FROM THE EDITOR

All good things come to an end.

and there is a very talented staff of • Escorting the Chief Justice of people here who put a lot of time West Germany during a visit to into giving you all the news you Madison. One of his bodyguards need from your school. broke his watch. I took it to a Over the years I have written jeweler and had it repaired. He about my two daughters (now offered to send me a beer stein in graduated from college and one return. I'm still waiting. married); about baby ducklings that, as building manager, I had to • Tom Palay and I spending rescue from the old courtyard each Sunday morning during Labor spring; about the weather and how Day weekend in 1996 shoveling it sometimes affected us inside the dirt out of the student locker building; about the many comings room to prepare for the opening and goings of friends and fellow of classes on Tuesday in the newly staff; and about the many nuggets remodeled Law building. of Law School history I uncovered. As I said in one column, when you • While on a trip to thank lawyers are the editot, you can write about who volunteered to teach at the whatever pleases you. I found Law School, Ralph Cagle and much to please me over the years. I buying raspberry pies at the I actually first set foot on Norske Nook in Osseo, Edward J. Reisner, campus in the summer of 1965, to . Ralph asked the Assistant Dean for register for freshman classes - that Freight House restaurant in La External Affairs was forty years ago. After graduat- Crosse, Wisconsin, to refrigerate ing from Law School in 1972, I the pies while we did a General worked for the State Bar of Practice Course dinner there. This is my fifty-second and Wisconsin until February 1976. Imagine our surprise when our final Editor's Note for the Gargoyle. I have worked for four deans and pies were served to the whole At the end of September, I will be known three others - more than group for dessert! stepping down from one of my half of all the deans in this school's most enjoyable duties at the Law history. I have learned from each of • Visitors including Ralph Nader; School - indeed, I will be step- them and hope that they feel, on Lawrence Tribe; David Broder; ping down from all my duties. balance, that I have served them well. Chief Justice William Rehnquist; With thirty years in the book, I am I will always have vivid Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; retiring and will be moving on to memories of great students and Senators Gaylord Nelson, Herb new challenges. wonderful alumni. A few memories Kohl, and ; I took over as editor in 1979 that stand out: Governor ; when Ruth Doyle retired. She and Sir John Mortimer. taught me what I needed to know • An hour with Judge John Minor to produce a rather minimalist ver- Wisdom, of the Fifth Circuit • Dedication night for the new, sion of the Gargoyle, as compared Court of Appeals, in the parlor of remodeled Law building in April to the glossy publication we now his Garden District home in New 1997: more than six hundred have. Ruth and I worked at a time Orleans. Wisdom in a bathrobe happy people filling the Atrium. when we took the photos, wrote and slippers. Judge Wisdom wrote the text, laid out the copy with many of the groundbreaking civil- • Grabbing the dinner check from scissors and tape, and delivered rights decisions to come out of an alum, only to discover that he each copy by hand (well, maybe the South in the 1950s and had ordered a $250 bottle of not that last part). Now most of 1960s. He once had a sack of wine, and then a second! the composition is done by com- rattlesnakes dumped in his front puters far from the Law School, yard as a reward.

