July 13, 1944 – January 3, 2024
James Starke Dittmar was born on July 13, 1944 in Mount Lebanon Pennsylvania. His parents were members of the Mount Lebanon United Presbyterian; his father Edward Dittmar Jr. was a warm clerk, his mother Lois Dittmar was a cranky athletic homemaker who had Polio as a child, which left her with a bent spine and a limp. His mother and his sister Susan, older by only one year, adored him.
Jim was the product of the post-war American suburbs and high quality public education. A long distance runner in high school, he came in 2nd at the Pennsylvania state championships. His coach quipped, “Dittmar is into the mortification of the flesh.”
Jim went to Amherst College at a time when a single sex college could provide both a monastic intimacy and a window onto the wider world. He graduated magna cum laude and as “First Citizen” in the Amherst Class of ‘66, the highest honor awarded to a graduating senior for all around scholarship, athleticism, and contribution to the college, where he was student body President.
He entered the London School of Economics in 1966 to take a Masters in International Relations, but he did not apply himself. Instead, with civil rights and student activist Marshall Bloom as a roommate, he listened to rock and roll, talked politics, and learned how to roll joints. Jim once recalled hosting a party in London in 1967 at which black power and civil rights leader Stokley Carmichael flicked cigarette ash directly onto the white carpet. When the students occupied the LSE in 1967, Marshall was famously expelled. Jim’s supervisor was, supposedly, surprised he graduated at all.
Jim returned to the United States in 1968 and entered Harvard Law School, which he hated. At the time, being a student provided exemption from the Vietnam War draft. When this rule was changed, he immediately dropped out. He got a job teaching political science at UMass Boston and met his first wife, Linda Gesundheit. Their son Jeremiah Dittmar was born in 1974.
After finishing his law degree in 1973, Jim began a remarkable career as a trial lawyer. He started at Goodwin, Proctor, and Hoar, leaving the week they made him partner to start a new firm, Berman, Dittmar, and Engel. He subsequently moved to Widett, Slater, and Goldman, headed their litigation practice, and eventually led 29 lawyers to migrate to Hutchins, Wheeler, and Dittmar. His second wife, Deborah Kay, was amongst them, and he became a loving stepfather to her two sons, Miles and Ryland. In his final years of practice, Jim returned to Goodwin, before retiring at the age of 70.
Jim brought creativity and intellectual dexterity to his work as a civil litigator. He was an ambitious perfectionist. He wrote brilliant briefs, leading staff through sometimes excruciating rounds of detailed outlines. Above all, he relished the performance and improvisation of oral arguments; one judge called him a peacock. He became a nationally recognized securities law expert, defending mutual fund companies in class action lawsuits. For decades he served as personal counsel to Ned Johnson, the long-time owner and chair of Fidelity Investments. He represented the Boston Bruins and Delaware North, and tried a broad array of civil cases ranging from railroad disasters, to synthetic diamond theft, to a dispute involving the world’s greatest private collection of rare books. However, Jim was most proud of his appearance before the US Supreme Court representing minority firefighters in Boston Firefighters Union, Local 718 v. Boston Chapter, NAACP, where he advocated for diversity hiring protection in the Boston Fire Department. Attorneys across Boston regarded Jim as a role model and mentor.
Jim traveled widely and read voraciously. He was a talented photographer and an avid collector of books and the arts and crafts of other cultures. He was fascinated by the history of the Middle East and Ottoman architecture. An Anglophile and a history obsessive, his favorite was the great Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm. Jim celebrated achievement and status, but also had a knack for sparking the exceptional life stories from almost anyone, occasionally invoking some version of Whitman’s remark, “Very well then I contradict myself.” He was a committed member of ‘the Men’s Group’ for over forty years – originally founded as a male consciousness raising and friendship group in the wake of the counterculture, and only later focusing on aging and prostates.
Jim loved living in the Back Bay and spending time with his family observing wildlife in Little Compton, Rhode Island. Some of his happiest times were traveling to France to visit his sister and to London, where his wife’s family and his son live.
Jim was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia in 2015, an illness that causes confusion, difficulty with daily activities, and hallucinations. He moved to a memory care unit in November of 2022. He was remarkably eloquent in reflecting on his condition even as the dementia took further hold, remarking that he was “dying in slices.” Jim’s painful awareness of his cognitive decline led him to ask a month before his death, “When will I be free?” He found that freedom the night of January 3rd, 2024.
Jim is survived by his wife Deborah Kay, his sister Susan Thobois and brother-in-law Jean-Yves Thobois, his son Jeremiah Dittmar and daughter-in-law Stephanie Sherman, his stepson Ryland Stanley and daughter-in-law Kathleen Stewart, and stepson Miles Stanley and daughter-in-law Anna Rose Ott.
In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts in his memory. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
