ACLU figure Larry Frankel found dead in Washington creek

If Larry Frankel, past executive director and longtime lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, were to have played a character in a biblical pageant he would have been the burning bush, Andrew Chirls, his former longtime partner once told him.

"Because if you were near him he inspired you to service and he inspired you to believe," Chirls said.

On Friday, Frankel, who took a position last year as state legislative counsel for the ACLU's Washington office, was found dead in the stream that gives Washington's Rock Creek Park its name.

Police released little about the circumstances of Frankel's death and as of yesterday had declined to officially identify the man found floating in water shortly before noon on Friday in the federally administered large park that cuts through Northwest Washington.

But the ACLU and Frankel's family and friends confirmed his death.

Yesterday, Chirls said that he accompanied Frankel's brothers to the D.C. Medical Examiner's Office to identify his body.

"We were told there were no signs of trauma or injury that would be consistent with a crime or a fall," Chirls said. "What they found was consistent with death from natural causes while out running."

The D.C. Medical Examiner's Office declined to comment.

Chirls said that Frankel was found 20 feet from a running trail in jogging clothes and - without offering specifics - that he had been experiencing medical symptoms the previous morning that were consistent with the preliminary finding.

So far, though, there is no indication as to how Frankel ended up in the water, Chirls said.

Frankel and Chirls met when both were law students at the University of California at Berkeley, the same school that Frankel, a Burbank, Calif., native, attended as an undergraduate.

Following graduation, the couple moved to Philadelphia. Frankel worked as an associate at a law firm before founding his own practice, where he worked in criminal, civil and security law.

In 1992, Frankel quit his practice to become legislative director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

"When he became a lobbyist he found his real calling," Chirls said. "He knew that getting something done in a collaborative body like a legislature wasn't a matter of pushing people around but of persuading and working together."

Karl Baker, a member of both the Philadelphia and state ACLU boards, remembered Frankel's ability to search out people from different backgrounds and appeal to their common rationalities.