My remarks at
a Celebration of Life of
Keith W. Harvey (1952-2019)
held on March 11, 2019
Dallas, Texas
1
Together, my wife Susan and I knew Keith over most of his life. Susan knew him first, from school and growing up in Tyler, Texas in the sixties, and most specifically from the debate program at Lee High School in that town.
I then met him in some Chapter 11 cases, beginning in 1988—we met his wife Paula that same year, over a memorable dinner at a café on Lower Greenville— and continuing over the years, in cases in Dallas and in the Eastern District.
2
I always knew that Keith was a lawyer with an active mind that ranged beyond our Bankruptcy Code and Bankruptcy Rules, the case reporters, and the Collier’s on Bankruptcy treatise.
He read widely—when Susan and I visited him for the last time, at his and Paula’s house, his brother David brought out Keith’s large, deep basket of books from his bedside. A bibliography of those books would easily furnish the syllabus for a graduate-level course of study in philosophy! And that was but a sample of his library. A year ago he mentioned to me that “with over 4,000 books, I don’t often have to go out for reading material!”
And you probably know he wrote and published both novels and books of poetry with curious or even wild titles such Cave Gossip; Sea Snails on a Black Chow’s Tongue; Vogel Flies South; Grimoire of Stone: A Romance of Water; and Petroglyphs.
And he was a fine Chapter 11 bankruptcy lawyer. His was indeed a significant intellect.
3
In 2017, as I headed into retirement, and he became ill, Keith’s and my intellectual exchanges became more frequent and meaningful, over lunches and by email.
I gave him one of my legal-history articles, and he politely commented, “Interesting article and a perspective on law I had not considered.”
Then he told me what he was working on, and it was a big question: “the modern and the city.”
He did not define “the Modern” for me, but I have come to understand it to refer to the web of norms of culture and society ,and generally the intellectual trend toward rationality rather than traditionalism, that has obtained, particularly since the nineteenth century.
Keith strongly recommended that I read some books about “the Modern” that he considered important:
o Marshall Berman’s 2010 book, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity
o Stuart Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss
I did pick them up. But for a comparison, I found the Berman book to be as difficult as reading subsections (a) through (p) of section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code straight through for the first time. The Jeffries book is a little more readable, a sort of prosopography of the “Frankfurt School” of philosophers during the interwar years of the twentieth century of whom I had never heard. Neither book was easy to comprehend, as I told Keith.
4
Because he knew I am deeply interested in history, Keith then strongly recommended I read a 13-page essay by the twentieth century philosopher Walter Benjamin, entitled On the Concept of History.
He said to me, “Don’t be put off by Benjamin's strange style. It was only after three or four readings that I began to understand what he was up to. His ideas are somewhat brilliant.”
So I have persevered and have reread and reread that piece, written by Benjamin in the last year of his life, 1940 (he committed suicide to avoid being taken by the Nazis). My takeaway is based upon this paragraph by Benjamin:
"The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes
its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held
fast. . . . To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize 'how it
really was.' It means to take control of memory, as it flashes in a moment
of danger."
-Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History (1940), available at
http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2010-11-02.7672177498/file (emphasis
added).
Benjamin was writing in 1940, with World War II already underway in Europe, but are we not today living in a “moment of danger”? We therefore should follow Benjamin's advice to “take control of memory,” that is, we should be intentional in our rememberings. And so with respect to Keith Harvey, whose life among us we celebrate tonight, let us purposely "hold [him] fast" in our memories as a fine lawyer with whom we were privileged to work, a good man as all have attested, and, additionally, as an example of how the practice of law and intellectual endeavor—the work and life of the mind, beyond the law books and case papers of the lawyer’s daily grind—can coexist and even prosper, even in "moments of danger" that we are living through.
5
In our visits with Keith the last 10 days of his life, Susan and I asked to pray with him, and he consented. Afterward he asked me to recite this prayer at any memorial gathering. And so:
"Loving God, thank you for Keith and for the wonderful gift of his time with
us. Thank you for the joy he has brought to our lives and the lives of
everyone who knows him and loves him. Thank you also for the people
who have given him joy, those who know him and love him. We pray for
courage for his family. Most of all we pray for peace. Peace for his family,
and true peace for Keith in your everlasting arms. As in all places, help us
know that you are here with us, now and always, granting your peace.
Amen."
-Josiah Daniel
