All Saints Cemetery

Frank” Higgins went from being valedictorian at Fenwick High School in Oak Park to straight-A student at the College of the Holy Cross to Harvard Law School.Then, for more than half a century, he was a litigator in Chicago with the law firm of Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, now K&L Gates.Mr. Higgins died Saturday of vascular dementia at Symphony of Lincoln Park care center, relatives said. He was 81.His father Frank J. Higgins Sr. was a courtroom bailiff and Chicago building inspector. His mother Lois was a pioneering police officer who rose to head the Illinois Crime Prevention Bureau, where she lectured on the dangers of drugs and testified before Congress. They met in court and married in 1935.Two years later, the city was planning to offer the first policewoman’s exam in two decades. After her husband laughed about it, she took it and placed first out of 1,119 women who did.The couple raised their family near Madison and Cicero. Young Frank played at Moore Park and went on to graduate tops in the class of 1954 at Fenwick.While attending Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, he traveled to France’s Brittany Coast to study French. Languages came easily to him. He was able to converse in several, including Arabic, French, Italian, German, Polish and Spanish, relatives said.At the law firm, he did defense work for major corporate clients, handling complex cases involving securities fraud, antitrust litigation, proxy fights and hostile takeovers. He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and the International Chamber of Commerce and became a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers.“What would be career cases for many lawyers have merely been cases in the career of Frank Higgins,” partner John W. Rotunno said when Mr. Higgins hit the half-century mark at K&L Gates.Mr. Higgins had a command of the law and a gift for oratory, according to Rotunno. “He had a dominant, overpowering intellect,” he said. “He had an encyclopedic knowle...