Some time back, I believe when Wayne was a brigadier general in the Army JAG, he married Marie Dommer. Everyone who knew them was delighted for both of them.
Bill and Jeanie Suter had a party for them and everyone was supposed to bring a pound of something as a gift. Now, it is easy to think of a pound of coffee or even a pound of candy, but people had to be pretty imaginative to come up with other pound gifts. When we came up with a pound of potting soil, I figured I had better write a poem.
My favorite Marie story was when Wayne retired to become the Dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Law. They were moving into their new house and Barry Switzer, the OU football coach, came over to say hello. Marie introduced herself and mentioned that Wayne was the new dean of the law school. Barry then said, “I’m Barry Switzer.” Marie said, “Oh, are you also with the university?” I love it!
Ode to a Bad Gift
A pound of this, a pound of that,
What a great idea for the night.
We’ll play them a prank, to hell with his rank,
Maybe we’ll short circuit a light.
Well, we scratched and we fought for an original thought,
Long hours over this we did toil.
But, when nerves grew frail and Dart Drug had a sale,
We decided on potting soil.
While the present may sag and leak through the bag,
And the package becomes very light,
The advantage is clear, it’s quite cheap, my dear,
And that certainly counts when you’re tight.
I ask you, is a gift from the ground fundamentally sound?
It certainly is no panacea.
So to make the gift special, we slipped in the vessel,
A plant called a peperomia.
Now, the plant ain’t so great and its size and its fate,
May never cause people to remark.
But for Wayne and Marie, people shout wild with glee,
It’s a match that will glow in the dark.
So the effort was spent and our idea became bent,
Like a pipe cleaner wrapped to another.
Then it came like a zing, they don’t need anything,
Cause what they got is they got each other.
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Long Distance Decision Making Before the Internet
I am always amazed when I reflect on the whimsical way that significant decisions have been made in my life. In late 1968, I was in the last year of a three-year tour in Germany. I figured I would be sent to the Career Course at the JAG School and then off to Vietnam. Someone in my office, I think John Naughton, showed me a little squib in a JAG monthly publication which said the JAG Corps intended to send a few officers to universities to obtain a masters degree. Anyone interested should let them know. I submitted my name and promptly forgot about it.
On February 10, 1969, I received a letter from the JAG Career Management Office in the Pentagon telling me I had been selected to go to graduate school to obtain an LL.M. in criminal law. The kicker was that I had to select the law school and be enrolled within the fiscal year (that meant enrolled before June 30, 1969!). Remember, this was before emails or fax machines. First Class postal service (snail mail) was the gold standard.
I sent letters to Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford and Texas University. The only things I attached were the letter from Career Management and a copy of my undergraduate and law school transcripts. Then, I just had to wait.
I just took a look at a copy of the letters I sent out. They were dated February 10! It was nice to be married to a legal stenographer. I wrote out the letters and Carole put them in perfect form that very day (did I mention that in law school, I got an A in the Drafting Legal Instruments course?).
Believe it or not, I received a response back from all five schools within two weeks. Both Harvard and Michigan sent me back my correspondence advising me that they did not have summer classes for graduate students and consequently, they could not meet my requirement of being enrolled by 30 June 1969. I always think fondly of those rejections. They could have rejected me for a hundred reasons, but they were kind enough to say they could not meet my requirements. If you’ve got to be rejected by Harvard and Michigan, that’s the way to go.
Northwestern University sent me back a two page letter telling me they had a graduate level criminal law program and that I would fit in nicely. It would include obtaining admission to the Illinois bar and carrying a case load down at the Cook County Jail. Did I mention that I was born and raised in downstate Illinois and really wanted to be a member of the Illinois bar? When I graduated from law school, I did not have time to take the Illinois bar, because of my military obligation.
The word from the University of Texas was also good. The had an experimental project on criminal justice funded by the Ford Foundation. The professor who wrote me said they envisioned using some graduate students and that they were quite interested in me. The problem was his title. He was “Chairman, Special Advisory Committee on Recruiting Law Students From Minority Groups.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it spooked me. I pictured myself being graded against some group under some experimental project. In reflecting back, I think I over reacted, but back then, I didn’t have time to check it out. Texas was out.
The letter from Stanford was the last to be received. It told me that if I had received a “form graduate letter” to please disregard it. It then said that because of the particular requirements of my situation, my request was “receiving special attention” and that I should hear something shortly from Dean Robinson. The letter was definitely positive and I really wanted to go back to California. While I was a Midwest boy, my tour prior to Germany had been in Monterey, California. While I only spent six months at the Presidio of Monterey studying German, California was etched in my mind. It would be easy to get hooked on California. So, again, I waited.
When this drill began, I had 141 days (Feb 10 to June 30) to select a graduate law school (that would accept me), get approval from the Army and move my family and worldly possessions from Germany back to somewhere in the US and be enrolled in the law school. Did I mention finding a place to live? And, I waited to hear from Stanford. Did I mention that I’m a Type A?
