4 May '04 Bar News

The ISBA Committee on Military Affairs has provided the following advisory from Army Major Joseph Baar Topinka. An Illinois resident, he is chief of the Administrative and Civil Law Division of the Staff Judge Advocate at Fort Drum, N.Y.

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In this time of deployments and mobilizations of active duty and reserve military personnel, civilian attorneys need to be aware of support organizations that are available to family members of absent military spouses.

These organizations come in all sorts of forms, but their main goal is to focus on getting information to family members about benefits and entitlements, while providing support and a sense of belonging.

For clients who have questions about the military or the status and unit of a deployed spouse, these organizations can provide great comfort and valuable resources that go beyond the sometimes limited knowledge or expertise of the civilian practitioner.

Each branch of service has a similar form of the concept with slight variations. The active Army has long advocated for the existence of the Family Readiness Group or FRG (formally known as a Family Support Group). The FRG concept has also been used in units of the reserves, National Guard, Air Force and Marines.

In the Navy, there is a term referred to as volunteer ombudsman. These volunteers, usually unpaid spouses of unit members, are selected by commanding officers at all levels. They become the primary liaisons between commanders and their unit members' families.

The basic idea is simple. Ombudsmen typically revolve around particular military units or organizations that focus on the self-help of the officers, enlisted personnel and civilians, as well as family members who volunteer to provide social and emotional support, outreach services and information to fellow service members and families.

These organizations foster a spirit of inclusion not only for service members and their spouses but for service members' parents, significant others, and other relatives and friends. My spouse volunteers for the FRG in support of the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate at Fort Drum.

While the 10th Mountain Division was deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the office FRG provided information and held meetings for family members of deployed office legal personnel. The FRG also sent food and other comfort items that it collected for office lawyers and paralegals in Afghanistan.

Another example is the Illinois National Guard's eight Family Assistance Centers or FACs. Each provides a wide range of information and referral services. According to the Illinois National Guard Internet site, these FACs are often called "one stop shopping" for guard families.

There is an active Family Readiness Division for the 88th Regional Readiness Command out of Fort Snelling, Minn., which has units in Illinois. Its three full-time directors provide many services, including help to individual units in establishing and maintaining their own local FRGs.

Much information is at the disposal of family members of mobilized or deployed service members. This information can seem overwhelmingly foreign, especially for family members of reservist personnel who are not used to seeing their spouses in uniform for longer than one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.

Military attorneys often mobilize and deploy as well, so it is incumbent on civilian attorneys to know something about military benefits or entitlements for their clients, or at least to know where to refer them for help and support. Information about FRGs can be found at the Internet sites listed below.

In addition, the offices of the Illinois lieutenant governor and Illinois state treasurer have Internet sites with excellent links to varied military sites that can provide useful information about military family readiness.

www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/deploy/family/family_support.shtml The Department of Defense site with several family readiness links.

www.afcrossroad.com The official Air Force family readiness site.

www.lifelines.navy.mil The readiness site for the Navy and Marine Corps.

www.guardfamily.org The National Guard site for members and their spouses.

www.il.ngb.army.mil The official Illinois National Guard site.

www.usarc.army.mil/88thrsc The 88th Regional Readiness Command.

Judge Gloria Coco balances passions for law, theater

By Hilary Anderson

Gloria Coco is a woman of many talents and roles. She loves the law and has served it well - first as an attorney and now as a Cook County jurist. She is supervising associate judge of the Domestic Violence Division in the 1st Municipal District.

But even with the demands placed on her schedule, she finds time to be passionate about her love of the theater, which has become more than just a hobby.

Coco's passion took her to night classes at Northwestern University, where she will earn a bachelor's degree this year in radio-television, film and theater performance. Her curriculum included authorship of a play, "The Passages of Grace," which she will perform this month in Evanston.

"Learning more about the theater, and performing, are things I've always been interested in," she said. "I look upon it as adding another dimension to myself as a person and another means of understanding others."

Coco admits her passion probably was rooted in early childhood, when at age three she began taking lessons at the Ethel and Gertrude Morgan Dancing School.

"I performed every kind of dance - tap, ballet and whatever was popular," she said. "That continued until age 14, when I stopped because I wanted to hang out with my girlfriends."

During those 11 years, she performed in high school productions and at many venues, including popular television programs such as Lunchtime Little Theater, Bozo's Circus, the Lee Phillip show, and Ray Rayner and Friends.

Coco wanted to major in theater in college, but she was told by a counselor that it would be a waste of time. "Those were the days when women had few choices," she said. "Usually they amounted to teaching or nursing. I chose teaching."

