Stevens becomes 2nd US justice to turn 90

April 20, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

His tenure on the Supreme Court touched four decades, after service in a war that defined his generation and a childhood in a prominent family. He celebrated his 90th birthday among court colleagues at least a dozen years younger.

Until today, Oliver Wendell Holmes was the only American who fit that description. Now, John Paul Stevens becomes the second Supreme Court justice to mark his 90th birthday on the court.

Stevens’ recent announcement that he will retire this summer, a few months after turning 90, means Holmes will remain the court’s oldest justice. He retired two months shy of his 91st birthday in 1932.

Holmes, whose bushy mustache was his most striking physical feature, was born during the short presidency of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president. He died with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president, in the White House. His grandmother remembered fleeing Boston ahead of the advancing British at the start of the Revolutionary War.

Stevens, known for his sporty bow ties, was born near the end of the wartime presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the nation’s 28th president. He’s leaving to allow his successor to be nominated by Barack Obama, the 44th.

There are similarities between the two justices that extend well beyond their longevity.

Holmes grew up in Boston amid the day’s leading intellectuals. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were visitors to the family home.

Stevens was born into a family that owned a large hotel in Chicago that attracted celebrities as guests. As a child, he made the acquaintance of Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh.

Both men were decorated war veterans: Stevens spent World War II in naval intelligence; Holmes was wounded three times in the Civil War.

Their appointments to the court had little to do with their political ideology, said G. Edward White, a University of Virginia law professor and Holmes biographer. “Both Holmes and Stevens are not identified in any easy way with national politics,” White said.