The lights and cameras of a television studio may always remind me of last Monday morning. The impact of a sudden loss can touch us so deeply that the memory of what we were doing at that moment becomes etched in our memories.

As planned, the television interview involved the education, health care and social security issues we are confronting in the 106th Congress. When the t.v. anchorman asked me to comment on the death of former Court of Appeals Judge Harry A. Cole, he intended no surprise. He had no way of knowing that I had not been informed of Judge Cole’s passing.

Stunned by the news, I delayed our interview for a moment, collecting my thoughts about the man who had become my mentor and friend. "Our young people should know about Harry Cole," I said to myself. "He became a great man because he never forgot the source of his calling. He never left his people."

My interviewer had correctly assumed that Judge Cole was an important force in my career, but the newspaper accounts of the Judge's life could not tell him how personal the Judge’s gift to me had been. That act of generosity is an insight only I can share.

Judge Harry A. Cole became a figure of such imposing stature that people forgot he was the son of a tailor, not an aristocrat. He attended Douglass High School, not an exclusive prep school. He was educated at Morgan State, not Dartmouth. He received his legal training at the University of Maryland, not Yale.

Years of determination and hard work sharpened Harry Cole's mind, preparing him to become Maryland’s first African American Assistant Attorney General, our first elected State Senator and our first Judge on the Maryland Court of Appeals.

Judge Cole served as the first Chairman of Maryland's Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and he remained true to those principles. Harry Cole would become a Circuit Court trial judge absolutely committed to a Constitution which protects the poor, the accused and the unpopular. Despite his personal feelings of repugnance, for example, he once dismissed a case against demonstrators opposed to integration because the charges violated constitutional guarantees of free speech.

Personal character and a passion for justice - not political patronage - would provide the foundation for Judge Cole's success. It was as a Republican, after all, that Harry Cole defeated the powerful Pollack organization for his Senate seat in 1954. Nevertheless, his electoral triumph would pioneer the way to Annapolis and Washington for future African American candidates.

Despite conflicting demands of party loyalty, it would be a Democratic Governor, Blair Lee, III, who would recognize Judge Cole's unequaled qualifications, naming him the first African American on Maryland's Court of Appeals. Elevated to the Court at the time of its 1977 bi-centennial, Harry Cole would demonstrate his wry sense of humor to the Maryland political elite by declaring: "The fact that this appointment comes after 200 years could be an indictment in itself."

Deeply committed to the equal treatment of all people, Judge Cole would write the unanimous Court of Appeals decision which guaranteed to poor women the same reproductive services available to women who could afford to pay. That opinion illustrated the shining legacy of a wonderful, brilliant man born into the world of Jim Crow.

We must recall that contribution to our children and remind them that it was Judge Cole’s intellect and his sense of reasoned compassion which elevated him into the leadership structure of this state. A pioneer in our community's continuing struggle for recognition and respect, Harry Cole was a man of integrity who never forgot from whence he had come. It took a lifetime of hard work, but Judge Cole ultimately earned the acknowledgement of all who knew him.

Harry Cole overcame the prejudice and impoverishment of his youth to become one of the most influential people in Maryland. He succeeded through his skillful application of a powerful insight into human nature. He clearly understood that in order to attain the respect of others, one must give respect.

History will record all of these accomplishments, but it was Judge Harry A. Cole's personal gift to me which I must contribute to the record of his life. His gift to me more than 20 years ago was simple but profound, lasting a lifetime.

Judge Cole placed his faith in me, believing more strongly in my future than I believed in myself.

As he passes from the company of his colleagues and friends, I share with those of you too young to have known him Judge Harry Cole's gift of faith to a young lawyer uncertain about his future. His contribution to my life has become more valuable to me - not less - for being the same gift he would offer to thousands of students during his "retirement" as Chairman of the Morgan State University Board of Regents.

"You are the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen," Judge Cole counseled me more than 20 years ago. "Have faith in yourself...."