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Welcome Message from the President
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The First Class was First Class
When Lou Smith, the law school’s first secretary read the roll call on that fateful first class session, each student stood and announced his or her undergraduate degree and alma mater. In addition, they told whether they had any graduate or post graduate education.
I was surprised at the number of master’s degrees. Indeed, there were several doctorate degrees among the members of that first class. They were a special group of people.
Larry Nolan was a graduate of Western Michigan University. He came to see me in my office in the supreme court before classes began. He wanted to thank me for the opportunity to attend law school. He looked like John the Baptist, with long flowing black hair, a full mustache and a beard. A child of the sixties, I thought.
He came to see me the following semester. The beard was gone and the hair noticeably shorter. Again, he thanked me for the chance to pursue the study of law.
Every term for the rest of his law school career, Larry sought me out and thanked me for his legal education. Each time, the haircut was more conservative. By the time he graduated, he looked like a wall street lawyer. Larry went on to become the chairman of the young lawyers section of the State Bar of Michigan, and to establish a successful practice in Eaton Rapids.
Mark Redding was from Ann Arbor. His father was a lawyer and he wanted desperately to join him in practice. He had been shut out of other schools, and was almost unable to believe his good fortune in being accepted at Cooley. He showed up several times a week to mop floors and perform any other menial chores that might be needed.
Jackie George lived across the street from Wayne State University’s law school in mid town Detroit. She commuted five nights a week to Cooley on a Greyhound bus. Kept it up for three years. She always said it gave her good uninterrupted study time. Jackie has done well in the law practice. She is a major donor to the law school.
One day I visited the classroom and showed the students several drawings of logos which we had under consideration for the school. Curiously, the students picked a representation of an Ionic column. I say curiously, because it was some time before anyone thought of acquiring the old Masonic Temple with its stately front pillars, as our school building.
With the help of Father Jerome MacEachen, our pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing, I devised a Latin motto to be displayed beneath the logo.
In corde hominem est anima legis. The spirit of the law is in the hearts of men. It wasn’t long before a delegation of our female students visited my office. They informed me that they were representatives of a new student organization known as CAT, an acronym for Cooley Action Team. They made it clear to me that the spirit of the law also resides in the hearts of women.
Summoning my high school Latin background, I explained that vires was the Latin word for the male of the species, and that hominem was more properly translated as mankind or humanity. From that day forward, the official translation of the Cooley motto became “The spirit of the law is in the human heart.”
The students in that first class developed a great spirit of comradery. For one thing, they had all been required to sign an affidavit to the effect that they were aware that the school was unaccredited, and that they might never be able to take a bar exam or become lawyers. They were sharing a substantial risk in addition to the usual gauntlet that first year law students must run through. Moreover, there were no guaranteed student loans. Even veteran’s benefits were not yet available. Every penny of their tuition was paid in cash.
One of the students, probably in his mid 50s, had a heart attack. His name was Ray Davis. Along with several other mature students, Ray had organized a study group. His classmates vowed that Ray would not be allowed to fall behind. They took the class notes to him in the hospital and later to his home as he recuperated. Ray kept up with the class.
There were a number of success stories to come out of that class. Claude Thomas, the first black judge in Lansing. Brent Danielson, a district court judge in western Michigan, who would one day succeed me as chairman of the Cooley board of directors. The list is long and distinguished.
They were modern day pioneers. Their faith and commitment built a foundation of achievement and good repute which inured to the benefit of future classes.
And they confounded many critics when they outperformed the graduates of the illustrious University of Michigan Law School on the February, 1976 bar exam.
But that’s another story.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004