WASHINGTON — Illinois-based attorney Christopher Cohen’s loves talking about his father. Wilbur Cohen, a professor-turned-dean at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, was the first employee of the Social Security Administration and a longtime federal public servant.
Wilbur came to UM in 1969 as the dean of the School of Education after a long career in the federal government. He partly created the Great Society program under President Lyndon Johnson, as well as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
He’s also the namesake of a federal building in Washington, D.C…