http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/politics/20coblentz.html
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
September 19, 2010
William Coblentz, who helped shape California's postwar history
battling Gov. Ronald Reagan as a liberal university regent,
representing Patricia Hearst and the Jefferson Airplane as a lawyer,
shepherding major building projects as a power broker died on Sept.
13 in San Francisco. He was 88.
His daughter, Wendy, confirmed the death.
Mr. Coblentz (pronounced KAHB-lenz) was a fixture of the California
establishment, with political roots in the administration of Gov. Pat
Brown and membership in San Francisco's prestigious Bohemian Club. He
was one of the bigwigs who met in the St. Francis Hotel in 1967 to
choose a lawyer named Joseph Alioto to run for mayor. Mr. Alioto went
on to serve two terms.
Not only did Mr. Coblentz pop up in the must-read newspaper columns
of Herb Caen (once for being sprayed by a skunk), he also negotiated
Mr. Caen's contracts with The San Francisco Chronicle.
But it was after Reagan used attacks against the University of
California to be elected governor in 1966 that Mr. Coblentz gained
fame. He had been appointed a regent of the state's university system
by Governor Brown in 1964.
Reagan denounced the university's "spirit of permissiveness" as he
quelled student disturbances and imposed tuition. Mr. Coblentz
defended professors and lecturers, including the African-American
radicals Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver.
Mr. Coblentz himself was at home in a tie and was shocked when the
Jefferson Airplane invited him to a dinner where each guest had two
joints by his plate.
In an oral history interview in 2002, Mr. Coblentz, who oversaw the
group's bank account at the time, told of the Airplane's Grace Slick
wanting to buy a Mercedes. Ms. Slick refused a cashier's check and
asked for cash, which she stuffed in her bra. Two days later, she
wrecked the car. She had no insurance.
Mr. Coblentz came to represent the Airplane and other groups,
including the Grateful Dead, through his association with the rock
impresario Bill Graham. They met when local complaints threatened to
keep Mr. Graham's Fillmore Auditorium from opening.
To show the Fillmore was not a blight on a fine neighborhood, Mr.
Coblentz had a friend stake out a hotel across the street known to be
a house of ill repute. The friend photographed policemen entering.
After Mr. Coblentz shared the photos with the Board of Permit
Appeals, the Fillmore was approved.
Mr. Coblentz knew Catherine Hearst as a fellow regent, and when her
daughter Patricia was kidnapped by a group of radicals calling
themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, she and her
husband, Randolph, hired Mr. Coblentz. He spoke with the S.L.A. for
the Hearsts.
One job was arranging the donation of $2 million in food to the poor
demanded by the S.L.A. Another was representing two members of the
group charged with murder. Mr. Hearst had reasoned that the
kidnappers might appreciate free high-priced legal help for their
comrades. The members nonetheless soon switched to public defenders.
"They didn't like us, we didn't like them, but they were entitled, as
we say, to their day in court," Mr. Coblentz said.
William Kraemer Coblentz was born in Santa Maria, Calif., on July 28,
1922. A doctor's son, he worked at a drugstore as a teenager;
graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with an
economics degree; and served in the Army Corps of Engineers in the
American South during World War II. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1947.
Mr. Coblentz practiced law in California and became involved with
Democratic Party politics. That led to working as an assistant to Mr.
Brown, when he was state attorney general and then when he was governor.
The governor offered Mr. Coblentz a judgeship, but he asked to be a
university regent. Terms were 16 years, and for the last two years,
from 1978 to 1980, Mr. Coblentz was chairman.
As a member and chairman, Mr. Coblentz was the force behind the
regents' decision to appeal the Bakke case to the United States Supreme Court.
The case involved Allan Bakke, a white applicant to the medical
school of the University of California, Davis, who claimed he was the
victim of reverse discrimination and had been passed over in favor of
less-qualified blacks. Lower courts had ruled in his favor.
The high court, in a fractured ruling with six different opinions,
outlawed racial quotas but left consideration of race as a
possibility. It also ordered Mr. Bakke's admission to the medical school.
Interpretations of the ruling have varied, but Mr. Coblentz contended
that the case indisputably helped the California university system by
showing that it cared for minorities and that it would defend itself
vigorously.
Mr. Coblentz later developed a reputation as one of San Francisco's
most adroit land-use lawyers, helping steer major projects like AT&T
Park, the San Francisco Giants' baseball stadium, through the
regulatory labyrinth. As a member of the San Francisco Airport
Commission for 16 years, he successfully pushed for free luggage
carts like those in foreign airports. A boarding area is to be named for him.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Coblentz is survived by his wife of
57 years, the former Jean Berlin; his son, Andy; his sister, Lolita
Erlanger; and four grandchildren.
Mr. Coblentz, who had a habit of taking the Christmas Day janitorial
shift in his office, once called Mr. Reagan "a menopausal Cary Grant"
and never apologized. When he retired as a regent in 1980, he was
startled when Mr. Reagan appeared in a video tribute.
"Bill, you and I have had our differences," the future president
said. "But let bygones be bygones. If you support me, I may make you
the next ambassador to Afghanistan."
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