Obituary
Louis Schwartz, 85
One of the most active attorneys in the founding days of public television stations, Louis Schwartz, died of vascular disease March 31 [2004] at a nursing home in Bethesda, Md. He was 85.
Schwartz was retired as a partner in Schwartz, Woods & Miller, a Washington-based firm that devotes a large part of its practice to public broadcasting. He and colleague Robert Woods helped many stations acquire licenses in the 1960s, when they worked at the firm of Krieger & Jorgensen, and since 1970, when they founded their own firm. They later added Lawrence Miller as a partner.
The firm represented the National Association of Educational Broadcasters and the Eastern Educational Television Network, two major organizations in the early days of public TV. Schwartz helped EEN leader John Porter expand it into the national syndicator now known as American Public Television.
"He had a way of asking what you wanted the outcome to be," when a client took a problem to him, recalls Rick Breitenfeld, founding head of Maryland PTV. "More often than not, he'd say, 'I can defend that.' And he did."
Three decades ago, Schwartz was fighting the indecency charges involving the same variant of the "f" word now troubling NBC. He defended Philadelphia's WHYY, which broadcast the word in an interview with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, Miller remembers. Schwartz told the FCC that the word was only "an adjectival intensive" but he lost anyway. WHYY was fined $100.
Schwartz also helped stations earn underwriting when he wrote memos defining "enhanced underwriting" credits that were attractive to underwriters without violating FCC principles, Woods recalls.
The lawyer may be remembered most fondly, however, as a lawyer who could enliven a legal presentation with comedy and music, using his own Columbo-like persona and sometimes casting Woods as the straight guy.
"He was always in a good humor — always a joke, always a snatch of a song," says Miller.
Upon founding their firm, Schwartz and Woods decided to make it less formal than most firms and to keep work from taking their nights and weekends, Woods said.
Outside of work, Schwartz participated in movements to allow African-Americans into the Glen Echo amusement park in suburban Maryland and create the Bannockburn housing cooperative nearby.
Born and educated in New York City, he worked with Woods at the National Labor Relations Board until they went into communications law at Krieger & Jorgensen.
He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Gloria, three sons and eight grandchildren.
Web page posted Sept. 23, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
