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KATHLEEN AND BUZZ TRAFFORD Robert W. (Buzz) Trafford (’95) was born in Florida, but fate (and his family) took him to Columbus, Ohio before he start- ed school. Kathleen M. Trafford (’04) was born in upstate New York, but fate (and graduate school) took her to Ohio in 1970. Their fates converged when they met in Co- lumbus, married on February 25, 1989, and practiced together from 1988 until Kath- leen’s formal retirement at the end of 2022. Buzz continues an active practice. Kathleen started her college career at a small college in Rochester, New York, studying math because she wanted to be a civil en- gineer. When the “good nuns” told her that civil engineering was not a good profession for a lady, she switched to sociology for her B.A. degree, then headed to Kent State for her master’s degree in urban planning. She stayed in the Akron/Canton area working for a regional planning commission for seven years. Part of her job involved inter- actions with townships and village officials on the virtues of regional planning and fair housing, but she was often stymied by their lawyers’ arguments that regional collabora- tion was a threat to local home rule. Not being able to convince these suburban com- munities otherwise in the face of what she believed was misinformed legal advice, she decided she would go to law school, so that local officials would find her more credible. Buzz’ legal journey started much earlier. He knew he wanted to be a lawyer from the time he was a fourth-grade elementary student, recalling that he and his fellow students were learning to write full paragraphs. Each was asked to write, and then read aloud, a paragraph about what he or she wanted to be when grown up. Buzz wrote (and read) “I want to be a lawyer.” A fellow student raised his hand and asked: “Why do you want to be a liar?” Buzz completed both undergraduate and law school at Ohio State, and start- ed work upon his 1977 graduation at the firm where he has remained his entire career and where he served from 1997 to 2015 as managing partner. The firm had been formed in 1850, and the founding partners had wisely enacted a nepotism rule at that time. But it only prohibited the hiring of Kathleen enrolled in law school as a part- time night student, “almost as a hobby.” She told herself that if she didn’t want to be a law- yer, she could stop at any time in the process. After all, she loved her job with the planning commission. She ended up moving to Columbus, Ohio, but continued night law school at Capital University Law School, from which she graduated cum laude in 1979. While she was still in law school, she worked as a law clerk with the Ohio Attorney General’s office, and soon discovered law was her true calling. sons – no one worried about whether they should ban the hiring of wives or daughters as that was then beyond contemplation. This turned out to be a providential oversight for Buzz and Kathleen. Kathleen had a varied practice at the Attorney General’s office from 1979 to 1988, ending up as a deputy chief counsel, or “office floater,” where she handled all sorts of cases, mostly those with a significant constitutional component. One of the more interesting cases involved a married, pregnant teacher at a Christian school, who was denied contract renewal and told she should stay home and raise her child as a moth- er’s place is in the home. When she had the audacity to consult a lawyer as to whether the school could do that, she was terminated for ig- noring the “biblical chain of command,” which required her to resolve the dispute through private channels and avoid going to the law. SUMMER 2023 JOURNAL 82