The ANNOTICO Report

Pellegrino Rodino Jr. was born in a tenement in the Little Italy section of
Newark on June 7, 1909. At some point his name was anglicized and enlarged
into Peter Wallace Rodino. His father, an Italian immigrant
toolmaker/carpenter came to America from Italy as a 16-year-old. His mother
died when he was 4.

The younger Rodino received a bachelor's degree from the University of
Newark and was a 1937 graduate of what became Rutgers University law
school.As an aspiring writer and poet, he would describe his fiercely
ethnic neighborhood in an unpublished novel called "Drift Street."

Mr. Rodino, who learned oratory by reading Shakespeare with a mouth stuffed
with marbles and stones, taught public speaking and citizenship classes in
Newark before taking up the practice of law in the late 1930s.

He served in the Army in North Africa and Italy during World War II and was
one of the first enlisted men to receive a battlefield commission as an
officer. He was discharged as a captain in 1946, having been awarded the
Bronze Star.

Mr. Rodino, was a Democratic Congressman who represented a Newark district
from 1949 to 1989.. A dapper man with a slow and deliberate speaking style,
he was seen as a calm and nonpartisan presence in one of the country's most
politically charged episodes.

Rodino was one of the primary sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1966. In
the mid-1960s, he helped lead an effort to end immigration quotas and enact
fair-housing standards. He wrote the 1982 extension to the Voting Rights
Act. His best-known piece of legislation was the bill that had made
Columbus Day a national holiday.

Obituaries below from the Washington Post and New York Times.

Washington Post
By Adam Bernstein
Staff Writer
Sunday, May 8, 2005

Peter W. Rodino Jr., 95, the Democratic New Jersey congressman and House
Judiciary Committee chairman who rose from relative obscurity to national
prominence while presiding over articles of impeachment that led to the
resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, died May 7 of congestive
heart failure at his home in West Orange, N.J.

Mr. Rodino, who represented a Newark district from 1949 to 1989, was among
those whose reputations were enhanced through television coverage of the
impeachment hearings. A dapper man with a slow and deliberate speaking
style, he was seen as a calm and nonpartisan presence in one of the
country's most politically charged episodes.

In 1972, several men linked to the Nixon White House had broken into the
Watergate office complex, where the Democratic National Committee had
offices. In February 1974, the House of Representatives voted to allow the
Judiciary Committee to review grounds for impeachment of the president and
gave the committee unlimited subpoena power -- which it used to obtain Oval
Office tapes of Nixon's conversations with aides.

Mr. Rodino spoke before the House that February: "Whatever the result,
whatever we learn or conclude, let us now proceed with such care and
decency and thoroughness and honor that the vast majority of American
people, and their children after them, will say: 'That was the right
course. There was no other way.' "

In July 1974, the Judiciary Committee approved three articles of
impeachment against Nixon. The president resigned in August, before the
full House voted whether to approve the articles for a Senate trial.

Although Mr. Rodino voted for impeachment, the outcry against him was much
more muted than it might have been. He was known for letting all sides
contribute to the debate but made it clear he did not want speeches.

Mr. Rodino considered himself a reluctant overseer. "People thought we
would impeach Richard Nixon," he said years later. "That was the furthest
thing from my mind. I was hopeful, I was prayerful that we wouldn't, that
what we would find out was exculpatory."

He added that after he voted for the third article of impeachment, he went
to a back room, called his wife and cried. "And I said, 'I hope we've done
the right thing.' "

He was a largely untested figure on the national scene when he became
Judiciary Committee chairman a year before the impeachment hearings began.
He considered it a fluke that he got the chairmanship, which came after the
surprise election defeat in 1972 of Emanuel Celler (N.Y.), who seldom had
ceded authority in two decades as chairman.

"If fate had been looking for one of the powerhouses of Congress, it
wouldn't have picked me," Mr. Rodino said.

The hearings made him all but a household name. His new celebrity helped
him fight attempts in his district to unseat him. In the 1980s, he used his
Judiciary Committee seniority to contest what he viewed as efforts by the
Ronald Reagan administration to limit the reach of civil rights laws as
well as movements to ban abortion, allow school prayer and end school
busing.

