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By Jennifer Kovalich, Enterprise staff writer

BROCKTON — When Charles Wolf first met Kenneth Feinberg in May 2002, he wasted little time ripping into the way the Washington lawyer planned to disburse money from the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund.

Wolf's wife, Katherine, had died when hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, where she was working as an executive assistant for a consulting firm on the 97th floor.

Wolf thought Feinberg, the special master in charge of the fund, was "parsimonious and stingy."

"Everybody hated him, just hated him," Wolf said.

The flashpoint for Wolf and others was compensating victims' families for pain and suffering. Feinberg was using $250,000 as a benchmark, the sum paid to the families of uniformed public safety officers or military personnel killed in the line of duty. That figure was nearly 30 years old and had never been adjusted for inflation.

Under the hurriedly written Victims Compensation Fund law, Feinberg had to fill in the details of the regulations, implement them and adjudicate them.

"He put the meat on the law. He judged the law. He executed the law," Wolf said. "He was everything this country was not supposed to be."

Wolf and others balked at joining the fund, which would have meant waiving their right to sue, a measure Congress hoped would avert billion-dollar claims against the airlines whose planes were hijacked.

But Wolf went even farther. He founded Fix the Fund to press for changes in the compensation guidelines and joined a lawsuit against Feinberg.

Nearly a year after he met Feinberg in anger, Wolf attended a meeting of the New York Bar Association where Feinberg was speaking and discovered the special master had loosened his regulations. He would take into account special circumstances for the injured. He would make awards of more than $4 million to families of those who died in the attacks. He would use his own discretion.

Wolf was astounded. Once one of Feinberg's harshest critics, he became one of the lawyer's most ardent supporters and encouraged all of the victims' families to join the fund.

"It was like God came down and spoke to him personally and changed his mind," Wolf said. "It takes a hugely big man to change like that."

It is that strength of character that will bring Washington, D.C., dignitaries and Feinberg's boyhood friends together to honor the Brockton native at a testimonial dinner Friday night at the Shaw's Center. The event will help raise money to restore the city's War Memorial Building and for the Brockton Symphony Orchestra.

The dinner is the highlight of a daylong series of events recognizing the accomplishments of the 59-year-old lawyer, who has received widespread acclaim as the unpaid head of the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund.

The tribute was spearheaded by a band of Feinberg's childhood friends who have remained extraordinarily close to him as his career took him from Brockton to the corridors of power in Washington.

Born at the end of World War II, they came of age during the '50s and '60s. They formed lifelong friendships in the classroom, in pick-up basketball games and at summer camp, and each became successful in his own right.

The circle includes Dr. Robert Haglund, a Campello dentist; Larry Noonan of Noonan Bros. Oil Co. in West Bridgewater; Paul Fireman, CEO of Reebok in Canton; Robert Epstein, president of Horizon Beverage Co. in Avon; Brockton attorney Larry Siskind; Barry Koretz of BKA Architects, and Ed Knopf, a North Shore businessman.

In addition to his childhood friends, Feinberg will be honored by admirers he met later in life and with whom he has maintained close relationships over the years. Invited guests include Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, another acquaintance, will honor Feinberg at a luncheon Friday at the War Memorial Building.

"There is nothing about this day that is going to be like anything anyone has seen before," said Haglund. "Everything is going to be special." That includes the reunion of a group of friends who grew up during what many remember as a golden era for Brockton.

Feinberg, Noonan, Koretz, and Knopf met at the Red Feather kindergarten when they were 5 years old. Some of them later attended the Lincoln Street School, West Junior High and Brockton High School, from which they graduated in 1963. The YMHA Jewish Community Center on Legion Parkway was their after-school hangout and basketball was one of their pastimes.

"We had a gang of us that would play basketball in my backyard every weekend and oftentimes during the week," Noonan said. Feinberg played a special role.

"He used to make believe he was the radio announcer, giving play by play," Noonan said. "Miraculously he'd have stats on all of us, which were fictitious, but to the 'radio audience' it sounded real."

Born Oct. 23, 1945, Feinberg was the middle child of Martin and Dorothy Feinberg, who moved to Brockton from Chelsea. Home was 71 Highland Terrace, where Feinberg was raised with his sister Ruth, who is two years older, and his brother David, two years younger. Their father ran Tower Tire Co. on Perkins Avenue. His mother was a bookkeeper.

At Brockton High School, which was then at Warren Avenue and West Elm Street, Feinberg did well in classes he enjoyed — English, history, government — but struggled with math and science. He acted in all the school plays.

"I was the class comedian," Feinberg said. "That was sort of my claim to fame. All the important awards went to others."

