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Welcome Message from the President
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Perry Mason Comes to Lansing
I can't honestly remember how I happened to get through to Raymond Burr on the telephone. Somehow I did. Maybe his secretary thought that the Justice Brennan on the line was Justice William J. Brennan of the United States Supreme Court. Whatever.
The fact is that Raymond Burr could not have been more gracious and accommodating when I invited him to be the principal speaker at the Cooley Law School Founders' Banquet. He had only two stipulations; first that he should be able to bring his long time friend and legal advisor, Gordon Schaber, then dean of the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, and second that Marian Gallagher, the librarian at the University of Washington Law School, be invited to introduce him. She had introduced him once before, and he liked her whimsical style.
Schaber had come to Burr's rescue some years before after the actor had suffered severe financial setbacks due to the dishonesty of his former agent. Schaber had been a circuit court judge in Sacramento, and had left the bench to take charge of a floundering part time law school. Through Schaber's leadership, the school made tremendous advances. Burr helped raise the money to install McGeorge's Courtroom of the Future.
So it was through Gordon Schaber that Raymond Burr became interested in, and a benefactor of, legal education. That was Cooley's good fortune. Burr charged us nothing beyond reimbursement for expenses.
In honor of his appearance, we established the Raymond Burr Award for excellence in Criminal Law, to be conferred, each term, upon the student with the highest grade in the freshman course in Crimes. The first winner, announced at the banquet, was James Bonfiglio. I have no idea whether Jim went on to become a prosecuting attorney, but he certainly had a good grounding in the criminal law.
The Raymond Burr appearance was not without incident. Murphy's Law teaches us that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. For my part, I have long clung to a mantra of correction which goes like this: If you drop it, pick it up, if you spill it, wipe it up, if you break it, fix it, if your destroy it, replace it, if you forget it, go back and get it, and if you start it, finish it. There are days when just getting back to where you were feels like success.
We were all ready for the Founder's Banquet to take place. Invitations had been printed. The Cooley Class had been enlisted to address envelopes to all the members of the local bar, and hundreds of prominent members of the community. Then the call came from Mr. Burr's office. A conflict. He could not make it. Frantically, I called Dean Schaber and asked him to intercede. Get us another date, if possible. He did, and the banquet was rescheduled for Saturday, June 16, 1973. A new set of invitations was printed, and sent out.
On the appointed day, board member Lou Smith and I took a limousine to Detroit-Wayne County Metropolitan airport to pick up our distinguished guest. He was a big man, just as he appeared on television. Severely overweight, he moved about with difficulty. It was easy to see why, cast as Robert Ironside, he was confined to a wheel chair.
In conversation, he was charming and good natured, interested in the law school and what we were doing. He made no pretense of being an expert in criminal law, or anything else for that matter. He simply accepted the fact that since he played the part of a lawyer on television, people would think that he was schooled in legal affairs. He knew that his opinion mattered, and made an effort to speak intelligently. I don't know if he wrote his own speech, or if it was the work of someone else. It didn't matter. He delivered his remarks in that familiar stentorian voice, and the audience loved it.
In the few hours that Burr was in Lansing, I had the chance to observe a phenomenon, which I would call intoxication with celebrity. First off, we had a press conference. Newspaper and TV reporters turned out to ask Burr his opinion on some of the celebrated court cases that were then on the front pages, and other current events. They hung on his words, as though he were an oracle of some kind. He was, after all, a movie star.
At the cocktail reception that preceded the dinner, a receiving line quickly formed as people pressed forward to shake his hand and share some tidbit of commonality or admiration. People I would have thought to be somewhat sophisticated turned giddy in the man's presence. Getting one's picture taken with a movie star is apparently an event of great significance. I remember seeing one of those photos prominently displayed on top of the television set in a lawyer friend's living room many years after the event.
Nor did the public adulation stop at dinner. A steady stream of guests approached the speakers' table while we were eating to introduce themselves to Burr and solicit his autograph. I don't know how they expected the man to enjoy his meal. Even movie stars have to eat.
The Founder's Banquet was a success, but it was a one time event. There are precious few celebrities who will come and give a speech without expectation of a substantial fee. Raymond Burr did it, and secured for himself an enduring place in the history of Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004