“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
Clarence Odbody, the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, to George Bailey
Whenever I think I know something, I generally find out that what I know isn’t completely correct. Strangely, this also seems to be true about memories of things that actually happened to me. The telling of a story over the years seems to include a process of winnowing the truth down to easy catch-phrases which, often repeated, rob us of the full reality of what occurred. In other words, we seem to dumb down our memories to their essence and forget much of the vivid detail as a way of saving the core knowledge.
A case in point occurred this last weekend when I attended my 40th law school reunion at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. I do not usually attend reunions of any sort, since I have preferred to live my life looking forward rather than backward, but this reunion has caused me to spend the last 48 hours looking intensely into the rear view mirror.
Michigan Law School is a wonderful place, both physically and intellectually. I spent the twilight hour Saturday evening before our class dinner sitting with my wife in the law quad, watching the grey squirrels forage, the leaves tumbling to the ground, and students walking through to study or to go to their rooms. Much of that time was also spent ruminating on a conversation from the prior evening at a local watering hole where Michigan law students have congregated for many decades.
When people of my certain age get together, the discussion frequently turns to the Vietnam War and the draft. It is hard to ignore this topic at a reunion of those who graduated in 1970, since the draft and how to deal with it were central to our lives forty years ago. Ours was the smallest graduating class at the law school in modern times. The reason for this is simple: many of us were drafted, some to return to graduate in subsequent classes and some to die in Vietnam. Since a reunion is all about memories, a topic of this intensity can hardly be ignored.
For years, I have told my story this way: In 1968, at the start of my second year of law school, I received an induction notice. The notice was particularly galling to me because I had written to my Eastern Washington draft board prior to ever leaving for Ann Arbor, advising them that my then-wife and I had been admitted to law school and that I would rather enlist than go 2,500 miles to law school only to be drafted before I could complete my education. The draft board replied, advising me that they wanted their young men to get an education and that I should go to law school with their blessing and they would see me upon graduation. Accordingly, the induction notice not only was a blow, it was also a slap in the face.
Several days later, I found a memo written by Yale law students setting forth an argument relating to the timing of my induction. It seemed that the law allowed me to finish the academic year in which I was enrolled, even though the draft board was insisting, in accordance with the admonitions of the Selective Service headquarters, that I be inducted at the Christmas break. Six of us decided to contest the timing of our inductions and a law school professor agreed to argue our case if we students would do all of the necessary legal research and write the briefs. We filed our case and a friendly federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on our behalf. At this point, the other five enrolled in National Guard units, but I found myself unwilling to do so despite well-intentioned advice to the contrary.
The judge waited until April to call us back for a final hearing, telling those in the courtroom, with a wink, that he had lost the file on his desk and was apologetic for having done so. He was ready to rule that the case was moot because I was about to finish my second year of law school in a matter of a week or so, when my counsel advised the court that I had been mis-classified and that the draft board was obligated to re-classify me properly and then begin the induction process anew. The judge seemed surprised by this and asked for confirmation of the argument from the US Attorney, who reluctantly agreed. The judge mused aloud that if the draft board was unable to move quickly enough, I would have the same argument for my third year and might be able to finish law school. He then took the matter under advisement, waited several weeks while writing an opinion, and eventually ruled in my favor. The draft board could not move fast enough to reclassify me prior to my commencing classes, and I entered my third year of law school with the added argument that my wife was pregnant with my oldest son, Don. Don’s advent eventually led to a fatherhood deferment, following a further exchange of letters between myself and my draft board.
I have always remembered the judge’s opinion as relatively unsophisticated, focusing mostly upon the definition of the word “shall.” I have also said over the years that my main regret was that the decision favored only me and my fellow plaintiffs and helped no one else. I discovered this weekend that both recollections were incorrect.
Last Friday evening, a former classmate said, in my hearing while speaking with me and others in a side gathering at an open house, that the lawsuit some of his classmates had filed had allowed him to complete his third year when he would otherwise have been drafted. When I subsequently revealed my role in the case, he thanked me for letting him complete his law school education. After I indicated that his situation was news of first impression to me, he indicated that the Ann Arbor draft board had, following the judge’s ruling, decided to be bound by the decision even though the Selective Service headquarters had advised otherwise. The Ann Arbor draft board told graduate students enrolled at Michigan that they should transfer their induction point from their local draft boards to Ann Arbor and the Ann Arbor board would allow them to finish the academic year in which they were enrolled.
To say the least, I was stunned. One of my major themes – that I regretted that I was the sole beneficiary – went up in smoke in a single conversation. The proof was in the presence of the man speaking to me. He had gone to the Ann Arbor draft board, received their advice, transferred his induction to Ann Arbor, and been allowed to complete his law school education before being inducted.
How could I have not known of this until 40 years had passed?
The answer is that I kept facing forward, didn’t look back and dumbed down my recollection of the case. When I re-read the case yesterday morning upon returning to my office, I found that it was not only far more sophisticated than I remembered, but that it was also a class action in which the judge had ruled in my favor and on behalf of all those similarly situated. In other words, the second basic tenet of my long told story was also bunkum and I was the one who had made it so.
I am not yet ready to reach the conclusion my classmate reached that our case may have assisted thousands of people. I am unable to go too far astray from my prior belief in a single bound in the absence of additional evidence. I only know for certain that (a) at least one other person got deferred because of the legal issues espoused in our case, and (b) there were three or four similar cases in the courts, most of which came out the same way ours did and some of which did not. It may well have been the decision in our case that the Ann Arbor draft board relied upon (the anecdotal evidence from my classmate says it was and the draft board was within the jurisdictional boundaries of the court granting our sought after relief), but I cannot be absolutely certain. I can be certain only that if it was our case that protected my classmate, it was due to my stubbornness in refusing to enlist in the National Guard since, had we all enlisted, the case would have been moot by the time of the April hearing.
So I am faced with the knowledge that my stubbornness – a subject of some discussion with a former and present wife – may have been of benefit to someone. The question now becomes what this lesson means. I am not certain that I can now say anything more than I will be pondering this for some time to come. What is clear is what one of my best friends in my law school class said to me after this all occurred:“As we go through life, we don’t know how we affect or benefit others. Isn’t it great you learned how your lawsuit helped others!” But it is also likely true that some other decision I took – in another time and place and about another subject – may have harmed, not helped, others.
So what is the place that each of us occupies in the hierarchy ranging from evil, on the one hand, to good, on the other? How am I to know where I might place, especially after the weekend’s revelations? I went from thinking I had assisted no one and that my actions in proceeding to judgment were essentially selfish (I remain very conscious of the fact that the graduate student deferment was not color blind in those days, and that African Americans served in Vietnam in far greater numbers than whites), to realizing that at least one other person may have benefited from my stubbornness. At this moment, I have no idea what that might mean to me now. I have reached out to my former law professor to see what he remembers, and can only hope he will respond to my email of inquiry.
I have long advised my children that, on their last day, they need to be able to look in the mirror and like what they see from the standpoint of doing good, and, since it is not given to us to know which day is our last one, they had better be able to do that each and every day. I know of no other way to try to live a good life. But, how can one look clearly into the mirror when one’s own recollections may well be faulty?
Since today has not yet proven to be my last one (and, hopefully, will not), I am unable to assess what this news might mean in this regard. I only know for certain what King Mongkut in “The King and I” says so frequently to Anna Leonowens: “Tis a Puzzlement!” I will have to wait to see if the wake I leave behind does or does not contain phosphorescence, and, even then, that judgment will be left to others. I have now learned that I am not the best person to make that assessment.
