John Levy: Friend, Mentor and Inspiration

Other tributes in these pages will recognize and honor John Levy's many accomplishments, achievements and contributions--to the Law School, to the legal profession, to Legal Aid and to society at large. Here, I focus on John Levy, the person, and John Levy, my friend. Those who know John know that, unlike many others in the Legal Academy, "the Law" has not been his whole life. What follows are some randomly organized vignettes. I write them with warm memories and enormous gratitude for everything John has done for and meant to me and countless others. I graduated from William and Mary Law School the year John Levy came. I went to law school because I wanted a skill to volunteer. My first encounter with John was when I asked him if I could volunteer at Legal Aid. He told me "no." I didn't like this man who was to become my best friend at William and Mary--not one little bit. The next year, I was asked to teach Family Law on an adjunct basis. What did I know about that (or anything else for that matter)? I knew John Levy knew a lot about Family Law. I sought him out, even though I didn't like him. (Desperation knows few boundaries. First-time teachers know desperation first-hand.) John was patient. He was kind. He was funny. He was calming. He spent hours with me. He taught me everything I ever learned about Family Law. He got me through my first year of teaching. In a very real sense, I owe John my career. He not only nipped my volunteer-lawyering idea in the bud, but served as mentor, coach and cheering section at the beginning of what would turn out to be my professional life--teaching. This was but the first of many difficult situations in which John was my shepherd. When I joined the William and Mary faculty full-time, the law school was still on the main campus. Some faculty offices were in other buildings. As junior, low-on-the-totem-pole folk, John and I were stationed in an outpost (Those were the days when we had to shoot and kill our lunch too). John and I are both morning people, much to the chagrin of our spouses. We would arrive at school around six o'clock. It wasn't long before we instituted our daily ritual--coffee and conversation in my office. The day didn't begin right if it didn't begin that way. We talked about so many things over the years--teaching, the Law, the Law School, our colleagues, Law School politics, Legal Aid, Legal Aid politics, art, music, Africa, the Peace Corps, real politics, our kids, our pasts, our fears, our disappointments, our hopes. We traded classroom war stories. We discovered common bonds. John had lost his father at an early age. I had lost my mother. We both had a child who took our nonconformity to heart. Both of us were rabid yellow dog (Northeast Reform) Democrats. We were both "sixties" kids. We preferred blue jeans to "grown-up" clothes. We trusted people who worked with their hands more than people who wore suits. We were "do-ers," not writers. Soon, in whatever law school activity one of us did, the other was dragged along. So, John roped me into judging the Client Counseling Competition every year and I corralled him into assisting in the planning and execution of multiple social events--picnics at Art and Betty White's "estate" on the water, cocktails at the Walcks' house overlooking the river, an annual pot-luck Christmas party in the Wren Building. It wasn't difficult to get John to help. He was always doing something for someone else, be it his clients at Legal Aid, his students, his friends or helping his wife Kaye with her Montessori and other work. As fate would have it, John was chair of the Status Committee when I went up for tenure. By now, the Law School was in its present beautiful building. John's office was beside my office, and my office was across from the faculty lounge (such as it was at the time). This made for an easy "morning commute" for our Kaffee Klatsch. The Committee had sent my tenure piece out for "outside review. …