When you meet Robert M. Morgenthau, it feels like nothing has changed. His office on the 31st floor of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is as messy as ever. His assistant, Ida Van Lindt, is still with him after 44 years. The photos of him with John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson still adorn the wall. And they still call him boss. But of course, a decade has passed since Morgenthau, New York City's longest-serving district attorney, was one of the most feared men in America. And it's no surprise that as he approaches his 100th birthday, he has had to make some concessions to age. His booming voice is gone, he whizzes around in a wheelchair and he no longer jumps rope with the kids in the Police Athletic League programs. Nevertheless, there is one point on which he is adamant. It is too late to retire. "My grandfather used to say opportunity comes to everyone. The secret is to recognize it and not let it go by. I didn't recognize the opportunity and let it go," he confides in an interview last week with the Law Journal. When was that? "At age 65 or 70," he replies. Are you sorry you didn't retire? "No," he says and for just a minute the booming voice is back and the blue eyes twinkle. "It's always been a pleasure for me to go to work." In contrast to the years when he was a constant presence on the nightly news and the model for DA Adam Schiff on "Law & Order," Morgenthau hasn't been in the spotlight nearly as much at Wachtell. But that's changing in a big way as admirers celebrate his 100th birthday at eight different events. The Fund for Modern Courts honored him last Wednesday. Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who bestowed the John J. McCloy Memorial Award on him, enthused: "It is no exaggeration to say that there is no one in the history of this nation who has done more over a lifetime to serve the public than he. "At a time when immigrants have been under siege, he has championed the rights of immigrants," Katzmann said. "He has spoken on behalf of veterans, on behalf of inmates on death row, in support of pleas for clemency, maintaining his high level of activity with organizations like the Police Athletic League and the Museum of Jewish Heritage." Last Thursday night, he was roasted by about 100 assistant U.S. attorneys who worked for him from the time he was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to 1970 when he was forced out by Richard M. Nixon.

On June 17, the Manhattan District Attorneys' Association will fete him. Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is planning to be there. Sotomayor worked for Morgenthau when he was DA, as did Gov. Andrew Cuomo, John F. Kennedy Jr., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cyrus Vance Jr. All told, he supervised 3.5 million prosecutions, including  John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, subway vigilante Bernie Goetz and preppie killer Robert Chambers.

As he approaches his 100th birthday, Morgenthau still works almost every day from Wachtell's offices on West 52nd St. or from his Upper East Side home. His mission now is to inspire young attorneys to understand the plight of immigrants and the less fortunate.

"I remind them what immigrants did for New York and the nation and how important it is to welcome immigrants as part of our tradition and not turn them away," he says. He sees no contradiction between his defense of immigrants, support of a death row inmate, his pleas for clemency and his career as a prosecutor. He says that even as a prosecutor he championed the little guy, shifting resources from investigations of small-time thieves to white-collar criminals. He is proud that his vigorous prosecutions helped push the murder rate down 90% during his 35 years in office, making New York City safer for everyone. He says he developed his appreciation for common people when he enlisted in the Navy while still an undergraduate at Amherst College. "When you're on a destroyer, you're really in close quarters and you try to find the best in people and not the worst," he says. As the executive officer and navigator aboard the USS Lansdale when it was torpedoed and sunk by German aircraft in April 1944, he still finds the attack difficult to discuss without choking back tears. Some 200 men were blown into the Mediterranean off the coast of North Africa. Reports differ but 40 some odd men died despite frantic attempts to rescue them. Another ship in the convoy that day, the USS Paul Hamilton, was carrying ammunition and all 580 men died when it was struck and exploded. Born in New York City in 1919, Robert M. Morgenthau is the son of Elinor and Henry Morgenthau Jr., who as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury helped craft the New Deal. The younger Morgenthau, who grew up near the Roosevelts' home in Hyde Park, got to know the president and his wife Eleanor well. "People would ask why didn't Roosevelt bomb Auschwitz," Morgenthau, a supporter of Jewish causes, says during the interview. "The answer was the Air Force was busy bombing priority targets and that didn't include Auschwitz." After the war, Morgenthau attended Yale Law School. He worked in private practice in New York City until he was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1963, he brought his top assistant U.S. attorney, Silvio Mollo, down to D.C. for a meeting on organized crime with Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Mollo hadn't had a chance to meet Kennedy before that day. Morgenthau and Mollo joined Kennedy and his wife Ethel at their home for lunch. They had New England clam chowder and tuna fish sandwiches and sat by the pool, Morgenthau said. The phone rang. It was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover with the heartbreaking news that  JFK had been shot in Dallas. Morgenthau and Mollo were ushered to a study while Bobby closed himself in his home office. Less than a half hour later, Bobby remerged to say John F. Kennedy was dead.   Read More: Paul Weiss Partner, Who Retired 35 Years Ago, Still Works in Office at Age 106 Law Firms Ease Mandatory Retirement Policies, but Tensions Remain Herb Rubin, Who Argued 'World-wide Volkswagen,' Isn't Ready to Retire at Age 100