By Friday, March 7, I decided to call Dean Robinson. I waited till 5:00 PM, which would be 9:00 AM in California. Dean Robinson’s secretary told me he was on the East Coast and gave me the number. I ended up talking to Dean Robinson at noontime in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He apologized for not responding and told me I had been approved to come to Stanford. They didn’t have a graduate criminal law program, but they would set me up with a criminal law professor and we could put a program together. He assured me he would send a letter to me quickly. I thanked him and hung up. I looked at my wife, Carole, and said dejectedly, “Honey, we’re going to Northwestern.” I really wanted to go to Stanford, but in the area of a graduate level criminal law program, Northwestern won hands down. I would never become a California golden boy.
After reading through this blog, I realize the only thing whimsical was getting into the graduate program. My selection of Northwestern was probably the right choice for me and I took the necessary steps to get there. It gave me a chance to work with Professors Fred Inbau, Bill Martin and Jim Haddad. Today, with the internet, I could have done all my research on line and made a much more informed decision in one-tenth of the time. But in 1969, in Goeppingen, Germany, with the clock running, we did what we had to do. Auf Wiedersehen.
Respect for Our Military
Do you know what gives me a warm feeling right down to my toes? It is the way the American people today treat our service men and women. The American people may disagree on whether we should be in Iraq, but almost none blames the soldiers, marines, sailors or airmen who are serving there.
It wasn’t that way 40 years ago when we were bogged down in Vietnam. For some reason, just seeing a military uniform set off a certain segment of our society. Of course, this same segment did not trust anything called the Establishment. I think the message was, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.”
In the early years of the Vietnam War, I was protected from the impact of the dissent by being assigned in Germany (1966-69). We had all we could handle with the drug and racial problems. Our sources for information were Armed Forces Radio and the Stars and Stripes newspaper. Not a lot of anti-war stuff was getting through to us. We did know that President Johnson had decided not to run for re-election because of anti-war sentiment, but we truly were sheltered.
So in 1969, when I showed up at Northwestern University School of Law to obtain a masters degree in criminal law, I wasn’t prepared for the resentment to the military I encountered (was I really a baby killer?). I wasn’t in uniform, but I couldn’t hide. I was the only one on the downtown campus without a pony tail!
Having lived in a cocoon for three years, I wasn’t prepared for the intense anti-war, anti-military uproar that enveloped me in Chicago. I softened the impact by getting my news from the conservative Chicago Tribune and their TV station, WGN. In reflecting, I am satisfied that the Germans treated the US military better than our fellow country men. I knew we were in trouble when our graduate group’s sweet 50 year-old secretary told me she would be late coming back from lunch because she was attending an anti-war rally.
It was during this period, with me on orders to Vietnam, that Carole decided that she and the kids would be more comfortable in a waiting wives community (see blog on Shilling Manor under My Military Daze) than living among the demonstrators. It turned out to be a spectacular choice.
In 1973, our country eliminated the draft and went to a volunteer Army (VOLAR). Even though all JAG officers were volunteers, some of them may have volunteered rather than be drafted (“It was either the JAG Corps or Canada.”). The JAG Corps was given a certain number of “VOLAR” dollars to go out and recruit young law students to join us. I was teaching at the JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia and was selected to visit 11 law schools in the Midwest.
My Commandant, Colonel John Jay Douglass, advised me that since it was already October, I needed to start my visits with North Dakota. The longer I waited the less likely I was to get there. Well, I put Grand Forks, ND at the top of my list and just barely got there. The plane I was on started to land in Grand Forks, but pulled back up and we landed in Winnipeg, Canada. They bussed us back to Grand Forks and promised our luggage would soon follow.
I set up my visit at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis with their placement office. They provided me with an office for interviews, but did not notify the student body that I was coming. The uniform was still a problem. One reservist who saw me stopped by to say hello.
My alma mater, the University of Missouri treated me much better. When my interviews were completed, I decided to step over to Jessie Hall and say hello to Dean Harris. He had been a friend and advisor throughout my six years at MU. He was my first counselor when I stepped onto campus. It was he that I talked out of sending me to remedial English Class (five hours a week for three hours credit). He also was instrumental in finding Carole a secretarial position in his office when I started to law school.
Dean Harris’ secretary told me he couldn’t be disturbed, because the entire afternoon was blocked out for interviews with medical school applicants. I told her I wouldn’t mind waiting so that I could say hello in between interviews. She said that was impossible. Just then, he came out of his office, saw me and pulled me into his office. I kept insisting that I didn’t want to get him off schedule. As he shut the door to his office, he said,”Jack, I am so sick of hearing these applicants tell me they want to become a doctor so that they can work in the inner-city and help the poor!”
We probably talked for 20 minutes with me continually reminding him that I shouldn’t stay. It was great seeing and chatting with an old friend. When I left the office, the secretary was waiting for me. She was furious. She said, “Major, by being so inconsiderate and interrupting the interview schedule, you may have cost some young student the opportunity to become a doctor.” I looked at her for a second and then said, “I think you are more upset about my uniform that your are with me.” There was a long reflective pause and she said, “Well, you may be right.”
Her comment was very telling of the time. Thank goodness things have changed. Today, under the same scenario, she would probably try to get me on the interview list. I love it!