MEMORIES OF CLASSMATES°
Please contribute. (Amusing valued).
DG We need memories of our great Class Secretary. Please send to the class gmail address. One memory: four of us formed the recommended "small study group" to prepare for the First Semester exams. We met in one of our rooms in one of the top floors of the YLS living quarters. Cough, cough. How the 4 of us formed is a mystery to this day -- but a joy to all: DG; Mike Reiss; Flip Kissam; Hardy. We met several times before the Xmas break and then again after. We were all blown away by the detailed notes Mike had taken in class -- everything was there, complete dialogues! -- and the fact that he'd used the break to type up those notes. Hardy remembers that he and DG had Flip explain to them the concept of preemption, which despite its centrality to constitutional law, Hardy had somehow missed, even though, like Flip, he was in Bickel's class. What are friends for? Who did DG have for con law? (That's a malamute named Shanghai).
Molodovsky With the help of Rockefeller Foundation in 1964, Tuskegee Institute started a summer program for incoming freshman, in which Liza taught.
The idea was a series of courses which would provide a headstart and which would also overcome high school deficiencies. A year later, of course, Liza was prepping herself to join
us at YLS.
Epstein Alan remembers him "coming over to me and asking whether I thought his acceptance to the law journal meant that he was one of the smartest in our class." Another memory of him is, of course,
that words were his friends. While at the boring task of checking footnotes to articles that were going to be published in the Journal, Rich would expiate at length on something like China's admission to the World Trade Organization, about
which he had reservations. "We certainly don't want to be in a situation where delegates raise their hands and things get decided by majority vote." It will be remembered he arrived in the class of 68 as we were entering second year, arrived from a parallel universe,
it seemed. Here was someone who had passed the agonies of first-year exams by, yet knew much more than we about the origins of concepts such as property and contract-- and about a parallel history of
decisions concerning these. Rich had read law at Oxford, rather than the traditional PPE (philosophy, politics, economics), so he was able to skip a grade, as it were. Nor was Rich shy about illuminating us, we found. After we graduated, Rich showed up in England, as did Dick Markovits, while Hardy was there. Hardy remembers arriving
at the station with Rich to take the train into London and meeting there Herbert Hart, Professor of Jurisprudence, the man Hardy had come to study with. Rich was absolutely delighted to be able to spend an hour in a compartment on a train with
such an esteemed legal scholar. One guess as to who did most of the talking.
Grey At Stanford, Tom went one morning for his regular run. One of his classmates was staying with him. When Tom came back he said, "I have just seen the most amazing thing."
How so? "I was running past the tennis courts and stopped to watch -- the tennis team was playing doubles matches against donors who had contributed substantially to the team." And?
"There was this one guy on the team who was so intense that he argued every line call he thought was wrong. Argued vigorously -- and here was a match that meant absolutely nothing, just
him and his partner against some duffers." So? "I said to myself this guy is going to go a very long way." This was the fall of 77 or spring of 78. People our age who have any interest in
tennis, and even those who don't, will know who this famous player is.
Batista Jorge didn't get out much at YLS. The few lucky enough to get to know him were
surprised at how infrequently they saw him, even at meal times.* This was because Jorge was always in his room, studying. What a room. More on
that room and more on Jorge in the new webpage on Memoirs/Memories.
*Does anyone remember any meal served at YLS?
Sinder In his 50th reunion book page, Stu tells us "I still play competitive table tennis regularly." Alan Ziegler has come up with more of the details behind this.
"We played regularly at the locker area table during law school class breaks, often joined by March Coleman. After his graduation in ’68, I didn’t see him again until the first day of the
1972 N.J. Bar Admission exam, when I heard someone in the line behind me call out my name. The first thing he said was 'Do you have your racket with you?' I brought it the next day. We
started playing once a week at a local college in the Montclair, N.J. area until he announced that the New Jersey Table Tennis Club had moved to Westfield, not far from the town he
moved to start a family, and that that was where he planned to play from then on. EventualIy, despite the longer commute for me, I had to join him to find decent competition and we
played at that club until I moved in the late 70’s to Connecticut. He eventually developed his technique to become one of the top dozen or so players in the expert level league of that
club at the time I left." ~More here.
Woolsey What did he do at CIA?
a) Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile (terrific book) begins with an award ceremony at Langley for Wilson, where there is a large
screen on which is projected “ 'Charlie Did It’ – President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, explaining the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan.” Wilson, Annapolis grad, alcoholic, champion
womanizer, Congressman from Bible Belt Texas, etc., is received by the Director, who in his speech compares him to Lech Walesa: “Without him, Woolsey concluded, ‘History might
have been hugely different and sadly different.’ ” b) Sisterhood of Spies by Elizabeth McIntosh (terrific book), a history of the role of women in the OSS, describes a ceremony at the
wartime headquarters of the OSS: "An agency color guard lowered the flag in front of the Administration Building, folded it ceremoniously, and presented it to CIA director, R. James
Woolsey. He briefly noted 'the tremendous debt of gratitude owed to the dedication, persistence, and sacrifice of women and men who had passed through these buildings.'
