When Kerry Pangere was 14 — a freshman in high school in the early 1980s — her dad John Pangere started law school at Valparaiso University.
There was one problem — he was blind.
So, she and her mother helped him by recording his law school texts.
“At that time, we weren’t aware of any services that would record books,” she said in a phone interview. “My mom and I would read into an old-fashioned tape recorder.”
It was mostly her mother Eileen, something that took “multiple hours per day,” she recalled.
It was an experience that inspired Kerry to go to law school herself; she and her sister both specialize in family law.
Her father died on July 19.
At first, he could see light and darkness, but that was lost over time, his daughter said. His blindness was genetic, but he overcame it to fulfill his profession. He retired around a handful of years ago.
“He had confidence in his own abilities,” Kerry said. “He passed that down to all three (daughters).”
He was one of a dozen attorneys who died in 2024 and were honored Thursday in the Lake County Bar Association’s Annual Memorial Service.
Her father, a Greek-American, took over Roberto’s Pizza in Lake Station with his wife in the late 1970s, before he made the jump to law school in 1982. According to his obituary, he was the first fully blind VU law grad.
That could not be independently verified by VU by press time. The law school closed in 2020.
During his career, John worked as a city attorney for Lake Station and in-house counsel for their family’s Gary-based industrial construction firm, The Pangere Corporation.
After he did a stint on jury duty in 1980, he was fascinated how the law could be molded to help a case, his widow Eileen Pangere, an Ireland native, said Friday in a phone interview. At that time, he relied on her heavily when they ran the pizza business.
Law school was an opportunity for independence, she said. He had doubts – saying he would be over 40 when he graduated, or couldn’t do it with his gradually failing sight.
She spoke to a blind judge in Illinois, a blind lawyers association, blind attorneys in Indianapolis to get pros and cons. She got the law school application.
“I knew he really wanted to go,” she said. “There was no harm in giving it a try.”
Before he was accepted, she said he had an interview at VU. How would he be more successful than past blind students who failed?
It would be a family effort, he said.
Eileen was fully committed to it. They had to buy three copies of every textbook. Working a week or two ahead, she or her daughter would record his texts to listen for upcoming classes. The second and third books were shipped to New York to a permanent transcribing service that took several weeks.
He got a computer that “spoke” back to him and could blow up texts to a single letter on the screen.
“It was amazing,” she said.
The university allowed her to go to tests and write on the blue books for him. She laughed as she recalled her panic when she had no idea how to answer the first question.
“I was just reading, I wasn’t comprehending,” she said. “I’ll never forget that feeling.”
His graduation was a turning point for the family – besides two daughters, two other relatives followed him into law, she said.
The memorial ceremony honored: David Mears, Jack Hilbrich, Cletus Epple, Robert Higginson, Clorius Lay, Eugene Feingold, Peter Hatton, James Greco, Pangere, Hon. Thomas Webber, Sr., David Moore, and Robert Kennedy.
Former colleagues were able to share bits and pieces of their lives and interests outside the courtroom.
Mears had a car collection, including 1960s-era Chevy Caprices and Impalas. His wife was a judge.
Hilbrich had a deep Catholic faith and loved the University of Notre Dame, where he attended law school, his obituary states.
Epple was a trust and estates lawyer who attended St. Paul Catholic Church.
Higginson was a Calumet City police officer, before he became a lawyer.
Lay was a devout checkers player, former Gary Deputy Mayor Trent McCain said.
Feingold served for decades as Munster’s town attorney and on the board of Ingalls Memorial hospital, leading up to its takeover by the University of Chicago, Judge John Sedia said.
John Reed recalled nervously planning to ask utility lawyer Peter Hatton permission on the golf course to marry his daughter. Hatton quelled his fears.
“She’s your problem now,” Hatton joked.
Greco loved Pac-Man and got an 8-foot satellite dish at his house so he could watch sumo wrestling at 4 a.m. from Japan, Dan Gioia recalled.
Although he didn’t know him well, Pangere was “one of the better attorneys” he saw and “did not allow his blindness to interfere with his practice,” Sedia said.
Webber was a “reliable” and “dependable”, especially as a senior judge — someone who filled in on the bench, Porter Superior Judge Jeffrey Clymer said. He was also a friend and mentor, who was once a Portage Police Assistant Chief and went to night school to become an attorney.
Kennedy had a “great personality,” Gioia said.
Moore was an unseen, but large presence in the Lake County courthouse, retired Judge Richard Maroc said. He worked in the prosecutor’s office for 45 years — reviewing and approving whether a criminal case had the merits to go forward.
Former colleagues described Moore as a hard person to get to know. Maroc knew Moore in high school, ended up as roommates for a time in college at Indiana University in Bloomington and finally reconnected in later life.
“He knew prosecutors have a lot of power,” Maroc said. He believed the review process should be tempered with “integrity” and “wisdom.”
