DATE: Tuesday, November 11, 1997            TAG: 9711110011

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B12  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   45 lines

NORFOLK CITY ATTORNEY PHILIP R. TRAPANI

Philip R. Trapani, age 63 when he succumbed to leukemia last week, served his hometown of Norfolk well during 32 years in the city attorney's office - 22 years as city attorney.

Trapani well understood that he worked for City Council and could be dismissed by it at time for any cause or none. That understanding did not make him a craven public servant - politic, yes, fearful, no. A first-rank lawyer and knowledgeable negotiator, he could hang tough, litigate, conciliate or come to terms, as appropriate.

Successive city councils kept him on, even when some new council faces had, as citizens, been on the opposite side from him in cases involving demands for grass-roots approval of municipal tax increases or returning Norfolk to the ward system - a system notoriously corrupt in an earlier, rowdier period.

Trapani was a key figure in recurrent water-contract talks between Virginia Beach and Norfolk, which had assembled South Hampton Roads' most extensive infrastructure of lakes, water lines, pumps and treatment assets.

There were times when Trapani's life seemed to lean to shaping water pacts. Headlines during the decades of Trapani's service often focused on water disagreements between the two cities and the unhappiness of Virginia Beach residents and leaders at having to depend upon Norfolk water. But the record does not support a charge that Norfolk's price for treated surplus water wholesaled to the Beach was ever unreasonable.

Trapani was indispensable to bargaining that produced the mutually rewarding arrangements enabling Lake Gaston water to be stored in Norfolk's reservoir system and treated at Norfolk's expanded and upgraded Moores Bridges plant, improvements underwritten by the Beach.

Which is to say that city attorneys do important work, and Trapani's counsel about complicated legal matters - busing, ordinances' wordings, lawsuits against the city - was as highly valued at City Hall as he was highly respected.

Trapani cherished his family, many friends and associates. Outgoing, energetic, intellectual, straightforward, fair-minded, Trapani lived joyously. Norfolk was fortunate that he chose to be a government lawyer - with his substantial personal and professional skills, he would have prospered in the private sector, too. He valiantly confronted the merciless disease that eventually felled him. His departure is widely and deeply regretted.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu