Dialog Editor
Victor F. Battaglia Sr. grew up at Second and West streets in Wilmington and 83 years later, he still works near his old neighborhood.
About half a mile from where his Italian immigrant parents, Bruno and Carmella, ran a grocery store and raised their 10 children in Cathedral of St. Peter Parish, Battaglia works at the law firm he opened some 50 years ago, Biggs & Battaglia.
The trial lawyer, a former president of the Delaware State Bar Association and a former Wilmington City solicitor, can still be found meeting with a first-time client at his Orange Street office after business hours when he’s not in court or preparing a case.
This Sunday, Battaglia’s hours include being honored by the Diocese of Wilmington’s St. Thomas More Society, a group of lawyers, judges and legal professionals dedicated to the example of St. Thomas More, the martyred 16th century chancellor of England.
Battaglia, a St. Joseph on the Brandywine parishioner, guessed recently that he might retire at 89. Clearly, he takes after his father.
“My father was the hardest-working human being anybody ever saw,” Battaglia said. “He was an entrepreneur. My father would get up at 6 in the morning and open the grocery store, and at 8 o’clock he would go across the street to the liquor store and get it ready to open at 9.”
Battaglia remembers his parents helping those who came to the door for some milk on a Sunday when “blue laws” prohibited selling groceries. He recalls his mother helping the hungry who asked for “the end of the lunchmeat,” by making them a sandwich.
“You’ve got to have compassion for people.”
Battaglia is a graduate of Cathedral School and of Salesianum. He attended the University of Delaware, earning a bachelor’s in chemistry with a minor in history.
His first look at the legal profession came accompanying his father to a lawyer’s office. “Albert Young “did legal work for my father. That’s all my father wanted to hear, ‘H. Albert Young.’ He was very solicitous to the family members. I was enormously impressed. He came out of the neighborhood.”
Battaglia finished Georgetown Law in 1959 and his contracts professor, Walter H. E. Jaeger, advised him to take a Williston fellowship to complete a master’s degree in law. Rather than take a second year of the fellowship, he followed the advice of a famous Wilmington jurist, Collins Seitz, then serving on the state Chancery Court, to begin practicing.
After a short stint in New Jersey, Battaglia returned to Wilmington without a job and Seitz persuaded him to work for him for about six months unpaid.
“You’ll see a lot of people and there will be opportunities,” the judge told him.
Seitz “was not only a judge, he was a scholar and a teacher,” Battaglia said.
He next worked for Theisen and Lank for four years, Battaglia said. “It wasn’t long before the old neighborhood paid off, people were coming through the door day and night. I really had a large practice in a short time.”
Battaglia also had a wife, who had already moved to New Jersey and back with him. He had met his Toni when they and mutual friends were collecting for the March of Dimes.
“I had no trouble falling in love with her and I conned her into marrying me. She has stayed the course for 57 years. … She’s the nicest person I have ever met.”
When Battaglia left Theisen and Lank, he shared space with attorney John Biggs.
“We practiced together for about 35 years, I guess. (Biggs & Battaglia started about 1965.) At one time we had a staff of about eight lawyers. We couldn’t have been any busier.”
Now, his four-associate practice include Battaglia’s son Victor Jr. Another son in the firm, Christopher, died.
“That was the heartbreak of my life,” Battaglia said. “He was bright and compassionate. People loved him. I loved him.”
Meeting people has been one of the greatest joys of his career, Battaglia said.
“The lawyers I dealt with were first class — Ned Carpenter, there’s not a better lawyer in the United States; Alton Tybout is a terrific lawyer; Bruce Stargatt, good friend of mine; Chuck Welch, probably the most effective corporate administrator in the country; Frank Biondi, he should be canonized; Ed Woolard, not a Catholic but the best Christian I have ever met; Dan Herrmann was a prince.”
Battaglia can recite a longer list of attorneys he considers icons, his title for colleagues in a profession he finds “as close to a religious calling as I can imagine.”
In his criminal practice, “I had people who would tell me things they would not tell their priest or their wife. There were times I thought I was a member of the clergy,” he said.
Battaglia said he’s glad Pope Francis has been talking about mercy. The criminal attorney opposes the death penalty as “a pure exercise of revenge and a wasteful extravagance that we do not need.”
The pope “says mercy, I say compassion. Anybody who comes in here, we want to give them good legal service and we want to do it with compassion.”
“Helping clients facing charges … whatever it was, I could see myself in their problem.”
Battaglia treasures a letter he received from a client in a case in which “her husband was very harsh with her.”
The woman wrote, “All throughout this ordeal, God has placed people along the way who were able to comfort and support me. You were one of them.”
The letter “made me feel like I was doing what I was supposed to do,” Battaglia said. “You can see I’m a sentimental slob besides being a poor sinner.”
Objection, counselor. The St. Thomas More Society has duly noted your esteemed virtues.
