The JAG Vietnam Reunion


Last night, we had our first full blown reunion of JAGs that served in Vietnam.  There have been other reunions, but this was the first that included everyone.  It was held at the Hilton Garden Hotel in Fairfax, Virginia.  JAGs showed up from every corner of this country.  The number from California was remarkable.  Chuck Spradling, Barry Steinberg and Bill Suter were principally responsible for making this reunion happen.

We had about 80 JAGs, plus their wives and friends.  It was not a riotous affair, but it was great.  Thank goodness, the organizers judiciously scrubbed the wet t-shirt contest.  I guess the younger JAGs in attendance were in their mid-sixties, but those in the seventies and eighties were well represented.  Energy dissipates, but not spirit.  Spirit sores.

We were seated, to a great extent, by the units we served with.  There were so many JAGs present who were with the 1st Air Cavalry Division that we took up two plus tables.  The 1st Air Cav could deploy most of the division through the air.  This lead to the motto, “Freed forever from the tyranny of terrain.”  This lead my boss, Lieutenant Colonel Ron Holdaway, back in 1970, to poke his head out of the office tent during one of our nastier monsoon storms and say, “Ah yes, freed forever from the tyranny of terrain.”

Our guest speaker was Fred Borch, the Army JAG historian.  He had been instructed not to speak over ten minutes  I think that’s a bit harsh to tell an historian not to speak over ten minutes.  I think we should have given him at least twelve minutes.

Fred did provide us with some remarkable information.  We had JAGs in country from 1959 to 1975.  Of course, in the early years, they were very few and they were part of a military advisory group.  And, toward the end, we had just a few closing doors and turning out the lights.  The vast majority were from 66-67 to 70-71.  Fred advised us that his research determined that 352 JAGs served in Vietnam.  John Hatcher, who was sitting next to me and served as one of my captains was quite impressed that he was part of such a small number.  I thought about that and decided that within a few years, we may be placed on the endangered species list.  I think what that means is that developers will not be permitted to encroach upon our habitat.  I am not sure that will solve our problems.

When we were in Vietnam, there were only two places you could be.  One was “in country,” which meant you were in Vietnam and the other was back in the “World,” which meant you were anyplace other than Vietnam.  The airplanes taking soldiers back to the World were called, “Freedom Birds.”  Toward the end of my tour, the 1st Air Cav headquarters moved from Phouc Vinh to Ben Hoa.  My second boss, Lieutenant Colonel Joe Conboy and I used to drive out by the airport and watch the Freedom Birds take off.  It was relaxing.  It was sort of like stretching out in your den with a brandy and listening to your favorite music.

It is now Sunday morning and there are no pills in my idiot pill container.  My idiot pill container handles two weeks for me.  It makes sure that I take the right pills on the right day.  No double dipping.  I need to get out my pill bottles and load up.  So enough of this JAG Vietnam nostalgia.  I’m back to the serious stuff.

Mizzou Law Professors (Continued)


After writing my last article on my law professors, I thought I would get it out of my system.  I didn’t.  The thoughts keep flooding in.  Even though these experiences happened over 40 years ago, some are as vivid as yesterday.  And, each year, the stories enlarge and get better.

I mentioned in my last blog that Torts was also a six-hour, year-long course.  It was taught by Dean McCleary.  He had been the dean from 1939 to 1958 (I arrived in 1959).  Any number of times during the course of the year, he would hand out true-false questions.  Each time he would hand them out, he would say, “This is something I prepared for the boys coming home from the war [no, not the Korean War].  They might be helpful to you, but you will probably never see them again.”  I found out late in the second semester, by accident, from an upperclassman, that the true-false questions were always on the final exam.  All of them.  He told me the questions were always the same.  Sometimes the answers changed.

One day in class, Dean McCleary called on me.  I just didn’t hear the question.  So, I said, “I’m sorry sir, what was that?”  Dean McCleary didn’t hear too well and he responded, “That’s right, a question of fact,” and fired another question at me.  The good news for me was that as Dean McCleary asked each question, he would nod his head up and down or sideways.  All I had to do was observe his head and answer the question accordingly.  I must have answered a dozen questions, all correctly, without having a clue as to what he was talking about.

