WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- Now that he's dead, a lot of people have been saying an awful lot of nice things about retired Justice Byron R. White.
But in real life, White had the reputation and the demeanor of a curmudgeon of the first water, and was a real burr under the saddle blanket for many who dealt with him.
White was particularly prickly when compared to the two other former members of the court who have died over the last few years.
Retired Justice Harry Blackmun was one of Washington's great gentlemen but delighted in wriggling his ears for children as he guided his wheelchair through the Supreme Court corridors. Retired Justice Lewis Powell was an almost beatific figure in his old age.
Powell died in 1998. Blackmun died in 1999.
For a while, White was the only living retired justice, but he seemed to be surviving on pure piss and vinegar.
White died Monday morning in Denver of complications from pneumonia. He was 84.
He served on the Supreme Court for 31 years. He was appointed in 1962 by his friend, President John F. Kennedy -- some say he and Kennedy chased women together during their salad days -- and stepped down in 1993.
A son of Colorado, White was highly unusual in that he was both an outstanding athlete and a brilliant scholar.
On the way to becoming a justice White was a college football star -- that's where he got the nickname "Whizzer" -- a professional football player, a Rhodes scholar, a Naval intelligence officer and a clerk for the chief justice of the United States.
The legends of White's abruptness are many.
A football-savvy waitress once asked him, "Say, aren't you Whizzer White?" The justice growled back, "I used to be."
White reportedly celebrated the 25th anniversary of his confirmation to the court by shredding his private papers.
Some of the best White stories come from a book written by one of his former clerks, Dennis J. Hutchinson, who went on to become a law professor at the University of Chicago.
In "The Man Who Was Once Whizzer White: A Portrait of Justice Bryon R. White," Hutchinson details White's intense sense of privacy in that most secret of institutions, the Supreme Court.
Hutchinson tells how a law review editor called the justice's older brother Sam for information on a special issue dedicated to the justice. The editor received a phone call a short time later from Byron White himself. The message from the justice was short but not very sweet: "Don't ever call any member of my family again."
In his later years, after retiring from the court, White often lived up to that acid reputation. He gave the impression of "whiteness" -- white hair, pale skin, blue eyes growing opaquely white from age, rimless glasses on a tall athlete's body that had once been brutally strong -- disdaining journalists left and right with a wave of his hand.
Which made the warmness of the tributes issued after his death so surprising to many people.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, not exactly a warm personality himself, opened Tuesday's court session by quoting Matthew Arnold on Sophocles and applying it to White: "'He saw life steadily and saw it whole.' All of us who served with him feel a sense of personal loss."
Each of the justices issued their own statements on White Monday evening. Justice John Paul Stevens, who probably knew him best as the court's senior member, talked about his ever-growing "respect, admiration and affection" for the man. "I miss him," Stevens said.
Justice Antonin Scalia talked about the painfulness of White's handshake -- "you had to squeeze back hard or he would hurt you." Justice Anthony Kennedy said White had a "splendid, vibrant human spirit." While most of the justices issued a couple of sentences at most, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg released a full two pages. Ginsburg succeeded White on the high court bench.
I first started covering the court for United Press International in 1993, the year White retired. Asked to fill the slot on an "emergency" basis, I'm still here nine years later.
My only contact with White in those days was to get out of his way as fast as I could when he walked stiff-legged down the hall, the lights glinting off his glasses, his hair askew and his face fixed in what seemed a permanent scowl. He usually looked like a man who loved babies, but who preferred them fried instead of boiled.
The older hands in the Supreme Court pressroom, people who would later become fast friends, assured me that dealing with White was like trying to dance with barbed wire.
His reputation as a hard-nose and as a press-hater was so intense around the court it was almost like a personal challenge. A few years ago, I stopped White as he stamped through the court cafeteria. I could almost feel the people around me cringe.
I held out my hand, and told him who I was and what I was.
White's face was transformed by a beautiful old man's smile, and you could sense what an attractive man he had been in his prime. Even in his old age, he still exuded a sense of power. He took my hand -- without breaking any bones -- chatted for a few minutes and told me, "It was nice to meet you."
What a charming old guy he was.