He then handed the flag to me."
c) R.V. Jones, author of Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 (terrific book), is shown on his
Wikipedia page standing next to Jim at a
ceremony where CIA created an annual award named in his honor.
* Obviously, we don’t yet have the full answer to our question, and we may never have it, but we are closing in, and we think it has a lot to do
with award ceremonies.
Then there's his new book, and his hopes we can be friendly with aliens.
And here's Jim as a green neoconservative, back in 2008 in Mother Jones. [turned up 2024, searching for his email, has good pic. Addresses we have are all out of date; do you have current?]
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Classmates: We need memories. Pls send to class gmail address.
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° MORE MEMORIES °
Send to class gmail address. Lengthy accounts welcome.
Comstock Here is a question for everyone in Bickel's class on constitutional law. Bickel was not, as we all remember, a great proponent of Socratic dialogue with his students. Questions were allowed, but were viewed as, well, interruptions. Few were asked -- most came from an Australian who was a JSD candidate, Garry Watson (who ended up teaching law in Canada).
However, Bickel had name cards. At one point he decided to use them to ask someone a question. The person he pulled randomly out of the pack was Craig Comstock. He started to ask, but then realized this was someone not with an ordinary name but with a very historical one. Here is where memory blurs. The strongest impression that remains
-- and the question for classmates is whether this is correct -- is that he linked the name to James Fenimore Cooper, and mentioned the Leatherstocking Tales and Natty Bumpo (aka "Hawkeye"). Research, however, fails to uncover a person named Comstock in those tales, though perhaps better research would turn one up. There was, however, a real person named
William Averill “Medicine Bill” Comstock who was Cooper's grandnephew and Custer's chief scout. One source says that, like Hawkeye,"Comstock chose to live as a fearless warrior who often dressed in buckskins and moccasins. Several companions thought he was half Indian, and Comstock did nothing to dispel the notion."
historynet. However, there is another Comstock, much more closely related to matters of the law, and Bickel might have had him in mind. This is Anthony Comstock, author of the Comstock laws, enforcer of Victorian morality during the Grant administration.
The laws forbade US Postal Service to transmit obscenity, contraceptives, abortifacients, sex toys -- even personal letters with sexual content or information.
Craig was a bit flustered by Bickel's question, but he had to admit he was related. ~More here. Special Note:
Comstock Act may rise from the dead!
Becker (For pic see Alas). "I think Len became the Ethics Officer for the D.C. Bar for several years after retiring from Arnold and Porter. Len was one of the most moral people I ever knew (if he wasn’t among the departed, I might
even say moralistic). So I never envied the lawyer miscreants who came before him. I shared a beach house with Len for several summers when we were new in Washington, and stayed distantly in touch over the
years. I had lunch with him a year or so before his sudden death, and he was unchanged from when we knew him in law school. (I’ve often thought most of us change more between our freshman and senior years
n high school than we do for the rest of our lives, at least for those of us for whom college is the first time we’ve lived away from home.) A little known fact about Len is that when he took the six-month
sabbatical that Arnold & Porter afforded all its partners, he studied the piano in San Francisco." Also: "Amazingly, he also looked very much like he did in law school right up to the end, except for white hair. And he became a fairly avid runner
for health reasons, and looked much more athletic."
-- Bill Iverson
Junius 1965 Selma.
Williams "Is Voting Enough? Selma Revisited":
On my way out of Selma, Alabama after the 57th Anniversary “Bridge Crossing Jubilee”, I stopped at a local restaurant for a breakfast of grits and eggs.
But when I came through the door, the first group I saw was about 10 good ole boys seated at two adjoining tables, having a meeting, very comfortable with each other. I didn’t know whether I should reconsider my need for breakfast and ease on down the road until I saw three black city workers at a table next to them, unconcerned, and enjoying the same breakfast I wanted to have. The Alabama I remembered during the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 was very different.As a SNCC volunteer in Montgomery, I survived white men on horseback chasing me with long sticks, and ultimately jail and Kilby State Prison, all because I wanted the right to vote for black people. Some of those guys might have been the ones after me.
Yes, segregation was long gone, but to actually see members of the two races sitting side by side in an Alabama restaurant was an eyeopener for me.
I asked the waitress when I paid the bill who were these men and she arched one eyebrow, told me quietly, “I don’t know, and I don’t ask. They old now and they been coming in here since they were young”, pointing to some pictures on the wall as proof.
They were indeed my age, so they probably knew the same stories I did about Alabama justice, just from the other side. One of them smiled and spoke to me when I left. Yes, things have really changed in Selma.