42 GARGOYLE Summer 2005 FROM THE EDITOR

• Grid Hall, the first person I knew minutes later. Nevertheless, the Browne was not a great man as with AIDS, and seeing him next morning our server had the world counts such. He was courageously but unsuccessfully more than 30,000 messages, and too generous to ever become fight the disease. it was weeks before they finally rich, and he did not grow famous stopped altogether. at the practice of law, simply • Early-morning coffee in the old because he had a bad habit of faculty lounge with Gordon It has been an incredible honor considering the position of the Baldwin and Frank Remington. to walk this campus, to walk these other fellow.Irving Browne was halls, among these giants. To hear an excellent lawyer, but a poor • Trading jokes with Justice languages from around the world, practitioner. "You cannot have Antonin Scalia, just the two of us, to hear discussions of physics, his- both the law and the profits," he waiting for his speech to begin. tory, and current events. once said. And yet Irving Browne The people here in the Law always had all he needed, and • Bill Morgan, who graduated in School have been part of my fami- perhaps that is enough. He made 1992, walking up to me during ly: I was here in the building when no pretense of loving his enemies orientation and saying, "My dad both of my parents died. I worked - he had none. said to say hello." Bill's Dad was here when I was married, when I've never been blessed with Jim Morgan, a classmate of mine both my children were born, when the gift of original ideas. As we in the Class of 1972. It was the both of them graduated from high constantly build and rebuild the first of many times that children school, when both of them gradu- Law School, physically and of my classmates or of students ated from college, and when the metaphorically, I have never been who graduated after me came to first got married. When I first the architect; rather, I have been the School. entered the building as a new the carpenter. While the building student, Richard Nixon was a new wouldn't exist without both, I • Tear gas filling Larry Church's president. I was here when Eric know that when the awards are Property class in the spring of Heiden won his five gold medals in passed out, it is the architect who 1970 during the Cambodian- the Olympics and when Challenger will win the prize. But the carpen- invasion demonstrations, and blew up. I was here on 9/11 and ter gets the satisfaction of knowing standing on the "porch" with through many cycles of war and that, without him, the walls would Gordon Baldwin and Bill Foster peace. It will be hard for me to not stand. on one of those evenings as the separate my memories of these peo- Ever since I left the sandbox, sounds of sirens and shouting ple and events from my memories things have been getting steadily filled the air - the same night of this school. Perhaps there is no more complicated in my life. that a rock broke a back window reason to even try. School was more complicated than of the Law Building as I walked Since I walked in the door as a home; work was more complicated down the stairs. 1L, thirty-six years ago, more than than school; I began here as a single nine thousand students have gradu- man but leave with a wife, two • The great e-mail fiasco: using ated - about 75 percent of all our daughters, and a son-in-law - actu- about 1,400 e-mail addresses for living alumni. Many have become ally a most pleasant complication. our alumni borrowed from the friends and loyal supporters of our Every day that I work here, State Bar, I innocently sent a school. I feel that my obligation to this notice that we were starting an e- It has been my role, over more school increases. But there comes a mail news service. Unfortunately, than twenty-five years, to operate time when the obligation I have to our computer staff had set the backstage. Now my role is going to myself and my family weighs equal- reply function to "reply to all." change. I have no interest in being ly heavily, and I know that there When alums began sending per- on the stage, but I am going to isn't enough time left in my life to sonal e-mail replies to me, they move out into the audience and fulfill all those duties. instead went to all 1,400 on the enjoy the show. I came here in 1969 to learn; list and began bouncing back and If I need some commemora- I returned here in 1976 to work; forth, multiplying like Mickey tion of my time here, let it be an I leave here now honored to have Mouse's brooms in Fantasia. adaptation of a lawyer's obituary I been a part of this institution. Thirty minutes after sending the read years ago and saved: original message, I had thousands Died, Feb. 6, 1899, Irving An article about Assistant Dean Ed of replies. We pulled the plug Browne, aged 58 years: Irving Reisner's retirement is on page 15.

www.law.wisc.edu/alumni GARGOYLE 43 FROM THE EDITOR

MYSTERY PHOTO

In the last issue we showed a photo of five students in the lobby of the 1963 Law Building. Thanks to Paula Doyle '80, Ken Axe '79, Terry Mead '81, and Kathy Zebell '81, I can tell you who four of the five students are: from left, John Beaudin '81, Bob Kittecon '81, Terry Mead '81, and Maureen Komisar-Schatz '79. The person on the right may have been named John, but no one was sure. The date was probably fall 1978, just as the Class of 1981 was starting school and before Maureen graduated. John Beaudin was a tribal judge for the Menominee Nation before his untimely death in 1993. Terry Mead was elected SBA president in 1978-79 as a write-in candidate under the name "The Aluminum Bullet." * * * I offer this issue's new Mystery Photo without further comment, except to say, "Who is this?!" and "Weren't the '70s a mar- velous time!"

44 GARGOYLE Summer 2005 Lavv School friendships - too valuable to lose. Stay in touch.

PHOTO: BOB RASHID Use the Alumni Directory at www.uwalumni.com to find "lost" classmates and make sure they can find you.

Just a few minutes on the Web to update your contact information will ensure that you keep receiving the Gargoyle and the newsletter, Law in Action.

Remember to include your e-mail address for valuable UW-Madison information throughout the year. WISCONSIN LAW SCHOOL