After almost 40 years, you would think I know everything about my Handsome Hubby, but recently I learned otherwise. The occasion for my learn something new, late-life revelations was HH’s 50th law school reunion.
I confess. When my sweet husband asked me to join him for a trip down his personal Memory Lane, aka the Golden Jubilee reunion, I wasn’t thrilled. The thought of tagging along sounded like a snoozefest. A lot of uh-huh-ing and nodding politely, while he and his buddies yuck-ed it up about the “good old days.”
But I’m a dutiful wife. So, I packed my bag, a perky smile, and off we went.
HH was a member of the founding class of Antioch School of Law in 1972.
I had vaguely known the school was a pioneer in its clinical law approach — meaning students worked with clients under the supervision of professors from the start (versus sitting in big lecture halls), but I had never focused on how bold the concept was.
In the decades since, that model has been emulated by virtually every law school in the US.
Nor had I appreciated the school’s anti-poverty, public interest approach in working with its “clients,” all of whom were low-income.
What that meant was that Antioch effectively served as a pro bono law firm, helping the poor take on all sorts of discrimination and housing rights violations. Quite simply, they gave voice and power to the powerless.
Clearly, Antioch was not the law school where students enrolled to become corporate fat cats. This was the place they went to fight “the man” and help the little guy and gal.
Another of Antioch’s unique requirements was for students to live with the low-income people they served for the first eight weeks of the first term. In Washington, DC in the early 1970s, that meant living in some bleak neighborhoods.
HH and three classmates crowded in with a woman, her eight children and a grandchild. The four students slept on a closed-in porch.
Life wasn’t hectic for HH in those days. In addition to his full-time studies, he worked long hours. Up at 3 a.m., six days a week, he rode a bike through those same inner city neighborhoods to the US Capitol to deliver mail, first in the US House of Representatives and then, on the Senate side.
After work, he jumped back on his bike and headed over to an old church where Antioch’s classes were held during its first year. He wasn’t a coffee drinker. How he stayed awake all day and into the night to study is a wonder.
In HH’s class of 145 students, 30% were women, and 33% were people of color. Several had been accepted by Harvard, Yale and Columbia law schools. A couple were Olympic champions. Another was Jim Thorpe’s daughter.
They all came to serve the public interest. Remarkably, half a century later, HH’s still long-haired (albeit gray, thinned and balding) classmates were still fighting that fight. Some were immigration lawyers, some were anti-poverty lawyers, some were in politics, some were environmentalists.
All retain their passion and clarity of purpose. I don’t think I ever sat in a room with so many admirable, impassioned people at one time. I was truly filled with awe, which in these heartbreaking times gave me much-needed hope and inspiration.
Of course, among them was my personal hero, Handsome Hubby, who has long championed energy efficiency and renewable energy policy.
Like I said, I learned a lot about my husband that weekend. Most amazingly, I learned that he didn’t attend his third year of law school!
Family obligations required his presence back in Nevada. To honor those obligations, he carried a compressed course load during the second school year and the summer before returning West.
Once home, he worked full-time and completed his law school thesis requirement long-distance, consulting with professors via telephone. (This thesis requirement was another pioneering element of Antioch’s core curriculum, which many law schools across the country now emulate.)
Maybe that last point only reinforced what I already knew — that HH will do everything within his power to help his family and make the world a better place simultaneously . . . and he’ll do it all without the benefit of caffeine. What a guy!
As I sat there listening to all these gitte neshamas of various faiths, races and creeds, I was struck by how “Jewish” they — and the Antioch approach — sounded, all striving to create a shenere un besere velt.
As I sat beside my wonderful, still surprising husband of 38 years, I thought about how marriage is built on a similar foundation of constantly striving for a better, more beautiful world.
