Joseph W. Bartunek, a World War II veteran, was serving his first term in the Ohio Senate when he decided to study law at his father’s alma mater. Otto J. Bartunek (1916) and his son were members of a family of Bohemian extraction who had been involved in state politics for decades. Joseph Bartunek was elected to the Ohio Senate first in 1949 and again in 1960. He resigned from the Senate in 1964 to run successfully for the Cuyahoga County Probate Court—but not before he had authored the bill that proposed the creation of Cleveland State University. Bartunek was one of the first members appointed to the CSU board and, along with U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Krenzler, was a principal advocate of the law school’s 1969 merger with the city’s new public university: Cleveland-Marshall College of Law of Cleveland State University. In 1986, Bartunek was appointed United States District Court Magistrate Judge, Northern District of Ohio; he retired in 1998.