Attorney, literary agent, and longtime Independent contributor Ronald Goldfarb, one of the most appreciated and respected advocates of Washington’s distinguished community of writers and authors, died on May 4th. He was 91.

A whiz kid from North Bergen, New Jersey, Ron was born in Jersey City on October 16, 1933. He entered Syracuse University at the age of 16 and enrolled in its law school at 19. After receiving his law degree in 1956, he continued his education, earning master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale University’s School of Law.

For three years, Ron served as an officer and a gentleman in the U.S. Air Force JAG Corps, where he worked as trial counsel.

In 1961, a friend introduced Ron to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who, along with his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was conducting a nationwide search for “the best and brightest” to serve in the administration. Ron was among those recruited.

As chief counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee from 1957 to 1960, RFK ate mobsters and labor racketeers for breakfast. When he was nominated by his brother and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead the U.S. Department of Justice in 1961, A.G. Kennedy assembled a talented and relentless cadre of federal prosecutors who began eating mobsters and labor racketeers for lunch and dinner, too.

In the long history of the DOJ, there was no greater assault on organized crime than that engineered by Kennedy and his crew.

Ron was a young member of RFK’s team of crime-fighters. He was best known for his work with crusading reformer sheriff George Ratterman in Newport, Kentucky. While pursuing major underworld figures operating in his jurisdiction, Ratterman, a former starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns who had also earned a law degree, was set up, drugged, and photographed in bed with a stripper in what became a botched act of blackmail by targets of his investigations.

With the assistance of Ron and the DOJ’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section (OCRS), Ratterman successfully cleaned up the town.

Notably, Ron often recalled and discussed a routine OCRS meeting with RFK on the morning of November 22, 1963. During their lunch break, they received the horrible news that a sniper had shot and killed President Kennedy in Dallas.

Following the DOJ’s two 1964 convictions of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, RFK’s principal nemesis, for jury tampering in Chattanooga and pension fraud in Chicago — for which Hoffa was sentenced to a total of 13 years in prison — Robert F. Kennedy resigned as attorney general on September 3, 1964.

After working as a speechwriter in RFK’s victorious 1964 campaign for the U.S. Senate in New York, Ron founded and incorporated Goldfarb & Associates, his longstanding law firm, on June 25, 1965. He specialized in public-interest law while advocating for bail and prison reform, as well as for the rights of farm workers.

Speaking about defamation law, Ron once told me, “People who sue for libel go in looking like pigs, and even when they win, they come out like sausages.”

As part of his law practice, Ron established the Goldfarb Literary Group, through which he represented hundreds of authors during his remarkable career. Along the way, he found time to publish 13 of his own books, the last of which was The Price of Justice: Money, Morals and Ethical Reform in the Law (Turner, 2020).

Ron and his devoted wife, Joanne, an accomplished architect who also graduated from Syracuse, were married for 68 years. They had three children: Nick, Matt, and Jody.

On a personal note, I first appeared on Ron’s radar screen in March 1980, when I testified before the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, along with other members of the Authors Guild, speaking against corporate concentrations in the publishing industry. In addition, Ron was a friend of my mentor, Walter Sheridan, one of Robert F. Kennedy’s top lieutenants at the Senate Rackets Committee and the DOJ.

Three months after testifying, I was elected to the Washington Independent Writers (WIW) board of directors. In June 1981, I was elected WIW president, the same year as the landmark American Writers Congress in New York and the formation of the National Writers Union.

Ron, who faithfully served as general counsel for WIW without pay, attended every board meeting and performed all tasks that the board and membership asked of him. During my turbulent year as president, Ron and I never had a single disagreement. In fact, as my occasional literary agent, he represented and sold three of my 10 published books.

David O. Stewart, another prominent and respected Washington attorney and author, told me, “Ron was a steadfast cheerleader for the Washington Independent Review of Books. He was very loyal to anything connected to WIW.”

Throughout his life and in everything he did, Ron Goldfarb — who, by the way, loved the music of the late French jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani — always made a difference. He was sui generis, aka “one of a kind.”

[Photo by Dan E. Moldea.]

Dan E. Moldea is a bestselling author, independent investigative journalist, and registered private investigator.