ACLU of Kentucky

The ACLU of Kentucky would like to express our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Carl Wedekind, who passed away this morning, July 2, 2011 at the age of 85.

A memorial service for Carl Wedekind will take place on Thursday, July 7 at 2:00pm at the First Unitarian Church, 809 South Fourth Street, Louisville, Kentucky.

Carl’s contributions to the ACLU of Kentucky, and indeed to our wider community, were voluminous.  He was a vigilant advocate for abolishing the death penalty and a defender of civil liberties on all fronts.

At the ACLU, he served in numerous leadership roles including Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, Chair of the Finance Committee, and National Board Representative.  In 2010, he received the Thomas L. Hogan Award – our highest honor – to recognize his contributions to the advancement and preservation of civil liberties.

On that occasion, we asked several peers to share with us a few stories about Carl.  Some of those thoughts are included below.

 Rest in Peace Carl, we are eternally grateful to have known you.

 Many of you have known the roles — leader, mentor, advocate, sage — for which Carl so richly deserves this award.  But I had the rare pleasure of practicing law with Carl, years after he left active practice, in what I think was his last case.  It was 1997, the electrocution of Harold McQueen.  Our affiliate filed state and federal court challenges to that method of execution.  Day after day, I got to watch Carl brush off the rust as we planned strategy, produced pleadings and briefs, and researched and debated complex legal points.  And I saw him experience the emotional extremes familiar to litigators, as we won, then lost on appeal, an injunction blocking the execution.  Carl maintained his spirits, and helped lift ours, that weekend in July, as we churned out (what we knew would be futile) briefs to the full appeals court and U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to block the Monday night execution.    We all benefitted from Carl’s calm maturity and eloquent passion as we waited, unable to do other work, for the painful phone calls from those courts late Monday.  Tom Hogan would be proud of Carl; I sure am.

David Friedman

I didn't know Carl when he had his first tour of duty with the ACLU. By the time he came back, I was off the Board. So it took me some time to get to know him. It was my friend Don Stern who first brought Carl to my attention. Donny has an eye for good people and he let me know this is someone of value; someone I should get to know.

Carl is a leader in the finest sense of the word. He uses his legal and management skills to get things done. And he doesn’t let his ego or his personal agenda get in his way.

He has his interests, such as abolishing capital punishment in Kentucky, but he understands that the ACLU must address many civil liberties issues. He refuses to pull the organization away from its broad mandate. He is far from being a one-trick pony.

To extend the equestrian metaphor, Carl is more like a workhorse. And he expects his compatriots to be the same.

He's just as comfortable talking about financial management as he is talking about the death penalty and First Amendment issues.

In a very true sense, Carl is a man for all seasons and I’m very happy that he is a man for all of our seasons.

Bob Sachs

In 1983, while working as the ACLU Director, I created the KCADP with the help of a Kent School student, Carl Enoch.  We had to raise all of the money to create it and to fund the newsletter that went to formal KCADP membership. The field had been completely empty with the exception of the KY state attorney's office;  KCADP gathered all of those opposed to capital punishment together for the first time in KY's history. As the creator of this essential organization I was and am thrilled that Carl Wedekind stepped up to maintain it and keep it going to the present day. Carl kept KCADP on life support until quite recently when the presidency passed on to another. Without Carl's time, energy and financial support, KCADP would have disappeared, and I am personally very grateful to him for supporting what I think is a crucial organization in the anti- death penalty movement. Capital punishment is the ultimate violation of civil liberties: thank you, Carl.

Suzy Post

I could write volumes about Carl -- he renewed his involvement with the ACLU in the early 1990s and was Chair during most of my tenure as Executive Director (1992-1999).  At a time when we had extraordinarily limited resources, Carl was the driving force behind the first Bill of Rights dinner, the 40th anniversary commemoration, including the book of essays/remembrances, resuscitation of the Hogan award, and building a fundraising program that laid the foundation for the incredible growth of the last 10 years, just to mention a few of his accomplishments from that period.  It was the moral outrage that Carl felt over the execution of Harold McQueen in 1997 that focused his attention on abolition, and ultimately led to all the wonderful work he has done on death penalty issues.  During the years that I worked with Carl, he was always warm and gracious -- but also tireless, unrelenting and hard-headed, and that's the way we got things done.  It was an incredible privilege to work with Carl.  He has been, and continues to be, a major figure in the history of the ACLU of Kentucky.  Congratulations, Carl!

Everett Hoffman

What a lovely way to recognize Carl's great commitment to the principles of the ACLU.  Carl has been undaunting in his work to abolish the death penalty - how fortunate we in KY are to have his fine work.  I appreciate having had the opportunity to work with Carl, both on the Board of the ACLU/KY, and in my brief tenure as Interim Executive Director of the ACLU/KY.  There is certainly not a more deserving recipient of the Thomas Hogan Award.

Dona wells