Posted February 24, 201411:48 am
Longtime Legal Aid supporter and pro bono volunteer Mark O'Neill passed away. His family suggests memorial gifts can be made to The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. The obituary in The Plain Dealer highlights his wonderful life:
Mark P. O’Neill, longtime trial lawyer and former president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, died February 18 at the Cleveland Clinic from complications of multiple myeloma. He was 88 years old.
In a career that spanned 58 years at one firm, Weston Hurd LLP, Mark tried more than 150 jury cases to verdict as well as more than 50 bench trials. He was admired not only for his courtroom skills, but for his lifelong emphasis on collegiality, courtesy and ethical practice. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he represented the Ohio Board of Education over a marathon 23 years of hearings and appeals of public school desegregation matters in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.
In 2010 he was gratified to be recognized at a ceremony at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., where he received the American Inns of Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Award for Professionalism and Ethics.
In his own community of University Heights he served for a decade on the civil service commission and also as chairman of the city’s charter review commission.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the first of four children to Frank and Gertrude O’Neill, Mark graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1943, from Harvard College cum laude in 1949 and from Harvard Law School in 1952.
In World War II, Mark enlisted as a U.S. Naval Aviation Cadet in 1943, hoping to become a pilot, then joined the U.S. Marine Corps in November 1944. He served aboard the light cruiser USS Providence in the final months of the war shaking down in the Caribbean, and was later deployed to the Mediterranean until June 1946.
In August 1953 Mark married Edna Drexler, a ballet dancer who educated him to appreciate that graceful art and its music. Together they had three sons, built their home and designed its garden with an architect-friend, and took many young-family road-trips camping in national parks.
In 1968, memorably, they drove by station wagon from Cleveland to Acapulco, via Mexico City, and back. A prolific photographer from teenage, Mark also kept journals of his and Edna’s later world travels to the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. His hopes to navigate the Panama Canal this spring were cut short by his final illness.
O’Neill is survived by his wife and companion of 60 years, Edna; his sons and their wives Kevin (Sonia Winner) and Timothy (Julie Harris) of Cleveland, and David (Tess Recio O’Neill) of New York City; four grandchildren Dylan, Katherine, Shannon and James; brother David J. O’Neill of Eugene, Oregon; sister Frances O’Neill Zimmerman of La Jolla, California, and ten nieces and nephews. His brother, James C. O’Neill of St. Paul, Minnesota, pre-deceased him.
Services will be private. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations to the Cleveland Legal Aid Society or the Cleveland Orchestra would be greatly appreciated.