In the previous article, I mentioned Professor “Rosie the Goose” Anderson.  Rosie taught Remedies and his exams were notorious.  Upperclassmen told me that you had to make sure you inserted the magic words in answering his exams.  The trouble was, no one knew the magic words.  The day before the exam, he went to the chalk board to discuss it.  He wrote an 80 on the board and said, “There are 80 points in the exam.  If you get 60 of them, you get an “A.”  If you get 40, you get a “B.”  I felt like I was listening to a pitch man at the carnival.  “Come right up and knock over the pins and you take home a Kewpie Doll.”  I vaguely remember Rosie saying that 28 points will get you a “C.”

After the exam, I checked and Rosie gave out one “A” and two “B”s.  The rest of the class got “C”s and “D”s.  So much for the 50% “B.”  We were still looking for the magic words.

I participated in the light opera spoof of the faculty.  I was to play Professor Willard L. Eckhardt.  Professor Eckhardt was renowned throughout the state for his treaties on real property law.  He co-authored his books with Professor Peterson.  Professor Eckhardt wore a 1940’s type hat with a wide brim.  I needed to find such a hat for the performance, but wasn’t having much luck.  Then, a few weeks before the performance, Professor Eckhardt approached me and offered me one of his older wide-brimmed hats.  It was the real deal.

I played Eck and Hank Westbrooke played Pete (Professor Peterson).  We sang our song to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore.  The issue addressed was who should be the dean.  Our lyrics went like this:

    I’m Eck, I’m Pete, Co-authors we
    The Keaton and Prosser of the Faculty
    If we keep on writing at our present pace
    We’ll outsell Tobacco Road and Peyton Place.

    Together we’re twice as witty and wise
    As any one of these other guys.

    We collaborate on our books it’s true
    But it’s not hard to figure where the credit’s due
    I work day and night and I never miss a thing
    Yes, watching the construction on the new west wing.

    Two deans is what this school requires
    Yes, one for the boozers and one for the dry’s.

Then came the Finale with every performer singing.

    Now you may question the propriety
    Of our castigation of the faculty
    And we realize with some remorse
    That the Dean and the professors have the last recourse.

    But, if we succeeded to amuse you all
    We really don’t object to flunking out at all.

                           FINIS

Law School Professors at MIZZOU


It doesn’t take much to get a lawyer talking about his law school professors.  During that three-year law school experience, the law professors were bigger than life.  I have heard so many times a lawyer tell me, “I don’ think anybody can match the cast of characters I had as law professors.”  After hearing that often enough, I decided that maybe my situation wasn’t unique.  But, then I thought, they didn’t have Rosie the Goose or the Gray Fox.

Professor Anderson was referred to as Rosie the Goose.  It may have had to do with the way his head moved up and down when he talked – or perhaps the high pitched squawks that came out while he explained a point.  He taught Remedies and I never figured out what he was getting at.  One day while we were waiting for him to arrive, a third year student stepped to the front of the classroom and put a large egg in the professor’s seat.  I suspected it was a goose egg, but don’t know that I had ever seen one.  It was clearly too large to be a chicken egg.  The student ducked into the back of the room and in came Rosie.

He stopped as he got to his seat.  I guess examining the seat before sitting comes from years of teaching experience.  He starred at the egg.  There were snickers running around the room.  Not me.  I was holding my breath and hoping nothing bad would happen to me as a member of the irreverent class.  Rosie picked up the egg and examined it.  He then exclaimed in his high pitched voice, “I presume this was laid by the last professor.”  The class roared and that seemed to please Rosie.  When the class finally settled down, we returned to the study of law.

Professor William H. Pittman was the Gray Fox.  He was very distinguished looking with gray to white hair and mustache.  By the time I was a student, we probably should have called him the White Fox.  But, in fact, he was universally known just as the Fox.

The Fox taught first year Contracts.  It was a six hour course – three hours the first semester and three hours the second semester.  The problem was there was only one exam and it came at the end of the year.  So you would go the entire year without knowing how you were doing (Torts was the same).  It made for a long anxious year.

