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Subject: [RABB-L] Obit of Maxwell M. Rabb
Date: 22 Jun 2002 09:13:43 -0600

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Surnames: Rabb, Weidenfeld, Ayers, Livingston
Classification: Obituary

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Washington Post
Washington, DC

Maxwell Rabb; Lawyer, Ambassador to Italy
By J.Y. Smith
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, June 11, 2002; Page B06


Maxwell M. Rabb, 91, a New York lawyer who served as ambassador to Italy during the Reagan administration and as secretary to the Cabinet under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, died June 9 at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York.

His death was attributed to injuries sustained in a fall while walking to work in Manhattan on June 4.

In the early 1950s, while serving in the White House, Mr. Rabb played an important behind-the-scenes role in desegregating public facilities in the District. In the late 1960s, while practicing law in New York, he made 23 trips to East Germany to broker the release of Americans being held on espionage charges.

He was ambassador to Italy from 1981 to 1989. During that period, the Reagan administration also used him on other assignments -- for example, he helped arrange the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia.

The normal rhythm of diplomatic life was sharply interrupted for Mr. Rabb shortly after he took up his duties in Rome, when Italian police uncovered a Libyan plot to assassinate him. This was said to be in retaliation for the downing by U.S. fighters of two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra. The American planes were carrying out exercises over the gulf, which the U.S. considers to be international waters, when they were attacked by Libyan planes.

The incident had little effect on Mr. Rabb's official duties, but for the remainder of their years in Rome, he and his wife, Ruth, were under guard. Mrs. Rabb remarked that they could no longer go out to dinner on short notice because it took an hour to make security arrangements.

A modest, unassuming man with a reputation for wit, Mr. Rabb was long familiar with the corridors of power. He had wide-ranging contacts in business and political circles in this country and abroad. A lifelong Republican, he was involved in efforts to persuade Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the commander of NATO, to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1952. He also was an early backer and fundraiser for President Ronald Reagan.

When Eisenhower became president, he created the position of secretary to the Cabinet and appointed Mr. Rabb to fill it. The job involved organizing the weekly Cabinet meetings that were a prominent part of the Eisenhower administration and keeping track of decisions that were made.

Eisenhower also used him on other matters, notably a directive to desegregate public facilities in Washington. He also was adviser on the dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock to desegregate Central High School.

These actions by the White House persuaded the late Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the flamboyant New York Democrat from Harlem, to back Eisenhower in his reelection campaign in 1956.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who succeeded Powell in Congress and who was a longtime friend of Mr. Rabb, said yesterday:

"I never met a more personable public official in my life or one who was equally modest about his accomplishments over the many years he's given to public service. I can't tell you how much it has meant to me to know him and his wife. He's been an inspiration to me over the years."

Mr. Rabb was born in Boston. He graduated from Harvard University and its law school. After briefly practicing law in Boston, he moved to Washington in 1937 as administrative assistant to Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-Mass.). When Lodge resigned to enter the Army in World War II, Mr. Rabb worked for Sinclair Weeks, who was appointed to fill Lodge's unexpired term. Mr. Rabb then went joined the Navy himself.

After the war, he was an aide to James Forrestal, the secretary of the Navy, and a lawyer in Boston. He returned to Washington to work in the Eisenhower White House from 1953 to 1959. From 1959 to 1981 he practiced law in New York, where he was a partner in the law firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. At the time of his death, he was of counsel to the firm of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel.

Mr. Rabb was a former U.S. representative to World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes; a member of the Presidential Advisory Panel on South Asian Relief Assistance and the Presidential Commission on Income Maintenance Programs; a former U.S. representative to UNESCO; a member of the board of advisers of the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard School of Public Health; a trustee of the Eisenhower Library and the George Marshall International Center; and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Survivors include his wife of 62 years, Ruth Rabb of New York; four children, Bruce Rabb of New York, Sheila Weidenfeld of Washington, Priscilla Ayers of Alexandria, and Emily Livingston of Brookline, Mass.; a brother; and five grandchildren.

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