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Pete McCloskey, war hero, former congressman, environmental warrior and founder of a Palo Alto law firm, died at his home in Winters, California, on Wednesday, May 8. He was 96.
McCloskey represented parts of the Peninsula and Silicon Valley in the U.S. House of Representatives for 15 years before running unsuccessfully for president against Richard Nixon in 1972 on an anti-Vietnam War platform. He was known for his pioneering work in environmental law, including co-authoring the 1973 Endangered Species Act and co-chairing the first Earth Day in 1970.
“He was a key sponsor of the Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act. All those early federal laws that protect our planet,” recalled Lennie Roberts, legislative advocate for Palo Alto-based environmental protection nonprofit Green Foothills.
He died of heart and kidney failure at his home, according to his wife Helen Hooper McCloskey, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
McCloskey was born in Loma Linda, attended Occidental College and later graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School. He then served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War, earning both the Navy Cross and Silver Star, as well as two Purple Hearts. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1945 to 1947.
Roberts said she was moved by McCloskey’s lifetime of service. She said she was perhaps most moved by his return to Korea after the war to reconcile with former combatants. And she marveled at all he accomplished in one lifetime.
“I changed my political party and walked a precinct for him in Palo Alto when he first ran for Congress,” she recalled on Wednesday.
Prior to his time in Congress, McCloskey served as deputy district attorney for Alameda County and practiced law in Palo Alto, co-founding the firm McCloskey, Wilson & Mosher, which is now Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. During his legal career, McCloskey tried more than 100 cases in front of juries. He was also a lecturer at the law schools of both Stanford and Santa Clara universities.
McCloskey became a partner in the Peninsula law firm of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy in 2004, but attorney Joe Cotchett fondly recalls decades of friendship and legal work together long before that formal partnership.
“We’ve been together for 45 years or more,” Cotchett said on Thursday, May 9. “When he was in Congress he had a small little law office in Woodside and we would do business together. The man was one of my closest and dearest friends. He was one of the most passionate people about other people and the environment you have ever met. He would speak for anyone who had no voice.”
Cotchett recalls a time about a decade ago when his firm entertained lawyers and judges from China in its Burlingame office. He said the visitors were so tired they were on the verge of falling asleep after their journey. Until, that is, McCloskey spoke to them and harkened back to China’s involvement on the opposite side of McCloskey’s Marines during the Korean War.
“I introduced Pete and here’s what he said to them, ‘I am so proud of you. And I am so proud of your fathers. Tell them they were the toughest warriors I ever knew.’”
“Every one of them wanted a photo with Pete afterward,” Cotchett remembered.
McCloskey was first elected to Congress in 1967. Many longtime Peninsula residents well remember those heady days.
“He asked me if I would do Palo Alto for him,” recalled Jeanne Ware. “By that he meant serve as precinct chairman for two of his elections. I found all the people to walk the district for him. Politicking is so different now.”
Ware recalls an interesting and intelligent cadre of McCloskey supporters in those days.
“All those people who worked for Pete were highly intelligent — and humorous — people,” she remembered. She said her late husband Leonard Ware might have had political aspirations at one time — until he realized how much energy it took to run a campaign the way McCloskey ran his.
“He had more energy than anyone,” Ware said.
McCloskey served in Congress until 1983 and had one unsuccessful bid for Senate and president each.
A vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, McCloskey was the first member of Congress to call for President Richard Nixon’s impeachment following Watergate and visited Cambodia in 1975 to witness the effects of U.S. military action.
After leaving Congress, he practiced law in Redwood City while living in Woodside and Portola Valley and continued lecturing at local universities.
He later settled in rural Yolo County on his farm and continued his legal and public service, including work as a trustee for the Monterey Institute of International Studies, according to The New York Times.
“When you look at the arc of what his life has been and for him to have a moral compass that allowed him to buck the system and still keep friends,” Roberts said. “You want to hear a wonderful story? Pete was in his 80s and he goes over to Martin’s Beach (on the San Mateo County coast, where there is an ongoing battle over beach access) and he gets out of the car and the gate is closed and the sheriff is there. Pete climbs over the gate and says to the deputies, ‘Are you gonna arrest me?’”
They did not. Instead, McCloskey was able to capture the attention of the public once more after a lifetime of standing up for what he thought was right.
“He had a great sense of fun as well as a seriousness about principles and policy,” Roberts said. “If all of us could just take a little bit of Pete McCloskey and make something good happen that would be wonderful.”
Pete is survived by his wife Helen, four children — Nancy, Peter, John, and Kathleen McCloskey — and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and nieces and nephews.
Bay City News Service contributed to this report.
