BRUCE PEARSALL

                                     Deputy Nassau County Attorney

C. Bruce Pearsall, a large, gregarious and humor-filled politician who at one time represented
half of a short-live but spectacular "reform faction" in the Nassau Republican Party, died Saturday
at Winthrop Hospital, Mineola. At the time of his death, Mr. Pearsall, 66, was deputy Nassau County
attorney in charge of property-tax protests.

Mr. Pearsall made headline in 1959 when he and his long time friend Edwin Fehrenbach called on
Nassau's two top Republicans, men who had established national reputations in the party, to resign.
But the leaders, Leonard W. Hall, the Oyster Bay Town chairman who later was to become head of
the national Republican Party and J. Russel Sprague, father of the nationally renowed county
organization and a statewide power, refused to do so. Hall and Sprague prevailed easily, and
Mr. Pearsall and Fehrenbach gave up their positions.

After a cooling-down period, both Mr. Pearsall and Fehrenbach made comebacks within the party
organization. Their complaint had been that the communities in which they were local leaders--
Mr. Pearsall in Amityville-Massapequa and Fehrenbach in Bethpage--were not being recognized
for patronage by the exising powers.

Fehrenbach, a retired banker now living in Florida, eventually concentrated on a legislative career
in the State Assembly, while Mr. Pearsall became Oyster Bay Town leader, a post he held in
the mid-1960's.

John Kinston, a Mineola lawyer and former Assembly majority leader, said Mr. Pearsall had "a great
political mind." At one point in the 1960's, Mr. Pearsall oversaw the daily operations of the Nassau GOP
when then-county chairman, Joseph F. Carlino, was tied up with his job as Assembly speaker in
Albany. He and Carlino were law partners for a time.

Mr. Pearsall, who stood 6 feet, 4 inches tall, would have been the last person in the world to call
himself a party reformer, at least in a dogooder sense of the phrase. He was fond of saying, "There
are only two types of people in politics, the selfish and the unreasonably selfish."

A conserative Republican and an ex-Marine Corps captain, he became an outspoken critic in
the 1960s of an intrusion into the party by the Far Right, specifically the John Birch Society.

He always had pragmatic advice tinged with political philosophy. A sample: "Don't vote
blindly. If you think a guy is stupid or a crook or too far to the right or to the left, then vote against
him. But if you don't know your candidates, vote for your party."

As a delegate at the 1964 GOP national convention, which nominated Barry Goldwater for president,
Mr. Pearsall was shocked and disappointed by an anti-New York attitude he found among many
Republicans.

He is survived by his wife, Virginia of Garden City; two sons, Carlton B. Jr. and Jeffrey P.; a
daughter, Diana P. Williams, and two grandchildren. Mr. Pearsall was cremated.

Source:
Newsday, July 16, 1987