In Memoriam

Peter Eric Rindskopf

Pete Rindskopf
1964 graduation

July 25, 1942 – October 9, 1971

Pete Rindskopf came to Yale from New London CT, the son of Rear Admiral Maurice H. Rindskopf, the youngest submarine commander in WWII and ultimately the Director of Naval Intelligence.

Pete was an English major, active in the Political Union, Yale Human Relations Council, and Dwight Hall.  He was on the freshman swimming and water polo teams. Pete moved on to Yale Law School, with an interest in civil rights issues. He married Elizabeth Roediger, a University of Michigan law student, in 1968.

They moved to Atlanta, where Pete joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a cooperating counsel. In addition, he took on such civil rights cases as Jenness v. Fortson, an unsuccessful challenge to Georgia's ballot-access standards on behalf of a Socialist Workers Party presidential candidate, which he tried before the U.S. Supreme Court.  He also took on a number of cases relating to the military, defending various servicemen who had spoken publically against the Vietnam war in violation of military regulations.

Pete was driving on Georgia State Route 197 west of Clayton when his car ran off the road and overturned, killing him. He was survived by his wife Elizabeth and nine-month old daughter, Amy Kathryn. Elizabeth remarried and subsequently became general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency and, later, Dean of the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento. Amy became an attorney in Boston.

More details are available on Pete's Wikipedia page.