The Fox, like most professors of that time, used the Socratic method of teaching.  He would call on a student to recite on a particular case and then pose questions to the student until the student was unable to construct a thought.  When he called on me I was clueless.  The issue was what constitutes the acceptance to an offer.  I had done my homework.  I knew the facts.  I knew the court’s rationale.  And, further, I knew that the present day law was consistent with the court’s opinion.  But, the Fox kept showing me that the court’s opinion didn’t make sense.  I would agree with him.  Then, he would ask me what the present day law was and we would start the cycle over again.  Finally, he called on someone else.  I felt foolish, but relieved.

The Fox also could lean way back in his chair and while looking at the chalk board upside down, write clearly.  It didn’t help.  Contracts just didn’t make any sense.  We were told by upperclassmen that we would wake up on Easter morning and it would all become clear.  Easter came and went.  Nothing was clear.  How far could I get with “a contract consists of an offer, an acceptance and consideration?”

I went to see Professor Pittman.  I think I told him that while I was preparing everyday, it just wasn’t coming together for me.  He was very pleasant and we talked for about twenty minutes (he talking – me listening).  I think what he was telling me was that he considered his role in the classroom not to teach me Contracts, but to teach me how to think.  The problem was the the final exam would expect me to know Contracts.  I went out and bought a Contracts hornbook.

Sometime toward the end of the second semester, I was shocked when I heard a student tell the Fox, “Professor, that doesn’t make any sense.”  I never heard the Fox raise his voice.  He just quietly said, “What do you mean?”  The student said, “If the facts are one way and you get the results of this case, then if you change all the facts to the other way, you will get the opposite result.”  The Fox said, “Can you give me an example?”  The student paused, then said, “If you have a force moving in one direction and you get one result, then, if the force moves in exactly the opposite direction, you will get exactly the opposite result.”  The Fox smiled and said, “Try that on the door when you leave.”  The door only opened in one direction.

As I said earlier, I never heard the Fox raise his voice.  Plus, he would write on the board without leaving his chair.  His lay back approach to teaching law was noted when, in my second year, the students put on a “light opera” spoofing the faculty.  Here is what we sang about the Fox.  “Conserving strength for the days ahead, teaching all his law, like he’s tucked in bed.”

I graduated with very close to a “B” average.  But I never fooled the Fox.  He gave me all “C’s.”

California Gold Coast – Tauck Tour # 18


Carole and I just got back from a twelve-day vacation in California.  We traveled with a tour group called Tauck World Discovery.  We have previously used Tauck to go to Australia/New Zealand, Ireland, the Canadian Rockies and Hawaii (and a few more places).  They are not cheap, but you stay at great hotels (for example, we stayed at the Ahwahnee Lodge at Yosemite), and you come away really feeling good about your vacation.  It is obvious that careful consideration goes into all of their tours.

California Gold Coast – Tauck Tour # 18

We started in San Francisco, and we looked around the city,
Then, over the Golden Gate Bridge, Sonoma Valley was the ditty.
We swirled and we sniffed, we viewed and we tasted,
They brought out more bottles, but nothing was wasted.

Then on to Yosemite and what the heck,
Searched El Capitan for climbers, got a crick in our neck.
But the time raced by, we had to leave soon,
But at least we ate breakfast with a raccoon.

In the San Joaquin Valley, we saw the crops grow,
Peaches and walnuts and grapes don’t you know.
Silage, pomegranates, pistachios and such,
Almonds, alfalfa, plums, figs – it’s too much.

Monterey and Carmel, the whole area is cool,
Make sure when you start out, your wallet is full.
Pebble Beach is fantastic, the golf course brings glee,
And to top it all off, the score cards are free.

Big Sur was foggy and scary to boot,
As Bob made the turns, we all began to root.
But then we were startled, each person turned their head,
When Carole announced, the elephant seals were dead.
The Hearst Castle was special, it really did swing,
But stay on the carpet and don’t touch anything.

Los Angles was clear, what a beautiful day,
No smog, but bad traffic, what can you say?
The Getty, the Getty, an incredible smash,
Look all you want, just don’t use a flash.

We wrapped in San Diego and visited the zoo,
We saw more plants and animals than we could ever chew.
The tour was a big success, Mike’s leadership was great,
We made lots of friends and no one was ever late!
So here’s a toast to Tour 18, we knew it couldn’t last,
We’ll say goodbye tomorrow, it really was a blast.