Reflections of a Boston Lawyer

Alone in my house this evening, listening to a Joni Mitchell album, I'm taken back to other times in other houses .   I remember staying at a friend's house in Ohio through one of our breaks my senior year in college.  It was winter, and the old wooden house was cold.  It was the year of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years," which we listened to repeatedly and which seemed to set the mood for the place.  I remember a photograph of my friend Tom and me enjoying our birthday dinner in that kitchen in late November with our dates.  Tom and I were born one year and one day apart, and the woman who was then his date later became his wife.  I lived in that house for only a few weeks, but some of the memories remain. There was the house I lived in during law school.  It was half of a duplex, and the landlady lived on the other side.  Our half had six bedrooms, and six of us lived there.  I had a room on the top floor with a slanted ceiling and a heating ven

As if timed to coincide with my last post, this story about my fellow College of Wooster alumn and Trustee, Chief Judge Sol Oliver, far outdoes mine.  From humble beginnings to the pinnacle of his profession, Sol is a good man for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration.  Be sure to read the text and watch the video.  http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=173328&catid=3

When I was in college, like many students, I spent much time pondering my career choices.  It was the 1970s, and many of us felt pulled by the opposing forces of the idealism of the 1960s and the growing materialism of the current decade.  My own thought processes about my vocation seemed to parallel the changing times.  I entered college expecting to find some kind of career that would allow me to help people in need of some kind of help, and I left four years later to pursue a career in law. A number of personal developments during those four years contributed to my decision to become a lawyer, but none more than a short, handwritten letter from one of my uncles back home.  His name was Angelo, but everyone knew him as "Ace."  Like all of the children of my immigrant grandparents, Uncle Ace was a child of the depression.  Growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, he and his brothers enlisted in the U.S. military and were stationed overseas during World War II.  After returning h