STEVEN B. DEROUNIAN, 89, JUDGE AND NASSAU EX-CONGRESSMAN
By Wolfgang Saxon
The New York Times
April 20, 2007 Friday
Late Edition – Final
Former Representative Steven B. Derounian, who represented Nassau
County in Congress from 1953 to 1965 and was later a judge, died on
Tuesday in Austin, Tex. He was 89 and moved to Austin, in his wife’s
home state, from Garden City in 1981.
His nephew, Paul D. Derounian of Manhattan, announced the death.
Mr. Derounian won national attention as a champion of personal and
public integrity when he sat on a 1950s subcommittee investigating quiz
show scandals and payola on the public airwaves. While in Congress,
he was an outspoken member of the House Ways and Means Committee,
among others.
Steven Boghos Derounian was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, to Armenian
parents who had fled persecution at the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
His family settled in Mineola, N.Y.
He worked his way through New York University, graduating in 1938,
and Fordham University Law School, graduating in 1942. There he was
editor of the Fordham Law Review. Four months after being admitted to
the bar he entered Officer Candidate School. He served in an infantry
division in Europe and was discharged in 1946 as a captain with a
Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster.
As a young lawyer, he was elected to the town board of North Hempstead
in 1948. He won election to the United States House of Representatives
in 1952 from what was then the Second Congressional District on the
North Shore of Long Island.
Easily re-elected for five more terms, Mr. Derounian, a Goldwater
Republican from a Rockefeller state, suffered a narrow defeat when
the Republicans lost Nassau County in the landslide victory of Lyndon
B. Johnson over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election.
His district was carried by Lester L. Wolff, a Democrat.
Mr. Derounian tried again in 1966, when he turned back a Republican
primary challenge from William B. Casey, who later became better known
as director of intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency
in the 1980s. But in November 1966 he once again lost to Mr. Wolff,
the Democratic incumbent.
Mr. Derounian practiced law again, becoming a name partner in a
New York firm. In 1968 he was elected to the New York State Supreme
Court on Long Island; he retired from the bench in 1981. After moving
to Austin, he was of counsel to a firm there and taught law at the
University of Texas at Austin for several more years.
Mr. Derounian is survived by his wife of 60 years, Emily Ann Kennard
Derounian; two daughters, Ann Banks of Lexington, Ky., and Eleanor
Derounian of Austin; and a granddaughter.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
