Memorial

David J. Kennedy, the retired co-founder of Kennedy & Graven died of cancer on May 10, 2009. He will be remembered for his Irish charm, his gentle manner, and his excellence as a lawyer and adviser.

Dave graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1953 and then served as a naval aviator and later retired from the Naval Reserve. Dave received his law degree from the University of Minnesota law school in 1960. While in law school, Dave started his life-long love affair with municipal law as a research assistant with the League of Municipalities (now known as the League of Minnesota Cities).

From 1960-1967, Dave served as a staff attorney for the League of Minnesota Cities, Director of the Minnesota Office of Local and Urban Affairs, and Assistant Senate Counsel for the Minnesota State Senate.

In 1972, Dave joined the law firm of LeFevere, Lefler, Kennedy, O'Brien, and Drawz. Dave became the preeminent public finance lawyer in the state, and in 1989 merged the municipal law and public finance practices of that firm with Kennedy & Graven.

In addition to Dave's public finance work, he was the City Attorney for the cities of Crystal and Sandstone. In his later years, Dave was considered to be the dean of public finance law in the state of Minnesota. Just this month, Dave was awarded the Douglas K. Amdahl Career Achievement Award by the Public Law Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association.

Aside from his distinguished legal career, Dave was widely known and admired for his fine wit, generosity, and kindness. A number of Dave's friends and associates have sent us comments reflecting on their memories of Dave, perhaps none as poignant as the observations of his former partner, Dick Schieffer:

As we remember Dave Kennedy, the Bond Lawyer, let us also remember that the legal profession is only a small corner of a very diverse life.

That ever-smoking cigarette could have just as well have been resting in an ash tray on the sound board of a jazz piano in a little basement bar on East Hennepin, with Dave at the keyboard; or next to a martini on the sideboard in a tiny Manhattan apartment where Dave sat at his typewriter, pecking out literary reviews deflating the egos of some of the more pompous contributors to the New Yorker Magazine; or playing the color man in the television booth at the State high school football playoffs from the perspective of an all-state linebacker from the 1950's.

Dave could have been all those things, but he chose to spend his life conveying soft-spoken advice to a just-appointed City Clerk in East Overshoe Minn. who is staring at a shoebox full of minutes, bills, notes, contracts and resolutions from a completed sewer project,----with a note from the mayor telling her to borrow $1,565,000.00 and pay the contractor.

In a world which has only praise for today's hero, and damnation for yesterdays', let us praise today and remember tomorrow, this gentle, gentle man.

Dave is survived by his wife of 55 years, Mitzi, and five children.