Throughout the 1980s, he faced increasing pressure to retire and yield
power to the rising black majority in his district. He decided not to seek
reelection in 1988 and was succeeded by Newark city councilman Donald M.
Payne (D), who became the state's first African American representative.

Born June 7, 1909, Peter Wallace Rodino Jr. was a Newark native whose
father was an Italian immigrant toolmaker. The younger Rodino received a
bachelor's degree from the University of Newark and was a 1937 graduate of
what became Rutgers University law school.

Mr. Rodino, who learned oratory by reading Shakespeare with a mouth stuffed
with marbles and stones, taught public speaking and citizenship classes in
Newark before taking up the practice of law in the late 1930s.

He served in the Army in North Africa and Italy during World War II and was
one of the first enlisted men to receive a battlefield commission as an
officer. He was discharged as a captain in 1946, having been awarded the
Bronze Star.

In 1946, he ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Fred A. Hartley Jr.
(R-N.J.), co-author of the famed labor legislation called the Taft-Hartley
Act of 1946. Mr. Rodino won the seat two years later, when Hartley decided
not to run again.

Over the years, Mr. Rodino made his name through his strong constituent
services policy and his work on veterans affairs and civil rights issues.

He supported landmark civil rights legislation in 1957 and was one of the
primary sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1966. In the mid-1960s, he
helped lead an effort to end immigration quotas and enact fair-housing
standards. He wrote the 1982 extension to the Voting Rights Act.

He also took part in the House select committee hearings investigating the
Iran-contra matter, in which U.S. officials covertly sold arms to Iran to
win the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East and used some of the
profits to support Nicaraguan rebels known as the contras.

Mr. Rodino also played significant roles in making Columbus Day and the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday national holidays.

Late in his legislative career, he helped lead impeachment proceedings
against two U.S. District Court judges, Harry E. Claiborne of Nevada in
1986 and Alcee L. Hastings of Florida in 1988. Hastings later was elected
to the House of Representatives.

After leaving Congress, Mr. Rodino taught at Seton Hall University law
school, which houses his papers and memorabilia, including the desk and
gavel he used during the Watergate hearings. During the impeachment of
President Bill Clinton in 1999, Mr. Rodino delivered a series of
well-attended lectures at the law school.

"There was not a single day of his professional life," said Seton Hall law
school dean Patrick E. Hobbs, "when he didn't carry a copy of the
Constitution in his pocket."

His first wife, Marianna Stango Rodino, whom he married in 1941, died in
1980.

Survivors include his second wife, Joy Rodino, whom he married in 1989, of
West Orange; two children, Margaret Stanziale of West Orange and Peter
Rodino III of Naples, Fla.; three granddaughters; and two
great-granddaughters.

Staff writer Matt Schudel contributed to this report.

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New York Times
By Michael T. Kaufman
May 8, 2005

Peter W. Rodino Jr., an obscure congressman from the streets of Newark who
impressed the nation by the dignity, fairness and firmness he showed as
chairman of the impeachment hearings that induced Richard M. Nixon to
resign as president, died yesterday at his home in West Orange, N.J.. He
was 95.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said Christine Bland, a spokeswoman
for Seton Hall University School of Law, where he was a professor emeritus
and continued to lecture until February.

To his colleagues on Capitol Hill, Mr. Rodino was a symbol of possibility -
a reminder that events can conspire to choose one United States
representative out of 435 and lift him to glory. To the end of his life,
Mr. Rodino wondered, "Why me?"

On Oct. 20, 1973 - 16 months and three days after five men with ties to the
White House were arrested for breaking into the Democratic Party
headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington - President Nixon had
Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal,
fired after Mr. Cox had subpoenaed secret presidential tapes.

In what became known as "the Saturday Night Massacre," the president
ordered Elliot L. Richardson, his attorney general, to fire Mr. Cox, but
Mr. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the instruction. When William
D. Ruckelshaus, who was Mr. Richardson's deputy at the Justice Department,
was given the same command, he, too, resigned.

Robert H. Bork was then named acting attorney general, and he carried out
the president's wishes.