For example, Black people now can vote, and that was the objective more than 57 years ago when SNCC began organizing black folks in Selma and nearby Dallas County. The people asked Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead a march to Montgomery, after Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed by a policeman defending his mother who just wanted to vote. But now with voting power and organization to elect the a black mayor; several state legislators, judges, and a Congresswoman; and lots of black people in appointed positions like police officers….. with all that official presence, the kind that only voting can bring, I wanted to ask, “Why the hell is that bridge still named after Edmund Pettus”, a major general in the confederate army, a supporter of slavery and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan? Why haven’t the new power brokers, been able to make the Alabama Legislature change a name that laughs at us every time we walk across its span over the beautiful Alabama River below, shouting, “Edmund Pettus still lives!”
It’s not just the name that’s troublesome, but the symbol of white supremacy that is so dominant, and so evident in Selma. Just as segregation had to be broken to remove the stain of second-class citizenship on black people, so do these connections to a different age that somehow remain in the mindset of both black and white people today. We come to join the foot soldiers each year for the victory in getting the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed. So how come Edmund Pettus is still sitting up there grinning at us and the 17000 cars that cross over, every day?
Despite all the history lessons and the great celebrations for the tremendous achievements in the past; despite the historic votes that elect “firsts”, and “foremosts”; we suffer because electing capable and well-intentioned mayors and legislators alone is not enough to bring the changes necessary. To do so will require great organization and thoughtful strategy including governmental action and direct action by the people , to force the name change of the bridge by a Republican controlled Alabama Legislature, but also to secure a quality of life change for the 17000 citizens of the city, through better education, jobs, decent housing; use of the land to grow things for a new beginning; and against the prison industrial complex which propels a steady flow of young people into the jails and out with lifelong titles called “felons”, rendering them forever reliant upon welfare handouts and the underground economy where drugs and violence prevail.
In my book, “Unfinished Agenda, Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power”, I warn that voting in elected officials is not enough. “The power in the suites (city hall, the state house, Congress) must be joined by the power in the streets.” The foot soldiers of yesterday, must be replaced by their grandchildren and great grandchildren who know the story well but must learn to lead today’s direct-action struggle with the help of their elected and appointed officials.
The ingredients are all there. 82% of the city is black, and the mean age is 37 years. Selma needs a vibrant youth organization and coalitions, to include the folks in office; and taught and cheered on by the foot soldiers of yesterday. If such an organization is reconstructed, not only will the symbol of white supremacy on that bridge be removed, but blacks and progressive whites will be able to fight for all that ails this little city; and hold accountable all those elected officials who refuse to follow the will of the people.
So, to answer the question many of us have: Is voting necessary? Yes, but not sufficient, to bring change to Selma, and to America.
Bayes (For pic see Found), Here's a "reflexive response" to our call for memories of classmates: Guy "indirectly helped me woo my (ex)wife. She was a teaching assistant in the Psychology Department and on the first date made a point of
telling me that she came from what she characterized as an evangelical/semi-fundamentalist family (I later concluded she was not only bright but rational and merely felt a duty to conform
to the shifting fanatical views of her mother). On the first date her lack of superficial values really attracted me and I suggested we get together on the coming weekend; but she had
concluded I had the wrong religious views (none) and tried to discourage me by telling me that she planned to attend a bible class. I surprised her by telling her I would gladly go with
her. I supposed you have guessed that the leader of the bible group was Guy Bayes from our class. He and I engaged in a serious discussion of the text (maybe I tended to monopolize
it to the exclusion of the other attendees and he had the good nature to go along with it). In any event she was impressed with my knowledge of the New Testament and religious
philosophy and eventually 6 years later we married."
-- Alan Ziegler
Goetz Jim likes fly fishing -- has anyone in our class been standing there in their Orvis waders in a
Montana stream with him? Tell us about it.
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Classmates:
We need memories. Pls send to class gmail address.
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Continuations of some items on this page can be found here.
° YET MORE
See special note below.
Markovits Perhaps the name Rudolph Nureyev does not immediately spring to mind when one thinks of Dick Markovits. Yet Dick and his lovely wife Inga were once Rudy's house guests -- sort of. Dick had gotten his PhD in economics from LSE before coming to Yale, and he returned to London at some point after our graduation for a visit. He and I connected (I was in England for two years), and when we met, he said he had an unusual proposition. He and Inga had somehow become friends of the people who were Rudy's housekeepers for his home in the Richmond Park area of London. Rudy was frequently away, of course, and they were permitted to use the kitchen in his absence and they had invited us to dinner. And a very pleasant dinner we had -- a feast, really -- as these people were very good cooks. We toured the house, of course. The only part I remember is Rudy's bedroom. There was a king-size bed surrounded by an ornate black wooden frame, and a bright red bedspread. -- Hardy
Sanders An absolutely astonishingly detailed account of Stan appeared in the LA Times in 1993 when Stan was hoping to succeed Tom Bradley as mayor.
