arguably the oldest on the street and an endless source of projects." Their most unbelievable project, however, is 2-year-old son, Joe, who is "huge and precocious." They both enjoy folk music and frequently attend house concerts in Andersonville featuring national artists. John runs at midnight "when all is settled down" to train for the upcoming Chicago Marathon. =

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