In the 1960s, Joseph F. Lewis brought the national spotlight to Sunnyvale with his innovative twist on the nightclub scene and his fight for civil rights in the courtroom.

Lewis, a longtime Sunnyvale businessman with a variety of interests, died Jan. 14 at 85, but not before leaving his mark on Murphy Avenue. From Murphy Avenue, Lewis practiced law, ran for state senator and opened the area's only Batman-themed night club.

"He could envision things and see opportunities when other people couldn't see them," said his son Garth Lewis, one of Lewis' four children.

Lewis made his debut on Sunnyvale's Murphy Avenue after he began practicing law in 1953 and opened a law office there.

He ventured into the club scene in the early 1960s when the Whisky A Go Go clubs in Los Angeles and Chicago were all the rage. Lewis decided to capitalize on the concept. He traded his apartment in San Jose for an old bank building where the Town Center now sits and opened a Whisky A Go Go in Sunnyvale.

According to Garth, the act was "a bold move and a risky investment," but it was an investment that paid off as he breathed new life into the nightclub scene, he said. When the craze began to fade, Lewis revamped the club into a scene straight out of a comic book.

"My dad was wracking his brain about what the next adventure should be and I said,`Why don't you make it a Batman [club]?,' " said Garth, who was an avid reader of the comic at age 10.

Lewis soon transformed the space into Wayne Manor, a Batman-themed nightclub, just as the television cartoon was created to accompany the comic book.

The club got the attention of Life Magazine in 1966 and a San Francisco columnist, who both wrote of the vibrant colors and dÂŽcor at the Sunnyvale club.

Lines stretched a block long on weekends to get into the club where Batman sold tickets at the front door, The Joker was the maitre d' and drinks like the "batini" were served by Batgirls.

"My dad had extraordinary creative energy and intelligence," Garth said.

Lewis even orchestrated a mock campaign to change the name of Sunnyvale to Gotham City, which kept the club in the media for weeks.

Garth remembers his father giving the four children credit for the idea and took the family on a trip to New York as a "thank you." "It was a nice gesture that made us feel involved and appreciated. That is the kind of man that he was," Garth said.

The timelines are unclear, but Lewis left the club scene behind a few years later and moved to San Francisco.

The building was later torn down to make way for the Town Center project.

Prior to his involvement in Sunnyvale nightlife, Lewis served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946.

He was a personal injury lawyer and ran for state Senate in 1962. Lewis garnered 52 percent of the vote in Sunnyvale, but lost the overall election.

He was active in the civil rights and anti-war movements. He was key in a San Francisco case where Lewis was a witness to a violent scene between student protestors and police. He created a rebuttal to a government documentary stating students were to blame. At the end of the case, the student was acquitted.

"The more I learn about his life, the more impressed and proud of him I become," Garth said.

Lewis is survived by four children: Todd Lewis; Garth Lewis; Shaun Egbert and J. Scott Lewis; and his wife, Margaret Boddie Lewis.