ROBERT TREUHAFT IS really dead. I knew him some -- anybody who got out at all in the East Bay knew Bob Treuhaft. Lots of people knew him as Mr. Jessica Mitford, and indeed sometimes in social situations he did appear to be a tugboat escorting his room-filling wife around. He was always affable and funny, and always ready to cede center stage to his remarkable wife.

It was a great love match, and when she died he grieved. He got on with things, but he grieved.

But I knew of him long before I knew of her; he was a lawyer for every cause I held dear, and a polemicist of considerable talent and endless enthusiasm. His first great cause was the civil rights movement, and he was a skilled advocate for social justice and equal rights. As low key as he was, he did not suffer fools gladly, and I saw him in debate turn his opponents into diced cheese.

A generation of students heard his strong clear voice and responded to it. He probably never knew a tenth of the people he changed. I am pretty sure that he didn't believe in heaven; he already had received his full measure of reward and happiness right here on earth.