Michael's Story (part 7)
Cheryl Marie was a lovely girl I met in Cincinnati a number of years ago. Sadly, her life was cut short when she was hospitalized and died from pneumonia acquired there. This story is exactly as she wrote it, except for a few spelling and grammatical corrections. I publish this in fond memory of her – I only wish she had lived to see it published.
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As I drove home, I reflected upon Michael, and what I knew about him, which was quite a lot. Michael and I had shared our love of many areas of belief, values, and background.
Michael had grown up in Lebanon Ohio, a picturesque but mostly conservative middle class town a short bit north of Cincinnati. He had reflected much of its solid conservative values. His mother was a traditional "housewife" and seemingly content and very skilled at that role. His dad, a successful production manager for a local manufacturer. Both regular mainstream protestant church-goers and community group stalwarts.
Michael was an outstanding student with a strong intellect complimented by an impeccable work ethic. He was also an accomplished enough athlete to be the captain of his football team.
Duke offered a decent scholarship but no real hope of playing the game that he loved. Washington University in St. Louis offered both, so a Battling Bear he became.
He was also eager to experience life in a larger urban setting beyond the gravitational pull of Lebanon.
He appreciated that Washington U. was a liberal campus in a city dominated journalistically by the liberal Post-Dispatch. But those were additional draws for him. He enjoyed a good argument of theory and fact and was eager to test his mettle in a liberal environment with intelligent students and faculty.
Plus, he enjoyed being a contrarian of sorts. Even growing up in relatively conservative Lebanon, he had rebelled against the more reactionary elements and liked defining himself as his own unique, and often iconoclastic, person.
He was especially contemptuous – some said arrogantly so – of the fundamentalist religious elements that were part of the Midwestern environment. He could not understand how any sentient or intelligent person could reject the insights and teachings of science when it conflicted with the literal interpretation of any form of holy writ. Especially the nonsense of the so-called creationist movement. Equally so, when alleged biblical absolutes condemned conduct or sexual actions that he saw as hurting no one and were deeply held matters of personal expression or desire.
He likewise bitterly resented any lingering aspects of racism or the like that even reared its head on the Ohio side of the Mason-Dixon line, as it did all too often in rural parts of the state.
He was an econ major at Washington U. and managed to travel in many circles and bridge many worlds – a talent that would serve him well in the practice of law in his mature years. He enjoyed playing football and worked his way into a starting position as linebacker his junior year. A solid and respected player but not one of the stand-outs. He was a bit flabbergasted at how even a smaller program like that at Washington U. could still attract some amazing athletes. He enjoyed hanging out with his football "buds", but did not restrict himself.
Michael was more a scholar-athlete than an athlete-scholar and excelled as a student. Hard work combined with a natural aptitude for learning and synthesis. He found kindred ideological spirits among a few rebelliously conservative faculty and students and enjoyed the opportunities to debate and share thoughts with liberals of all generations, earning – he hoped! – their respect, if not their agreement.
He found a lot of appeal in the Chicago School of free enterprise, but did not take it to hard-edged extremes. He generally believed that free enterprise with minimal or no regulation was the preferred solution more often than not. But he could see that some areas called out for some degree of oversight and regulation but always with due restraint and scrutiny as to overly zealous, wooden or irrational regulation.
His Washington U. experience did liberalize him to the extent that he recognized the need for regulation to protect employment rights for minorities and women. Even perhaps for gays, but that movement was barely recognizable at that time. Likewise, there was no avoiding the necessity for environmental regulation. But always with some sense of rational and pragmatic restraint. Pragmatism was a word he used often and believed it should trump rigid ideology at every turn.
In short he was a moderate Republican. Much like his father, whom he admired above just about any living person he knew.
His professors urged him to pursue a Ph.D in economics, but his love of debate and argument drew him to law school. To Duke he finally went.
Law school was a highly competitive environment, as anyone familiar with "Paper Chase" knows. A few courses focused on more grandiose matters of policy and ideology ... the landmark cases of Constitutional Law or the fascinating development of product liability law during the 20th Century or the constitutionalization of defamation law represented by New York Times v. Sullivan.
Michael enjoyed these occasional forays, but oddly found himself drawn to the more focused and defined disputes between two private parties that were the staple of seemingly boring courses such as contracts, property, and the majority of tort cases (i.e. A injures B by some form of negligent or worse conduct). Policy was not altogether absent from these areas but more a matter of background noise.
He found it fascinating to focus on real factual disputes and how the legal doctrine or theory intersected with the unique facts of a case to produce a result. A result, that in the hands of a fine judge such as Cardozo, Brandeis, Traynor, or Frankfurter could seem inevitable, at least until a powerful dissent was also presented. He enjoyed the specific yet demanding analysis that these areas of law presented, and found himself drawn to the commercial and litigious potential of the law.
Through lots of sweat and a natural analytical facility he worked his way onto the law review and graduated in the top 10% of his class. This gave him placement chops and he decided to return to practice in Cincinnati after a rewarding two years as a judicial clerk.
He thrived in the practice, excelling at litigating contract and commercial cases of many sorts, but found himself especially drawn to trademark and copyright litigation. Representing mostly companies seeking to protect their trademark and copyright interests from a variety of infringers, ranging from other legit companies to fly-by-night counterfeiters or resellers who took advantage of bargain prices without caring where a product came from.
This area of law appealed to him because of its byzantine intricacies known to the cognoscenti. Even if not exactly the stuff of good cocktail party banter, some of the strange personalities on the other side of the case often were!
He truly enjoyed the practice of law, but he found that it was not enough to contain all of his intellectual interests, especially his love of music. Many of his male colleagues, as sharp as they were, didn't share his devotion to the arts and music (although they could put on a decent enough show for social purposes).
Sometimes he wondered if his preoccupation with things of such expressive beauty was somehow part of his feminine side? Oh well ... whatever it was he was not about to exorcize it. He was true enough to himself to embrace and rejoice in it. He liked the fact that this made him different, but it was often lonely to have no one to share it with on his own terms.
As much as Michael, I enjoyed the front lines of trial and deposition work, but seemed to live for the challenge of legal research and analysis and writing and bringing all elements of a case, factual and legal, into a persuasive legal brief or memorandum. And when I was really on top of my game, a brief might even have a bit of literary style, at least when the pragmatic Michael did not edit it out.
But I also enjoyed the other areas of intellectual pursuits that Michael found so much a part of his life, while still enjoying more mundane things such as a good movie or even a good football or hockey game! I was every bit as eclectic as Michael. Thus it seemed inevitable that we would form a special friendship that transcended a productive working relationship.
–––––––––––––––––––– This is the end of what Cheryl Marie wrote. I wish she had lived to write more. Let me hear from you if you would like to read more. If there is enough interest I will try to continue the story in a way that honors her memory.
Feel free to contact me with your comments or requests. –Bill (oral_guy_2000@yahoo.com)
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