Friendships made at the YMHA were cemented at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, which several of Feinberg's cohorts attended, along with his sister and brother.

It was there that Feinberg flirted with a career on the stage, but his father, fearing his son might turn into a starving wannabe waiting tables for a living, suggested he use his acting talent as a lawyer.

"That was good advice and that's what I did," Feinberg said.

He attended the New York University School of Law, which also allowed him to indulge his love of classical music, especially opera, which had been stirred by Jerry Gluck, the cantor at Temple Beth Emunah.

"I think I ran to the opera the first two days I lived there," said Feinberg, who recalls waiting in line for $1.25 standing-room-only tickets.

Skilled mediator

After receiving his law degree in 1970, Feinberg clerked for Judge Stanley Fuld, chief justice of the New York Court of Appeals. Two years later he worked as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in New York, where he met another young prosecutor, Rudolph Giuliani.

In 1975, Kennedy, then a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tapped Feinberg as counsel to the administrative practice and procedure subcommittee. Kennedy chaired that panel, which looked into practices and procedures of federal agencies.

"I was impressed with his good judgment," said Kennedy.

As counsel to the Judiciary Committee during the Carter administration, Feinberg also worked with Breyer, then the chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and now a Supreme Court justice.

They worked on reforms that spanned judicial discipline, intellectual property and fair housing law, Breyer said.

Working for the Democrats on the committee, Feinberg and Breyer shared early morning breakfasts with one or two of the committee's Republican counsels.

"We tried to see what could be done constructively," Breyer said. "That was the kind of thing he liked to do and is good at doing."

Feinberg left Kennedy's office in 1980 and for the next dozen years oversaw Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler, a Wall Street law firm. During that time he helped resolve a class-action lawsuit brought against Westinghouse Electric Corp. by employees claiming gender and age discrimination.

In 1984, Judge John Weinstein, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, who also had clerked for Judge Fuld in New York, asked Feinberg to mediate the Agent Orange case, then in its eighth year of litigation.

Six weeks after taking the case, Feinberg, who had no previous mediation experience, reached a $180 million settlement with Vietnam veterans who claimed they had been sickened by Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used by the government in Vietnam. The case launched Feinberg's career into national orbit.

He was the first trustee appointed by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond, Va., in the Dalkon Shield IUD case, in which 250,000 women sued over the defective contraceptive device. That case in the mid-1980s yielded a $2.5 billion settlement.

He was one of two arbiters who determined payment of legal fees in the Holocaust slave labor litigation, and has mediated thousands of cases including asbestos personal injury litigation, silicone breast implants, civil fraud, product liability and insurance coverage.

"It's very, very exciting, challenging, to help people resolve the cases instead of fighting all the time," Feinberg said.

Although known as a "Kennedy Democrat," Feinberg earned a reputation for forging bipartisan results. He was appointed by President Reagan to a commission on catastrophic nuclear accidents in 1989. In 1994, President Clinton appointed him to a special commission on human radiation experiments done during the Cold War.

Feinberg left the Kaye Scholer law firm in 1992 and founded his own mediation and arbitration firm, establishing offices in New York and Washington.

"He's held in extremely high regard and is considered by many to be among the top 10 influential lawyers in Washington, D.C.," said Bob Epstein, of Horizon Beverage Co. in Avon, who grew close to Feinberg when they were summer counselors at Camp Samoset in New Hampshire, owned by Brocktonian Manny Winston.

Despite reaching the top of his profession, Feinberg has never forgotten how he got there or where he came from, Epstein said. As adults, Epstein and Feinberg traveled together to all of Mohammed Ali's and Marvin Hagler's fights in the United States. They now carry on that boxing tradition with their sons.

"Kenny is the greatest friend anybody could have and he doesn't ask a lot in return," he said. "His family is very, very important to him."

Feinberg and his wife, Diane "Dede," have three children: Michael, 29, a New York attorney; Leslie, 27, a paralegal in Tampa, Fla., and Andrew, 24, who works for Giuliani.

"The success his three children are having gives him delight," Epstein said.

Feinberg's friends describe him as a man of principle and high ideals.

"I am a true son of Brockton," said Feinberg, who can still name every grade school teacher he had. "I believe Brockton had a profound influence on me, all for the good: loyalty, friendship, happiness. Brockton taught me about striving to achieve, to live up to standards set by others."

"I think his father had the most influence on him," Epstein said. "I think his father sits right on his shoulder."

Martin Feinberg died about 12 years ago. Feinberg's mother, Dorothy, died five years ago.

A Solomon-like job

Feinberg lives modestly in Bethesda, Md., and owns property on Martha's Vineyard, where he may retire. He is a generous benefactor to many charities, including Jewish-Israeli causes.

