The title of this book is taken from St. Matthew’s Gospel, “The Comfortable Words,” a portion of the Episcopal liturgy when I was a  choirboy (later acolyte) in the ’40s. The men’s choir sat, stood, or kneeled across from the boys and when these words were read by the priest, my father and I would always look at one another. In his eyes, he said to me: “This is why we are here in this church. This is why we are here on this Earth.”

The book is a memoir of my life, professional and personal: my birth in Boston where my forbears have lived and led since the Civil War’s conclusion, covering (1) my exposure to segregation and discrimination as a child and young man; (2) the inspiration provided by parents and forbears and my tardy recognition that my father was and is the greatest man I have ever met; (3) my search for discovery of my great grandfather—how I followed or tracked what he had written in 1862-65 to North Carolina and the northeast and to the areas in Europe in which he pursued Confederate vessels.

This memoir focuses upon the fact that both McCarthyism (my father worked at Fort Monmouth, the object of investigation) and Brown v Board of Education drew me to the law and away from an initial interest in the Episcopal priesthood; my interest in labor law and good fortune in having a law professor who recommended me for my first job with the United Auto Workers in Detroit; the chance to study comparative labor law at the London School of Economics and my good fortune during that year in meeting the woman who became my wife and mother of our 3 sons; my opportunity to become a labor arbitrator in New York  and my plunge into courtroom battles on job bias, obtaining the largest per capita judgment in its time in Stamps v Detroit Edison after a decade of litigation.