Mr. Rodino, a 64-year-old representative from New Jersey with a voice like
Gene Kelly's, had been chairman of the House Judiciary Committee for only
nine months. For 26 years, he had been a stalwart of the Essex County
Democratic organization, an unassuming congressman who had quietly won 13
consecutive elections, thriving in a constituency in Newark that had gone
from being an Italian and Portuguese enclave to one in which black
residents had gained the balance of power.

He had compiled a liberal voting record, and pushed hard for civil rights
and immigration reform. But he was hardly known outside his district, and
his elevation as chairman had resulted not from merit but from
congressional seniority rules. His best-known piece of legislation was the
bill that had made Columbus Day a national holiday.

When Congress reconvened after the Veterans Day weekend that followed the
"massacre," the word "impeachment" was being uttered with the utmost
seriousness.

In the fall of 1973, the country was sharply divided over President Nixon's
role in the scandals. It was by no means certain that anyone in Washington
could steer an impeachment inquiry safely past the hazards of partisan
politics. Grave doubts were raised over Mr. Rodino's qualifications, even
within his own party.

Carl Albert, the Democratic speaker of the House, suggested that instead of
Mr. Rodino's Judiciary Committee, the House should form a select,
high-powered committee of prominent members to take up the impeachment
inquiry.

Mr. Rodino flatly opposed that idea, and Thomas P. O'Neill, the Democratic
majority leader, gave him his support, though he, too, was not free of
doubt.

For his part, Mr. Rodino had anxieties of his own. "My God," he blurted out
before the hearings began, "I haven't even questioned anyone on direct
examination in 30 years." He acknowledged that "I lie awake at nights," and
he spoke repeatedly of his "awesome responsibility."

But he never backed down, and when Mr. O'Neill tried to pressure him into
moving more quickly at the start, Mr. Rodino held firm.

As the country was soon to learn, Mr. Rodino's way meant great patience,
caution, enormous energy, and fairness above all. In his first major
decision he chose as the committee's special counsel John Doar, the former
civil rights troubleshooter for the Justice Department who 10 years earlier
had nudged Gov. George Wallace out of a schoolhouse door where he had been
blocking the enrollment of black students in Alabama.

They formed a powerful team: Mr. Rodino, a short, streetwise Democrat, a
child of immigrants who had gone to law school at night, and Mr. Doar, a
rangy, laconic Republican from Wisconsin who had gone to Princeton and
served two presidents, Eisenhower and Kennedy. They soon hired 105 staff
members, among them a 26-year-old lawyer named Hillary Rodham.

Mr. Rodino set a brutal tempo, rising at 6:30 in the morning and working
until 2 in the morning. By February, exhaustion forced him into Bethesda
Naval Hospital for six days.

He pored over the already enormous Watergate record. Three times over he
read a history of the impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson, and he
studied the writings of Edmund Burke, the 18th-century English conservative
who had urged that any process of impeachment should rest "not upon the
niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid
principles of state morality."

On May 9, 1974, when the hearings began, he was ready. Including the
chairman, there were 21 Democrats and 17 Republicans on the committee. From
the beginning, Mr. Rodino recalled, he had seen his role as teacher,
negotiator, leader and symbol. He urged the members to refrain from
grandstanding, but only rarely did he gavel anyone into silence.

"I know we're sometimes weak-kneed, and sometimes political," he said of
the committee. "But I really believe this is an instance when we can
demonstrate that the system does work."

On July 24, as the nation gathered around television sets to watch the
committee's final deliberations, the critical question was whether enough
Republican members would favor impeachment to parry the White House's
charges of partisanship.

The first article of impeachment charged President Nixon with forms of
obstructing justice by including such acts as making false statements,
withholding evidence, condoning the counseling of witnesses, approving
payments to witnesses, and trying to misuse the Central Intelligence
Agency. It was passed by a bipartisan vote of 27 to 11, with six
Republicans favoring impeachment.

A second article, recommending impeachment for abuse of power, specified
such charges as attempting to initiate tax audits for political purposes,
ordering and misusing secret wiretaps, and permitting the operation of a
White House unit engaged in covert and unlawful activities. It was approved
by a bipartisan vote of 28 to 10, with seven Republicans joining in the
majority.