"His philanthropy would stagger the ordinary person who didn't know anything about Ken," Epstein said. "Kenny never forgets. There was a time when a few Brocktonians did him a favor, and he never forgot it."

In November 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed Feinberg special master of the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund on behalf of the Bush administration. Feinberg found himself playing the part of Solomon on an international stage.

"There is no question the fund was an afterthought. It was debated by Congress only after the statute was enacted," Feinberg said. "I think it's fair to say this program stands on its own as an independent example of the compassion and the generosity of the American people."

In his role as special master, Feinberg alone determined a victim's compensation.

"You realize you're a fiduciary," he said. "You realize this is the best you can do. I can't replace lost lives. I don't have that power."

The fund paid out about $7 billion to more than 5,300 people, ranging from $500 for someone who broke a finger at the World Trade Center to nearly $9 million to a survivor who sustained third-degree burns over 85 percent of her body.

About 97 percent of those eligible for the fund took part in it.

"It's remarkable in those difficult emotional circumstances he was able to obtain voluntary agreement," said Breyer.

More than 60 percent of the claims came during the homestretch of the fund, which had a filing deadline of Dec. 22, 2003.

Feinberg personally heard the compensation cases of hundreds of victims and their families. Even his acting days and 20 years' mediation experience could not prepare him for what he encountered.

"It became in one sense easier, because you learned how to better deal with the emotions of the families," he said. "It became more difficult in the sense that it is piling on emotionally one after another, after another."

Epstein said federal marshals sometimes accompanied Feinberg to neighborhoods where people hurled ethnic slurs at him. He also took a lot of shots from the media.

"I think he endured an awful lot that probably just his wife knows," Epstein said. "When he started out, everyone underestimated the task Congress had given him to do."

Making time for friends

Kennedy, who counts Feinberg as a close friend and who still seeks his advice, said history will long remember his efforts.

"9/11 is going to be with us as long as history is written," Kennedy said. "The extraordinary suffering these families experienced will be with us. When people think about that, they are going to think about who was it that helped and assisted them through it, and Ken Feinberg will be forever associated with at least being part of the process."

In the midst of administering the fund, while repeatedly witnessing the pain of the victims' families, one of Feinberg's friends from Brockton, Tony Dorn, lay ill in a Falmouth hospital.

"We didn't know if Tony might live or die. He might recognize us or not," Epstein said.

After one long day, Feinberg flew to Boston from Washington and drove to the Cape, meeting Epstein at the hospital.

"When Kenny walked in the door, Tony started laughing," Epstein said. "With everything going on in his life, he always had time for a sick friend."

Dorn, the founder of Chillmark Dry Goods in Brockton and one of Feinberg's and Epstein's prize fight companions, died in October 2003. Feinberg delivered his eulogy.

"Kenny holds on to ties and doesn't let his go," Epstein said.

Moving forward after 9/11

Feinberg's work on the fund led to profound changes in his life. Professionally, he has downsized his law firm, is more choosy about the cases he takes and has begun teaching more. He is a professor at Columbia School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown University.

There are personal changes, too.

"I'm much more fatalistic after doing the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund," Feinberg said. "I don't think I'll plan more than two weeks ahead. I'm a better listener."

Feinberg has written a book about administering the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund called "What is Life Worth?" It hits the stores this week. Epstein said he believes writing the book was cathartic for his friend.

"He's kinder, gentler. I think he's a little more patient," Epstein said.

Feinberg's work on the fund wrought changes in the lives of countless other people, including Charles Wolf, who is moving ahead with his life after the death of his wife, who had started working for the consulting firm Marsh & McLennan in the World Trade Center just two weeks before Sept. 11, 2001.

Katherine Wolf was British and her husband, a staunch foe of the fund until Feinberg changed the rules for compensation, later helped British families of British victims join.

"I really look at the fund not as a healing thing, but as an enabling thing, a way to get on," Charles Wolf said. "Suing in this situation is about blaming someone."

And a lawsuit likely would have lingered in the courts for years.

"The creation of the fund has given people a lot of their lives back more quickly," he said. "What you do with your life is up to you."

Wolf wrote a 34-page letter to his late wife and sent it to Feinberg, who personally heard his compensation case. He declined to reveal the amount of compensation he received from the fund.

"The fund has allowed me to close the book and move on to current topics instead of who is to blame for my wife's death," Wolf said. "And if Ken hadn't changed, there's a possibility I wouldn't have taken the fund. I would have made that mistake."

Jennifer Kovalich can be reached at jkovalich@enterprisenews.com