Peace Corps Leader

He did many other things in his life, but that is his tag: heading the Peace Corps. He was also the Kennedy in-law who became the founding director of the Peace Corps, the architect of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty, a United States ambassador to France and the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1972...
 

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R. Sargent Shriver, left, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver greeted the crowd during a swearing-in ceremony for Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003. More Photos »

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Sargent Shriver, former Peace Corps director, Dies

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The Kennedy Family: A Legacy of Public Service

James F. Neal, litigated historic cases

James F. Neal, a lawyer who found success in nationally prominent cases on both sides of the legal battlefield, prosecuting Jimmy Hoffa and the Watergate conspirators and defending the Ford Pinto, the Exxon Valdez, the filmmaker John Landis, Elvis Presley’s doctor and Vice President Al Gore, died on Thursday in Nashville. He was 81. A Southerner who was described as having a country affect but a big-city swagger — “I remember hearing someone say he could strut sitting down,” his wife said — Mr. Neal was not long out of law school when he joined the Justice Department in 1961 as a special assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Quite a roster of clients.

In May 1973, Mr. Neal was in private practice in Nashville when he was asked by the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, to join his staff. He worked with Mr. Cox until October 1973, when John W. Dean III, President Richard M. Nixon’s former legal counsel, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and agreed to be a prosecution witness in the cover-up trial of five Watergate figures. Mr. Cox was subsequently ordered dismissed by Nixon, and his successor, Leon Jaworski, asked Mr. Neal to return for the cover-up case.