Letters
Remembering Daniel R. Tuchscherer Jr.
Until the last year or two, I did not know Dan Tuchscherer well. Our
work with the Equal Justice Coalition changed that.
Dan got me involved with John Skilton's Equal Access to Justice Task
Force, which led to forming the Equal Justice Coalition Inc. Dan and I
shared many rides to Milwaukee, Madison, and points between, for
meetings of the Coalition's Board of Directors. During those rides, Dan
discussed his wife and children, of whom he was justly proud. He spoke
of how good it was that, in recent years, he had been able to spend some
happy days hunting and fishing with his father. Dan was a great
outdoorsman, and spending that time with his dad was a great joy to him.
He spoke of visits to people and places in Massachusetts, some of whom
were familiar to me. Most of all, Dan spoke of the legal problems of
poor people in Wisconsin, and what we could do to help them deal with
the issues facing them.
Dan died unexpectedly while working in his yard on June 14. As I look
back on my friend, the memory that I will cherish is that of a man of
great compassion and regard for people of all walks of life, and a man
whose dedicated advocacy on behalf of disadvantaged people made better
our northeastern Wisconsin region and our state.
For the past eight years, Dan had been the executive director of
Legal Services of Northeast Wisconsin Inc. Previously he had been in
private practice in Pittsfield, Mass., and had served as the managing
attorney for Western Massachusetts Legal Services Inc. and as the
executive director of the Berkshire County Regional Housing Authority.
His work on volunteer boards included the United Way of Brown County,
the Homeless Task Force in Pittsfield, Mass., and the Berkshire County
Area Agency on Aging.
Dan's primary volunteer energies, in the last several years, were
focused on the Equal Justice Coalition (EJC), which was organized to
design a more permanent support base for providing legal services to the
poor of Wisconsin. In recognition of that involvement, Dan's family has
suggested that donations in lieu of flowers could be sent by friends and
family to the Equal Justice Coalition, 3505 N. 124th St., Brookfield, WI
53005. How fitting it would be if all State Bar members who have ever
thought about supporting the Equal Justice Coalition would now act in
Dan's memory.
Bert Liebmann, Green Bay
On June 14, 1998, Dan Tuchscherer unexpectedly passed away. Dan had
served as the executive director of Northeastern Wisconsin Legal
Services from 1990 to his death. Dan also was an active member of the
State Bar, serving, for example, on the Bar's Commission on the Delivery
of Legal Services. Most recently, Dan served as a vital member of the
Equal Justice Coalition Board of Directors, the entity formed as a
result of the Commission's recommendation that the Bar find a way to
provide long-term, adequate funding for our legal service agencies that
provide legal services to the poor.
Dan's loss is keenly felt on a personal level by his friends and
colleagues. But the timing of his death is particularly poignant givin
his life-long commitment to the delivery of legal services for the
poor.
Our legal services community is literally fighting for its life.
Every year there is a battle in Congress just to maintain reduced
funding to the Legal Services Corporation, the federal agency that
provides more than half of the funding to our four Wisconsin legal
services firms (of which Dan's agency is one). In 1994 available funds
were reduced by a third of our legal services lawyers in this state.
Two days after Dan's death, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4
decision, using a "property rights" (Fifth Amendment) rationale, put
into question the constitutional underpinnings of IOLTA (interest on
lawyers trust accounts), the source of more than $1 million in funds
that are distributed by WisTAF (Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation) to
Wisconsin providers of legal services to the poor.
Dan, of course, was leading the charge to find alternative sources of
funding, but we did not assume that the IOLTA base also was in
jeopardy.
What is at risk here is our in-place legal services delivery system.
Dan's untimely death underscores the potential mortality of this
system.
The Equal Justice Coalition hopes to keep alive both Dan's memory and
the system he so well served. But we need your help.
John S. Skilton, President
Equal Justice Coaltion
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C. Michael Hausman and James E. Collis
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Wisconsin Lawyer
