Dialog reporter
Longtime Wilmington attorney receives honor from colleagues with St. Thomas More Society Award
WILMINGTON — There were no lawyers in the family when Francis J. Trzuskowski decided he wanted to become one. In fact, he recalled recently, Delaware had just a handful of attorneys of Polish descent when he earned admittance to the state bar in 1962.
Over the next five decades, Trzuskowski made a name for himself in courts all over Delaware, and this past Sunday he was recognized with the Msgr. Paul J. Taggart St. Thomas More Award at the St. Thomas More Society’s annual banquet at the Wilmington Country Club. The society is an organization for Catholics in the legal profession; it first presented the award in 1989.
Trzuskowski wasn’t sure he deserved the award.
“But then Tom Sweeney told me he was the chair, and if I didn’t accept it, I was going to get a call from the bishop, so I said OK,” Trzuskowski said.
He attended Georgetown University Law School after graduating from La Salle College, and despite an opportunity to remain in Washington, D.C., he returned to his native Wilmington and married his wife, the former Ann Fleming. A year after joining the bar, he became an associate at Connolly Bove & Lodge, where he remained for 10 years.
In 1974, he and James Kipp, who had been a classmate at Salesianum School and a colleague in the state public defenders’ office, launched Trzuskowski & Kipp.
“Jim and I were in the public defenders together and we started talking about it,” Trzuskowski said. “We just decided that the time was right to go on our own. Art Connolly Sr. gave me his blessing. He said, ‘If things don’t work out, you’re welcome back,’ which was unusual. I was pleased to hear it.
“We sort of jumped off a bridge, but things worked out well.”
Attorneys were not as specialized in the 1970s as they are now, and both attorneys were general practitioners.
“We were an expert in anything that the client needed us to be an expert in. We were in every court in the state – Family Court, JP (Justice of the Peace) Court, Superior Court, Court of Common Pleas. We would go anywhere.”
Trzuskowski attended Catholic schools his entire life – he graduated from St. Hedwig School in Wilmington – and noted that his Salesianum graduating class included 10 attorneys and 10 vocations, including his best friend, the late Oblate Father Willard Rucinski, whom he had known since their St. Hedwig days.
His familiarity with the Oblates led to his first regular work representing Salesianum.
“Schools didn’t need lawyers,” he remembered. “It morphed into representation. They’d have some oddball problem and need someone. Father (Robert) Kenney called me in and asked if I could handle things for him. I was on the board at Ursuline, and I ended up doing legal work for them. And then there was a contact at St. Edmond’s, they needed some counsel, and I did some work for them.”
He lists as one of his most noteworthy cases a job-discrimination lawsuit against Salesianum in the early 1990s. The school and individual defendants prevailed.
He also assisted St. Ann’s Parish, where he has been a member for some 40 years. But in his earliest days as a lawyer, he was not representing the Catholics.
“What was funny was that when I was at Connolly Bove & Lodge, I represented a lot of the Protestant churches, and Tom Lodge represented a lot of the Catholics. He said, ‘This doesn’t sound right, but I’m doing the work for the Catholics, and you’re doing the work for the Protestants,’” Trzuskowski said.
Another case that stands out is the case of two brothers who were fighting over the validity of a will their mother signed just weeks before her death in 1994. That will, created by one of her sons using a software program, had replaced one drawn up in 1977 by an attorney. The case helped clear up state law.
“It’s a name case, cited several times,” Trzuskowski said.
After more than three decades, Trzuskowski and Kipp accepted an offer from Mark Reardon to work at Elzufon Austin & Mondell as senior counsel. He remained there until 2013, when he retired.
“It worked out exceptionally well. Mark was the impetus for us to go with them,” he said.
Over the years, Trzuskowski has volunteered with several organizations, including the Delaware Association for the Blind, St. Francis Hospital, the Americans of Polish Descent Cultural Society, Girl Scouts of the Chesapeake Bay Council and Bayard House. He is currently an adviser for the diocesan Lay Pension Plan Advisory Committee and a lector at St. Ann’s.
Trzuskowski, who lives with his wife on a quiet street near the Delaware Art Museum, has surrendered his law license, citing the high cost of malpractice insurance. He spends some time on the golf course, and he and Ann spend a lot of time traveling. In fact, they recently returned from a trip to Germany with friends.
He also has four children and four grandchildren. One of his granddaughters, he noted, will be starting law school soon.
He was looking forward to the banquet, where he would join some prominent legal names as the award recipient.
“I’m very humbled by it,” he said. “It’s a pretty eminent group of people. I guess they decided on me, but I’m not 100 percent sure why.”
