Dean Okrand is an Emmy-winning sound re-recording mixer, husband and father of two adult daughters. His own father was Fred Okrand, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California for more than 60 years, and its first legal director. Fred, born in 1917, died in 2002 at 84.
“My father definitely inspired my own political life. He was extremely fair-minded and socially conscious. When World War II started, he fought against the internment of Japanese-Americans. When he returned from the service, he was able to get citizenship reinstated for those of Japanese ancestry who had lost that during the war. I remember at Christmastime, flowers would show up on our doorstep from Japanese-American people he represented. And when we were in Little Tokyo, people would stop to thank him.
My father took on many unpopular issues. When he walked down the street near his office in downtown L.A., there were people who crossed to the other side to avoid him.
Since the ACLU couldn’t pay him very well, he made extra money by representing gangsters — always in civil liberties cases. When Mickey Cohen was being harassed by the Los Angeles Police Department, he hired my father. Dad said if they wanted to arrest somebody, they needed evidence; they couldn’t just hassle the person. I remember a guy would come to our house at night with a brown paper bag filled with cash to pay my father. My mom would take my brother and me to the back of the house because she was afraid of the gangsters.
I remember Dad working hard at home, writing and doing research for his cases. But he always had time for the family. At my Little League games, he not only rooted for me, but also for kids on the other team, to get a hit. That’s the kind of guy he was. He just wanted everyone to have a good time.
Through his whole life, my father was fighting for the underdog, and that influenced how I look at things — that people of privilege have enough, and we should make sure others have their fair share.”
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