John and Yoko’s personal lawyer also helped establish NY’s College of Optometry.
Morton L. Kimmelman (1918-1983)
Before John Lennon was shot and killed in 1980, he was building a real estate empire, represented by Morton L. Kimmelman, a founding partner in the Manhattan law firm of Kimmelman, Sexter & Sobel. According to newspaper stories at the time, Lennon owned a shorefront home in Cold Spring Harbor, a seven-bedroom house on the water in Palm Beach, Florida, two upstate New York dairy farms, a couple of waterfront mansions in Virginia, and 28 rooms in the exclusive Dakota co-op apartments on Central Park West, where he lived with Yoko Ono and their son, Sean.
Morton, the Lennon family’s personal attorney, wouldn’t comment on the former Beatle’s financial empire, but said the complicated estate would be probated “in due course.”
In 1975, Yoko told a Daily News reporter they had retained Morton and his partners, but fired their other business managers, agents, and lawyers. “It took us about a year to get them out,” Yoko said, “but we cleaned up all the mess.” After John’s death, Morton’s law firm and its offshoots continued to represent The Spirit Foundations, the charity Yoko founded with John.
Morton Lester Kimmelman was born in Queens on July 12, 1918, to Nathan and Selma Mandel Kimmelman, Austrian immigrants. He had a younger sister, Frances. He and Evelyn Martin were married in Manhattan in February 1942 and moved to Valley Stream, Long Island. Evelyn, the daughter of Samuel and Rebecca Martin, was born in Jersey City in May 1922. She graduated from Snyder High in 1938, where she was a member of the Nature Hiking Club and the Sans Souci Club.
Morton enlisted in the Navy during World War II, and served as a lieutenant in the photo service, capturing images of sailors and the Navy’s fleet of warships. He was honorably discharged on December 15, 1945.
Evelyn and Morton had a son, Warren, and a daughter, Susan. Susan was a dancer, choreographer, writer, and activist in Chicago. She co-founded both the Dance Center at Columbia College and MoMing, a modern dance company. She also established Cloud Hands Tai Chi studio and co-wrote Tai Chi Ch’uan: The Technique of Power with Tem Horowitz, a writer and director she married in 1978. Susan died of a heart attack in August 2001 at age 53.
Among Morton’s clients were the New York State Optometric Association and the Optometric Center of New York. He and Dr. Alden N. Haffner, executive director of the Optometric Center, became close friends, according to associates at the college, and worked together in 1971 to get state legislation passed establishing the SUNY College of Optometry on West 42nd Street in Manhattan.
The college was desperately needed after Columbia University closed its optometry school in 1976, explained Dr. Haffner, who served two terms—about 25 years in all—as college president. After Morton Kimmelman died in December 1983, Dr. Haffner established the Morton L. Kimmelman Memorial Award at the college.
Morton’s wife, Evelyn, also memorialized him with the Morton L. Kimmelman Fund at The New York Community Trust, which has helped nonprofits such as Mission Be and Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York. Evelyn died in December 2012.