Leonard Kerpelman: Living to bedevil the complacent

Baltimore lawyer who helped end school prayer now devotes time to holding government accountable

Kerpelman was not amused.

‘‘What the devil was this all about?” he said, recalling the story. ‘‘Where’s the accountability? How could we have any hope if they’re taking off the only program that has any chance of saving American democracy?”

Kerpelman has made a career of being the stone in the shoe, the burr under the saddle, the pain in the backside. And as he stares down his 80s, he’s not showing any signs of letting up.

As a Baltimore lawyer 45 years ago, Kerpelman argued atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately led to the elimination of prayer in schools.

Now, as a Baltimore resident, he is trying to bring local and state government to cable subscribers as a kind of one-man C-SPAN. Three times a week, he uses the city’s public access channel to provide hourlong snippets of Baltimore or state government events he has recorded with his tiny video camera, often as he whispers commentary into his microphone.

The C-SPAN-baseball switcheroo, however, still boils his blood. He said he consulted Comcast’s contract with the city to see if it had the authority to take off the government channel.

He said he was not willing to file a lawsuit against it. When he was a lawyer, he said, it was one guy against another guy. ‘‘Now it’s one army against another army.”

Kerpelman, armed with his camcorder and tripod, became a fixture in the Annapolis press corps after Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) took office this year. He regularly attends bill signings and other gubernatorial events, occasionally with a grandson in tow operating the camera.

In May, he was one of three media members who stood outside a restaurant in Little Italy where the governor was attending a closed-door fundraiser for Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Dist. 27) of Chesapeake Beach. At one point, O’Malley leaned over the second-floor terrace and called down to Kerpelman, who trained his camera skyward and introduced O’Malley into the microphone.

Kerpelman mingled with guests who strolled in and out of the fundraiser, including Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos, developer John Paterakis Sr., state lawmakers and Annapolis lobbyists.

Although Kerpelman believes in the power of video, he despairs at the barriers government is throwing up. Baltimore city public access once had a studio at Coppin State University, but that was closed in a budget move. Now he must supply 59-minute, 30-second tapes that go out over the cable wire. He thinks someone is purposely reducing the volume of the submissions.

‘‘I think they’re doing something to the machines to discourage people,” he said. ‘‘To me, it’s sad.”

Kerpelman keeps his age a mystery. Ask him and he says, ‘‘63.”

‘‘People are habituated to believe that once you reach a certain age, you have no more intellectual capacity,” he said.

But he does admit that he was not drafted for World War II because he is blind in his right eye. Instead, he worked a riveter on a B-26 production line.

He has no plans to let up on his quest for a local C-SPAN.

‘‘I don’t think I’ll stop unless I drop,” he said. ‘‘I find it’s something interesting to do. I regard it as something necessary to be done.”

Likes a handful of pols

Kerpelman is a great supporter of O’Malley, who makes up a third of his political trinity.

‘‘For my money, way up there is Martin O’Malley, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair,” he said. He thought a second, and then added: ‘‘I wish we had a prime minister so we could kick them out at a time like this.”

His support for O’Malley does have its gaps.

‘‘He has a problem because he never met a developer he didn’t like,” Kerpelman said.

And his face grimaces when he says O’Malley was responsible for ‘‘defunding” the city’s public access channels.

‘‘He took these hostile steps against public access, but at the same time I find him cooperative and friendly,” Kerpelman said of the governor.

O’Malley’s staff knows Kerpelman well.

‘‘He does understand the importance of these big government decisions and their effect on people’s lives,” said Rick Abbruzzese, an O’Malley spokesman. The Maryland Board of Public Works and the Baltimore Board of Estimates are the most boring things reporters have to cover, Abbruzzese said.

‘‘It is during these meetings that important decisions are made. And Leonard is intent on bringing these decisions to the people of the state,” he said.

Making a mark in history

Annoying people, however, has been a Kerpelman trait for years.

In the 1960s, he was a general practice lawyer who had done some civil rights and appellate work. O’Hair’s lawyer was no longer available and Kerpelman stepped in, taking the case to the Maryland Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then, as Madalyn Murray, she had sued Baltimore schools claiming it was unconstitutional to force her son to participate in Bible readings.

When the case went to the Supreme Court in 1962, Kerpelman said he didn’t do much. One justice would ask him a question, but before he could answer, another justice would chime in.

‘‘The whole discussion would take place amongst them. I did very little,” he said.

In 1963, the court ruled 8-1 in the Murray case forbidding coercive prayer in public schools.

O’Hair, Kerpelman said, was a repulsive person with whom no one could get along. Her personality suited her mission.

‘‘She was the best kind of a figure to have. ... If she had been nice, more people’s attention would have been diverted from what the bare bones of the First Amendment is about in the religion area,” he said. ‘‘I regard her as a very important to American constitutional democracy.”

The decision continues to irritate Christians. Kerpelman has found more ways to irritate others over the years.

A few years ago, he wondered why Baltimore’s Board of Estimates would meet privately before its official meetings. He once entered the private meeting and set up his camera.

Sheila Dixon (D), then the City Council president and now the mayor, objected, and a ‘‘bruiser” led Kerpelman from the meeting. He was arrested. All the while, his camera was rolling. He said he watches the tape for amusement from time to time.

Shortly thereafter, his camera was welcome.

‘‘I opened it up first for the pencil press and then I opened it up for the cameras,” Kerpelman said.

It’s a family thing

When Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) was running for governor in 2002, he met her outside Jimmy’s Restaurant in Baltimore. She agreed to answer some questions, so he set up his camera.

An issue at the time, and still an issue to some extent, was the possibility that the Pimlico Race Course would get a slot machine parlor if the state expanded legalized gambling.

Pimlico owns land in Kerpelman’s Mount Washington neighborhood.

So he fired off his question: ‘‘In the event Pimlico gets slot machines, what’s your position on a hotel-cum-whorehouse in Mount Washington?”

‘‘Two thugs dragged me away. End of interview,” Kerpelman recalled. Townsend was ready to answer and he believes she could have handled the question, he said.

So why is Kerpelman at the center of controversy?

‘‘I couldn’t explain it. It’s my family. We had some characteristic in my immediate family,” he said jovially.

His immediate forebears were immigrants or children of immigrants from Russia.

‘‘I think it was the way they acclimated themselves to this kind of society. They seemed to mature into people with a certain kind of values, a certain way of questioning authority,” Kerpelman said.

‘‘I’m always gravitating to the outré stuff because I think it needs to be covered.”