A co-founder of the biweekly Texas Observer, who inherited strong liberal views that never wavered, Eckhardt died Tuesday at Seton Medical Center after suffering a massive stroke last the weekend. He was 88.

Newspaper columnist Molly Ivins said Eckhardt had attended a party at her home in South Austin just before Halloween.

"He was the author of the War Powers Act," she said, "and he had been consistently troubled that presidents would wade us into foreign military adventures without having a chance to have a wider debate."

He once told a newspaper reporter that he thought the Vietnam War was at the heart of many of American's modern problems.

Bob Eckhardt

Born in 1913, Eckhardt's father was an Austin family physician who took pigs and chickens as payment. His mother was prominent for her work in charitable causes. The son would become a lawyer after a stint as editor of the Ranger, the University of Texas literary magazine, for which he was also a cartoonist, a specialty he retained for family and friends for many years.

A graduate of the UT Law School, Eckhardt's specialty was labor law at a time when there was little state or federal labor case law to go on. So, representing the AFL-CIO and the Communications Workers of America, he helped make it.

He served in the Army Air Corps in World War II, then went back to practicing law. He continued practicing while serving as a Democrat in the Texas Legislature from 1959 to 1965.

"When he was in the Lege he was helping with cases to force schools for Hispanics to have parity with white schools," recalled his daughter, Sarah Eckhardt of Austin. "When someone complained about it to his mother, she replied, 'It's all my fault. I raised him as a Christian.' "

The state law he was best known for was the statute that opened beaches to the public and barred them from private ownership, his daughter said.

"He drove a VW bug and he pulled a little trailer behind it with liquor crates with his files in them, and then he would go on the floor of the House and stack those up by him," said Tony Korioth, who served with Eckhardt.

When he won a seat for Congress in 1966, it was as a Democrat representing a conservative district filled with petrochemical plants.

"Conservatives in Houston cut him slack a long time after they would have for anyone else," said former U.S. Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Lufkin. "He was always thought of as being special by a lot of different people. But he finally ran out his string there."

The federal legislation Eckhardt may have been most proud of the Toxic Substances Act, which enabled the federal cleanup program now known as Superfund.

In Washington, Eckhardt was known for his incongruous Southern plantation style: a deep drawl, white linen suits, white hats, bow ties, and weaving through Washington traffic on a bicycle. He married three times.

His daughter said he was defeated in the conservative electoral sweep of 1980 that elected Ronald Reagan president.

"He had great charm and a very interesting mind," Ivins said. "He was absolutely not worth dog on any kind of practical aspect of life. If Bob had not been taken care of by good women all his life, he'd have been totally nonfunctional."

Co-author with Yale University law professor Charles Black of the 1976 book "The Tides of Power," Eckhardt was working on another book about the War Powers Act, to be called "Who Determines War," when he died.

His death was a surprise to Jamie Anderson, owner of Anderson's Coffee, a neighbor in the Central Austin neighborhood of Clarksville where Eckhardt had a treehouse where he liked to compose essays or work on his book.

"He was just in the store a few days ago," Anderson said.

Eckhardt is survived by three daughters, two stepdaughters and two stepsons.

Visitation will from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home, 3125 N. Lamar Blvd., with services there at 1 p.m. Saturday and burial to follow in Austin Memorial Park.

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