She taught primary grades and English to non-speaking Asians and Hispanics at the Stewart School in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. "I loved being a teacher," Coco said. "It's a wonderful profession, but I felt more was needed in my career."

She looked for advice from her father, who was an attorney. "Samuel J. Coco was my role model, and my mother, Grace, was my guiding light," she said.

"My mother and I would solve all the problems of the world over a pot of coffee. Some people in their ignorance warned me I would be 28 by the time I graduated from law school. My mother wisely said: 'You're going to be 28 anyway, so why not be 28 and a lawyer?'"

So for the next three and a half years, Coco attended night classes at the Northern Illinois University College of Law while teaching during the day. Through it all, her passion for the theater never subsided.

"During law school, I dabbled in acting classes and I auditioned with Second City's Del Close," Coco said.

"He let me join the group's workshop troupe. I worked with them every Tuesday night for four months until it got to be too much."

Coco's first job after graduating from law school in 1978 was as an assistant Cook County state's attorney in the Criminal Division. She prosecuted both misdemeanor and felony offenses.

From there, she joined the Illinois attorney general's Office in 1985 and became deputy chief of the Consumer Protection Division two years later.

She directed civil litigation in violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act and Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and she created the state's first felony prosecution system to combat unemployment insurance fraud.

Then came Coco's stint as an attorney with the City of Chicago Building Department in 1990, and service as director of its Code Enforcement Bureau.

Her credentials began mounting, as did her talents for helping others. She fought for consumer rights, rallied support for community issues and lectured extensively about domestic violence.

She also had become active in the Illinois State Bar Association. She was first elected to the ISBA Assembly in 1986, and is a current member. She served on the Committee on Community Involvement for five years and chaired it in 1990-91.

Coco received her appointment as an associate judge in February 1991, and in 1993 was installed as the first woman president of the Justinian Society of Lawyers.

Despite her success in the law, the yearning to fulfill her passion for the theater never ceased. "One day, I just decided that this theater thing wasn't going to leave me so I better do something about it," she said.

"I began taking an evening theater class at Northwestern. It led to five classes, and after that, I decided to go back for my bachelor's degree. That has taken me 10 years, but the experience has been an invigorating one," she continued.

"I look upon this as part of my lifelong learning. The knowledge gained from these classes is an asset to my professional, personal and volunteer lives."

Coco expanded her hobby to include the role of playwright. She took a course that gave her the impetus to begin writing an original play. "The Passages of Grace" follows the struggles of three generations of women dating back to Coco's widowed grandmother, who emigrated from Sicily in 1921.

"I dedicated the play to my mother, Grace Manninice Coco, who was born in Sicily," she said. "She came to the United States at the age of seven, along with her younger brother and my widowed grandmother. The family was detained on Ellis Island for three months, during which her brother died of scarlet fever.

"The play shows the strength of character of generations of women who have gone before us," she said. "They didn't have the opportunities we do today, yet they followed that passion within themselves.

"They passed that spirit of strength on to us. We, in turn, must follow their example and then pass that passion on to our daughters. The play is a matter of self-affirmation."

Coco has added the role of actress to her repertoire. She will perform her one-woman play publicly at Northwestern on May 21 and 22, with direction by Ann Woodworth, an associate professor of theater.

"The play is a work in progress, just like any hobby," she added.

Ticket info

"The Passages of Grace" will be performed by its author, Cook County Associate Judge Gloria G. Coco at Northwestern University's Mussetter-Struble Theater, 1949 Campus Drive, Evanston. Free performances are scheduled at 8 p.m. Friday, May 21, and at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, May 22. To reserve tickets, call Nina Vidmer at (708) 338-0760.

Traffic Court Conference slated June 3-4 at Bradley

The 39th annual Illinois Traffic Court Conference will take place Thursday and Friday, June 3-4, at Bradley University in Peoria. The ISBA Traffic Laws and Courts Section is a co-sponsor, and several section council members will be speakers.

The conference will begin at 9 a.m. Thursday with registration and a continental breakfast in Bradley Hall. The schedule of speakers and topics follows.

9:45 a.m. Introductory remarks by Aurora attorney George William Richards.

10 a.m. Secretary of State Hearings, with section council newsletter editor Larry A. Davis of DesPlaines.

10:45 a.m. DUI Trial Tips and Practice, a panel discussion with section council vice chair Donald J. Ramsell of Ramsell & Armamentos, Wheaton, as moderator.

Panelists are section council members J. Brick Van Der Snick of Geneva and Cook County Judge Charles P. Burns of the 4th Municipal District, Maywood, and Ryan J. Schmidt of Cowlin, Curran & Coppedge, Crystal Lake.

1:15 p.m. New and Pending Litigation, with section council member Jerome A. Zienty of Addison.