The memory of famed Chicago criminal defense trial lawyer Clarence Darrow was celebrated this month as usual by members and friends of the Clarence Darrow Commemorative Committee.

On March 13, the 69th anniversary of Darrow's death at age 80, his devotees gathered on the memorial bridge behind the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for appropriate remembrances and tossing of a wreath.

Darrow is said to have promised in 1938 on his death bed, nearby on East 60th Street, that his ghost would appear some time in the future at the Jackson Park Lagoon, where his ashes were to be scattered.

After the ceremony, the group moved into the museum's Columbian Room for a symposium at which Edward Yohnka, communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, spoke on “150 Years After His Birth: What Can Clarence Darrow's Legacy Contribute to our Challenging Times?”

Born April 18, 1857, in Ohio – and admitted in 1878 to the Ohio bar - Clarence Seward Darrow became known as “attorney for the damned” because of the many hopeless cases and unpopular causes he took on.

Moving to Chicago in 1887, he joined an attempt to free anarchists who were accused of the Haymarket riot deaths. He was well-known for defending educator John T. Scopes, who taught evolution, and for saving Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold from execution for the thrill killing of a teenager.

“As long as the world shall last, there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever,” said Darrow, who was an active member of the ACLU.

He shared offices for awhile with attorney and poet Edgar Lee Masters, and added labor leader Eugene V. Debs, whom he defended after the Pullman strike, as a partner when he was released from prison.

Darrow retired after gaining life sentences for Leopold and Loeb in 1924, but volunteered with the ACLU for the Scopes defense in 1925 to debate William Jennings Bryan on fundamentalist interpretations of biblical creation.

The annual tribute each March 13 in Chicago is usually attended by Anita Weinberg of the ChildLaw Center at the Loyola University School of Law. Her parents, Arthur and Lila Weinberg, wrote the 1980 book, “Clarence Darrow: A Sentimental Rebel.”