Click here. But one of us, a Chicagoan, a Bears fan, remembers him from 25 years before that. Stan
had been drafted by George Halas after his stellar football career as an All-American wide receiver at Whittier College (Richard Nixon 34', Stan '63), but turned Halas down and went to Oxford on a Rhodes. Then YLS. This
gave the Bears fan the opportunity to ask him why he'd turned Halas down. "Have you ever been in a locker room after a football match? There are guys bleeding and guys screaming
with pain. Trainers helping guys to walk. Bandages on everybody. People throwing up. Suffering everywhere." "A bright cookie," thought the fan. A couple of years even earlier, Mark Schantz
remembers Stan at Oxford: "He had not played basketball at Whittier, but we got him to play basketball a few times when our regular center was indisposed. He was an excellent rebounder, as you might expect, but a shooting range of
4 feet. At YLS, I got him to play flag football with us one season--made me look like a real QB."
New interview with Stan about his Whittier years discovered: see our new Memoirs/Memories
page.
Kissam In Flip's third year, he shared an apartment on Elm St. in New Haven with Lenny Ross, together
with Hardy. Lenny was, of course, famous because he had won, at age 10, $100,000 on the quiz show "The Big Surprise" and then, at age 11, $64,000 on "The 64,000 Challenge." His subject
was the stock market. Flip had started a PhD in economics at MIT before deciding to go to law school. Lenny had graduated from YLS, but was staying on to get his PhD in econ. There was
much that Flip and Lenny could talk about, but in fact Flip rarely saw Lenny because Lenny was locked up in his room all day, on the phone with his stock broker. The other thing about
this period in Flip's life is that he became interested in cooking. He said that what he would like to do is work his way through The James Beard Cookbook which had just
appeared in paperback.
And that's what he and Hardy did over the course of the year, from Fish and Shellfish through Meats and Pasta and Poultry. Soups, and even a soufflé.
Cathy A memory from the Dworkin seminar on jurisprudence. About Cathy Grey and the paper she wrote for it -- by far the best of any of those submitted that semester,
(A profile appears on our Alas page). The paper was on strict liability. She argued that in fact it wasn't as strict as it was often made out to be, that in fact traditional notions of personal responsibilty and action were part of this
doctrine which appeared to exclude both, as the doctrine was actually applied. Would you like a copy of this paper?
Here it is: Strict.
Reiss Newly married, Mike spent the summer after graduation on a spectacularly beautiful ranch in Oregon owned by his wife's family which is adjacent to the Black Butte
and near the Three Sisters mountains. One weekend we hiked up in these mountains to a cirque, where we camped
out for several days in splendid isolation. Hiking down we found the Volvo stationwagon, climbed in and headed back. His wife was driving, Mike was fiddling with the radio. "What are you trying
to find?" "I'm trying to find out who Nixon picked for his vice president." "Really, who's he gonna pick?" "I think he's gonna pick Agnew." "Who's Agnew?" "A sleazy governor from Maryland."
Another memory of Mike is from his student days: he did not have Kessler for contracts, but he knew of Kessler's fame. So, he sat in on Kessler's class and thus had two classes in contracts
our first semester. He took lots of notes.
Smith-Shepard VISTA
Remember VISTA? Mike Chabot Smith was interested to learn, by reading here, that Jonathan Shepard had VISTA roots
also, so he emailed the following:
[1] From: Mike Chabot Smith Oct 17, 2020 To: Jonathan Shepard
As a fellow member (at least originally) of the YLS class of '68, I was interested to read in your "Roots" entry that you, too, were a VISTA Volunteer in NYC in 1969. I'm not sure you
and I ever crossed paths at the law school (I missed a lot of classes, and eventually dropped out in the fall of '67 without completing 2nd year, came back in Spring of '71, finally graduated
in '72), but after I dropped out, I joined VISTA in Jan. of 1968 and watched all hell break loose the rest of that year, while I was busy attempting to be a community organizer in the South
Bronx. When the Nixon people took over in 1969, all hell broke loose within VISTA as they tried to clean out all the radicals among us who were causing a lot of trouble.
Where were you assigned and what were you doing that year? Did you see or hear about any of the upheaval that was going on (within VISTA)?
That was really when my true education began. A fascinating time.
Best, Mike Smith
To see the helluva reply he got, and for the rest of the dialogue click here.
[middle column, bottom]
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Classmates: We need memories. Pls send to class gmail address.
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Special note below -- this is it.
Native Americans! We now see
that a significant part of our class worked on these legal affairs, starting with five who upon graduation went off to what is now called Navajo Nation to work for an
OEO-funded DNA (founded 1967). Others of us have experience here, too. Ergo, we've
added a special page Click here.
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