A third article, charging that the president had sought to impede due
process by refusing to comply with subpoenas from the committee that sought
tapes of White House conversations, was approved, but only on party lines.
Two other articles, one charging the president with usurping the war powers
of Congress by secretly bombing Cambodia, and the other questioning his
claims of tax deductions and compensation for maintenance of his private
estates, were both defeated by 26-12 margins. Mr. Rodino voted yes on all
but the article involving tax and expense claims.

Three days after the voting ended, on Aug. 5, President Nixon admitted that
more than two years earlier, on June 17, 1972, he had ordered a halt in an
F.B.I. investigation of the break-in of Democratic Party headquarters at
the Watergate and that he had kept this secret from investigating bodies,
his own counsel and the public. Though he said these facts did not justify
the extreme step of impeachment, the disclosure led the 10 Republican
members of Mr. Rodino's committee who had voted against the first three
recommendations for impeachment to announce that they would reverse
themselves, in effect making the decision to move toward impeachment
unanimous.

After being advised of this, President Nixon, on the evening of Aug 8,
1974, told a television audience of some 130 million people that he was
resigning effective the next day.

"It has been an ordeal - for President Nixon and for all our people," Mr.
Rodino said in a statement. "I know it was necessary. I believe our laws
and our system will be stronger for it. I hope we will all be better for
it. These past months have been the most solemn of our lives."

In the weeks that followed, the nation found a folk hero in Mr. Rodino.
"He's enhanced the stature of Congress when we were at a low ebb," Mr.
O'Neill said. "It's magnificent how he has risen to the challenge." As a
result of Mr. Nixon's resignation, the House's inquiry was ended after 10
months. Later in August, Mr. Rodino's committee issued its final
impeachment report, providing the official record on which Mr. Nixon, had
he not resigned, would have been put on trial in the Senate. The report was
accepted, 412 to 3, by the House, which commended the committee's work.

Mr. Rodino was to head the committee for 12 more years, until he retired
from Congress in 1988.

Pellegrino Rodino Jr. was born in a tenement in the Little Italy section of
Newark on June 7, 1909. At some point his name was anglicized and enlarged
into Peter Wallace Rodino. His father was a carpenter who came to America
from Italy as a 16-year-old. His mother died when he was 4. As an aspiring
writer and poet, he would describe his fiercely ethnic neighborhood in an
unpublished novel called "Drift Street."

As a child he would go to the park to practice oratory with pebbles in his
mouth, like Demosthenes, in an effort to overturn the effects of diphtheria
that left him with a raspy voice.

He went to Barringer High School and the University of Newark, which later
became part of Rutgers, and then studied at night at the Newark Law School
to become a lawyer. He married Marianna Stango, whom he had known in high
school.

Mr. Rodino joined a law firm in Newark and ran unsuccessfully for the New
Jersey Assembly in 1940. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the
Army and served in North Africa and Italy, where he received a battlefield
promotion to captain and was awarded the Bronze Star.

As a returning war hero in 1946, he ran for Congress in the 10th District
but lost to the powerful Republican incumbent, Fred Hartley Jr. But the
ethnic mix of the district was changing, with more Italian-Americans. In
1948, Mr. Rodino won and began his 40-year career in the House.

Mr. Rodino was a prime sponsor and floor manager of the Civil Rights Act of
1966 and wrote sections of its Fair Employment Practices Amendment. As
chairman of the judiciary committee, he wrote the Voting Rights Extension
Act of 1982. In 1988, Mr. Rodino announced that he would not seek a 21st
term.

After he retired, he became a professor at Seton Hall's law school, where a
chair and a library were endowed in his name.

Mr. Rodino, whose first wife died, is survived by his second wife, the
former Joy Judelson; two children, Margaret Stanziale and Peter W. Rodino
III; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Mr. Rodino saw Richard Nixon only once after Watergate. He was flying from
Newark to Washington and was told that the seat he customarily reserved,
2B, was occupied. When he boarded the plane, he noticed that the former
president was in it. "I didn't say a word to him, but I figured it was
fair." Mr. Rodino said. "I mean, I had taken his seat, so he took mine."

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