From the archives: LI native fronts battle for Elian

This article was originally published in Newsday on April 3, 2000

A white-haired man, his mouth almost agape, lingered in the doorway of a Cuban restaurant as a thick-bearded, balding attorney in a yarmulke swept past him.

By then, Spencer Eig had gotten used to that sort of stare-part amazement, part adoration-just as he had felt almost comfortable signing his autograph on napkins and accepting the thanks of strangers who recognized him as a lawyer for Elian Gonzalez' Miami relatives.

Before Eig could reach his table, the restaurant owner waylaid him with a handshake, and a Miami Beach official, Frank Pintado, sprang up to greet him.

Eig, a 39-year-old Merrick native, is David, slinging stones at a Goliath known as the federal government to keep Elian from returning to communist Cuba, where his father waits, and its president, Fidel Castro, who has been demanding his return. For four months, Eig has been trying to outwit his old outfit, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, where he often argued against granting asylum.

"I had a perfect desire to take on Fidel Castro," said Eig. "I had no desire to take on the feds. They just came on the wrong side."

Today, Eig and a team of attorneys begin a third day of negotiations with INS lawyers. The government has set tomorrow as the deadline for the 6-year- old shipwreck survivor's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez to sign a promise to hand him over to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, if the Miami relatives lose the appeal for an asylum hearing.

Last week, Castro announced the father was ready to go to the United States to take back the boy. Elian's mother and 10 others drowned trying to flee Cuba for the United States, in an accident that left Elian clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast.

Elian's story struck a chord in Eig, even before the Gonzalez family spokesman, Armando Gutierrez, a political ally of Eig's, approached him to take the case. Gutierrez knew Eig as a good attorney sympathetic to the Cuban exile cause.

Eig, a father of three, saw it as a humanitarian cause, not just for the motherless child but for the world, a chance to drive out the remaining " little pockets" of totalitarianism-and that meant Castro.

Eig has hated communism since his teens, when he read "The Gulag Archipelago" by Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As a teen, he used his debate club skills to warn of the dangers of communism.

Spencer's poise and wide knowledge impressed neighbor Jerome Medowar, who suggested he join the Young Republicans. "I thought this was a good place to develop his skills," said Medowar, a retired family court judge who still lives in Merrick.

Like yeast to bread, the Young Republicans expanded Spencer's political ambitions. He invited President Richard Nixon to his bar mitzvah, and because his mother didn't seem to take arrangements seriously, he said to her, "But you don't understand. When the president arrives, at least 20 Secret Service agents arrive."

Eig earned an international relations degree from the University of Virginia in 1982 and a law degree from the University of Georgia in 1985. While studying for his bar exam, he worked as an intern for Rep. Norman Lent of Nassau. His work for Republican candidates won him appointments to posts in the Education and Justice Departments under Ronald Reagan and a slot on George Bush's transition team.

During his D.C. years, Eig became an Orthodox Jew, a departure from the Reform movement of his childhood. In his studies, he came across Hasidic philosophy that he said has been a source of strength in the custody fight with the INS. According to Rabbi Nachman, an 18th-Century religious figure from Breslov, Ukraine, "The world is an extremely narrow bridge, but the important thing to remember is never to have any fear, never to have any fear at all."

Eig said fearlessness and faith came a little easier to him because he had grown up in 1960s Long Island, which he remembered as "practically an idyllic place where there were practically no threats."

As the morale officer of the Gonzalez legal camp, Eig has tried to raise any lagging spirits by writing the rabbi's saying on documents for team members.

"He's fearless," said colleague Kendall Coffey. "Every time there's the sense of crisis, which has been almost continual, he always stays very strong. "

Eig left the capital for New Orleans to work in the U.S. attorney's office before heading to Florida about six years ago, spending five years with the INS, where his wife, Atara, now works part time as a lawyer.

As a Miami Beach resident, Eig served on Dade County's zoning appeals board, an unpaid position. When a 40-story high-rise was built in his neighborhood, Eig ran for city commission. He lost.

Last June, a few months after his father died, Eig left the government to open up a one-man private practice. By then he and his wife had two children, Miriam Malka, now 3, and Menachem Mendel, now about 18 months old. A daughter, Tzvia Rose, was born in January.

"I think he wanted a bigger challenge," his sister Robin Eig said. "I think he wanted to be stimulated."

As for himself, Eig said he won't go after any political dreams any time soon. "After this, I have no immediate goals for other intense, unpaid activity," he said.

Not long ago, his friend Robert Rosenwasser asked Eig if he wanted to run for city commissioner again and Eig began talking about a higher office: Dade County commissioner. Rosenwasser said the Elian case "will ingratiate him in the Cuban community, whose constituents he would need to gain office."

There's no end in sight to Elian's dilemma.

"I'm going to give it no more than 12 more years," Eig joked. "When Elian turns 18, he's on his own."