SJC justice recalled for her interest in people and piano
"Martha always had an encore prepared," Leila R. Kern said of Martha Sosman, her friend and former law partner, "because she knew the audience wouldn't let her go."
Reluctant, perhaps, to let go of the Supreme Judicial Court justice who died March 10, more than 250 people gathered yesterday in Old South Church and offered a coda to the life of Martha Browning Sosman, a curtain call for a woman as admired for her humor and intrinsic kindness as she was for her towering intellect.
"We remember her keen interest in people -- the proud and the humble," the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, senior minister of Old South Church, said as she opened the service.
In the sanctuary were Governor Deval Patrick; Margaret H. Marshall, the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court; and Paul Cellucci, who as governor appointed Sosman to the state's highest court. Present, too, were people who may never have met Sosman or traveled in the rarefied circles of the Commonwealth's top legal minds.
"It didn't matter if you were a CEO or mopped the floor for a CEO," said Catherine MacInnes, who was Sosman's secretary from the justice's first day on the high court. Sosman, she said, was more interested in the dedication people showed to their jobs than their social position.
Sosman, who had been an assistant US attorney and a Superior Court associate justice before joining the Supreme Judicial Court in 2000, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and died of respiratory failure at 56. When she was appointed to the SJC, women for the first time constituted a majority of the justices.
Yesterday, the cover of the program for the memorial service bore a drawing of a baby grand piano, and the service alternated between recollections of her legal career and musical pieces -- a reflection of Sosman's twin passions. Though she will be remembered most as a jurist, those who knew her well were as impressed by her facility as a pianist and the concerts she performed.
"Martha Sosman was a woman equally at home on two benches," said Victor Rosenbaum, former director and president of the Longy School of Music. "This duality," he added, "really was no schism at all. . . . She interpreted music with depth and probing, the same adherence to principle with which she interpreted the law." Then he played Franz Schubert's "Impromptu in A-flat Major." Like much of the music yesterday afternoon, the piece offered rich chords that rang out like judicial pronouncements from the bench, mixed with gentle passages.
Pianist and jurist, Sosman's range of interests and passions could be intimidating, the speakers said, except that she hastened to put friends and associates at ease. "She was the opposite of a dilettante. She was accomplished in virtually everything she was interested in," said Robert S. Sanoff, who had worked with Sosman during her first job as an attorney, at Foley, Hoag & Eliot , adding, "She was a first-rate lawyer and even a better judge."
Sosman was a gardener, too, and she designed and made dresses she wore for her piano concerts. She also "loved to cook Indian food," said Kern, an associate Superior Court justice who had worked with Sosman in the US attorney's office in Boston, then left with her to form an all-woman firm of five lawyers.
Meanwhile, her intellect was such that as a Superior Court associate justice she could listen to lawyers present a case, then immediately issue a ruling from the bench, speaking in "perfectly formed, ordered, and reasoned sentences and paragraphs," Kern said.
Those who visited her office glimpsed the woman behind the legal mind. When Sosman started out at the Supreme Judicial Court, MacInnes said, she declined assistance and used a hammer and nails herself to hang photos and frames. When finished, she invited MacInnes into her office to see the visual inspiration she had displayed: Bobby Orr skating for the Boston Bruins, Ted Williams swinging a bat for the Red Sox, Sosman's father skiing, and a print of a piano keyboard. "No diplomas, no letters of commendation," MacInnes said, "but a wall that showed a view of her soul."
A fiercely loyal fan, Sosman once overheard a conversation about her favorite baseball team and called out of her office, " 'When you're dealing with the Red Sox, there's always light at the end of the tunnel,' " MacInnes said. "I smiled and wondered if she knew she was the light at the end of our tunnel."
