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The professional accomplishments of this class of inductees are quite impressive. Rather than recite their long and lengthy resumes, let me share with you some of their origin stories; where they came from, why they decided to become trial lawyers, and how they have advanced the profession in the pursuit of justice.
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I certainly wouldn’t be standing here if not for my mother, since I was told, in no uncertain terms by a past president and regent, that she was to be invited to Rome. So I believe my induction to the College was con- tingent upon her being here tonight.
Allow me one more moment to acknowledge my dad. He was a great mentor, not just to me, but to so many other lawyers who would reach out to him when they needed advice. He always made time to talk to another lawyer who needed help. I do wish he was here tonight, obvious- ly, not just to see me be inducted but so that he could meet my fellow inductees and I wish that they could meet him. I think they would have gotten a real kick out of him.
We have an inductee who’s a first-generation immigrant to the United States and the first lawyer in her family. Another inductee was adopted into what he describes as a modest middle-class family with parents who worked hard but had no college degrees. One inductee describes himself as just a cranberry farmer’s kid from Middleborough, Massachusetts. We have another inductee who was the first woman in her family to graduate from college and earn a professional degree. One inductee grew up on a farm in Upstate New York where he and his father continue to raise reg- istered polled Hereford beef cattle, polled meaning without horns. Now, this inductee, I believe, is also a longsuffering Buffalo Bills fan so it’s not surprising that for most of his life he’s raised cattle that have no horns. Although I think I’m about to find out what it’s like to be a longsuffering Buffalo Bills fan now that Tom Brady is no longer a Patriot.
We have another inductee who is one of seven children born to a father who was a farmer, a mother who was an elementary school counselor. We have one inductee who grew up fixing motorcycles with her father; she had her own motorcycle by the time she was nine years old. And we have an inductee who was raised in a small town in the heart of Cajun country in southeast Louisiana which is the home of Tabasco sauce.
From those beginnings, we all came to the law in different ways. One in- ductee was slogging her way through college as an accounting major. Can you think of anything worse than being an accounting major? Eventually, she found a part-time job at a D.A.’s office and one day she sat in on a trial of a high-profile civil case. As the plaintiff’s attorney built to a crescendo during his closing arguments, she felt her heart racing faster and faster. When the lawyer slammed his hand down on the podium, she felt her heart stop. The inductee felt like she had been struck by lightning. Right then and there, she knew what she wanted to be: A trial lawyer.
Another inductee grew up wanting to be just like his dad who was a lawyer and also a Fellow of the American College. But when he was in high school, this inductee got to watch Bart Dalton, Past President of the College, try a double murder case. By the end of that trial, this inductee knew he wanted to start his career as a prosecutor. We also have an inductee who was inspired to become a lawyer by his grandfather, a quint- essential country lawyer in North Carolina.
Just about every inductee has spent time in public service, either as a prosecutor or as a public defender, and some have devoted their entire careers to public service. One in- ductee has twenty-three years of public ser- vice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and as tri- al attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Another inductee first started out as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and then spent the next seventeen years of his legal career practicing at a big white shoe law firm in Boston. He recently left that firm to be- come the First Assistant United States Attor- ney for the District of Massachusetts.
Many inductees hail from firms with long traditions of public service. One inductee comes from a small boutique firm that in- cludes a former associate who went on to have a very long and storied career in public ser- vice and eventually became President of the United States. A guy by the name of Biden.
I am reminded of that wonderful quote by
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. You know it: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” I love that quote and I can almost hear that beautiful baritone voice of his saying it in my head whenever I read it. But what is implicit in that quote is that the arc doesn’t bend by itself; it must be pushed. And we saw a little bit of that today when we heard from that marvelous woman in Utah and the effort she went to finally clear her record so she could pursue her life as a productive member of society.