Van Pearlberg, a longtime prosecutor, former Marietta councilman and beloved stage actor who knew no stranger, died Saturday night.
Irvan “Van” Alan Pearlberg, who served as an assistant attorney general, directing the Georgia Medicaid Fraud Division, until his retirement last year, was born in Brooklyn, New York on Feb. 2, 1951, to Lawrence and Marion Pearlberg.
He came south to attend the John Marshall Law School in Atlanta and stuck around, making Marietta his home as much as any native, according to Sam Olens, the former Georgia attorney general who hired Pearlberg to lead the Medicaid Fraud Division.
“From the day he got there, literally, he sought to improve the unit, and he did very much improve the unit,” Olens said.
Pearlberg and Olens went back three decades, often crossing paths in the Cobb legal scene.
Outside of being a top-notch attorney committed to the craft, Olens added, Pearlberg was a mentor to up-and-coming lawyers and relished that role as much as if not more than practicing law himself.
“He loved meeting with young lawyers, talking with young lawyers, giving them the benefit of his years of experience,” Olens said.
Pearlberg was also active in local politics, representing Ward 4 on the Marietta City Council from 2006 to 2012. Former state Rep. Bert Reeves, who worked with Pearlberg in the DA’s office and became a good friend, said he looked to Pearlberg as an example of how to serve in public office.
Olens noted Pearlberg was the opposite of a partisan and sought to do what was best for the city he had come to love.
And no matter the seriousness of his work, and it was for a long time just that — as a prosecutor in the Cobb District Attorney’s Office, where he worked for 25 years, Pearlberg tried murders, assaults and other violent crimes — he constantly sought to entertain, and did a good job of it,…
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