TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH ANGELA B. BARTELL

FOR DANE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION

Interviewer: Ed Reisner

Date of Interview: December 1, 2016

Transcribed by: Ann Albert

MR. REISNER: Good morning. It's December 1st.  This is Ed Reisner for the Dane County Bar History and Memorials Committee. And I'm here this morning to interview Angela Bartell, an old friend of mine. And I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about her background and history.  Angela, good morning.

A            Good morning, Ed. It's really nice to talk to you this morning.

Q           Well, let's go back to the beginning. I think I recall that you were a Milwaukee area native?

A            That's right. I grew up in Glendale, Wisconsin. That's my birth home. We lived in the same house throughout my childhood, and I went to Nicolet High School, graduating in 1964.

Q           All right. You then came to the University of Wisconsin for your undergraduate?

A            Well, actually, I didn't come directly. I had an interim, a year of travel and growing up and having a ball.  I became Miss Wisconsin in June of 1964 and took the next year off from school. It was my gap year. I guess we didn't call it that then. And I traveled the state of Wisconsin. I competed in the Miss America pageant, actually had a disaster with my talent where              my -- I was doing a concerto of "On Wisconsin" in various classical styles, and the microphone from the        piano to the director's ears in Atlantic City in the huge hall wasn't working. And so it was not coordinated because you had to have microphones to coordinate. That was a disaster. But the experience was great. And after that I spent a year traveling the state, representing the state of Wisconsin at various events. And the result of that was that I earned both appearance fees and scholarships which paid for my education through law school.

Q           Oh. Wonderful.

A            My dad had died in 1960, and so having that education paid for was a huge thing for me and for my mother.

Q           So we started at the University of Wisconsin actually together in 1965.

A            Right.

Q           And they were tumultuous times on the campus.

A            Yes. And in looking back on that tumult really puts in perspective for me many of the early experiences that I had. This was a time when young people were revolting and the older generations were revolted. And as a young woman in a profession that was not accustomed and had never experienced the phenomenon of increasingly large numbers of women lawyers, I ran into many special barriers and many special hidden holes to fall into as a young lawyer which had to be surmounted, and now better understood looking back.

Q           Did you enter law school as essentially a senior undergraduate, or did you finish your undergraduate?

A            Yes. I was the beneficiary of a special now-no-longer-existing early admittance program where if you could demonstrate by your law board scores and your academic records that you had a very high probability of being successful in law school, they would permit you to enroll after your junior year of undergraduate and get double credits. You had to finish your major courses. Then you received credits for your first-year law classes, and thereby cutting off seven years to six years, three plus three for law school, which I was fortunate enough to do.

Q           What encouraged you to go to law school? Were there lawyers in your family?

A            Not a one. It's kind of a funny story, and it all worked out very well. But I met and began dating a second-year law student, Jeffrey Bartell. And I would pick him up at the law school, and by sitting in the back listening to his classes. And I heard Professor Abrahamson lecture and Professor Hurst and Professor Campbell before I ever went to law school. And being the competitive person that I am, and knowing other law couples, I did not want to enter into a marriage where my husband was a lawyer and I didn't know what he was               talking about. Now, that's not a very weighty reason to go to law school, but it's -- all honest with you, that's the reason I went to law school. Now, it turned out that it fit me like a glove and was the best choice I ever made, for whatever reasons.

Q           In preparation for this interview, I read some of the articles that were written when you retired from the bench, and I was struck by one of them that said that if you weren't a lawyer, perhaps you could have been a musician?

A            Yes. I was a very serious young musician. I started taking piano when I was three and a half years old. I have no idea what my mother was thinking, but -- so I ended up studying piano for about 15 years. And then I took up the oboe and became first oboist with the Music for Youth Symphony in Milwaukee, and I gained a full scholarship to Northwestern Music School.

In 1964 when I began that year off, I did a great deal of performing. I was on stage all the time, and I loved it. But I concluded that I wanted music and entertaining to be a sidelight and not my main role in life. I -- rightly or wrongly, I concluded that the performance was an ephemeral kind of accomplishment, and you had to keep performing and performing, and what have you done lately. And I felt that I wanted something more lasting to make a more lasting contribution.  So I studied psychology and German in undergraduate. I spent my junior year abroad in Germany. So I really only had two undergraduate years at the UW-Madison. And I came to Madison because I turned back my scholarship to Northwestern, and I had the funds from my year as Miss Wisconsin to pay for my UW-Madison education, which at that time was a huge bargain.

Q           Dirt cheap.

A            Dirt cheap.

Q           I just got an e-mail from the dean yesterday explaining to law students that their tuition is likely to go up $1,000 a year for the next two years. And it reminded me that I think when I started, my tuition was $600 a year total.

A            Yes. Yes. I remember tuition in about the same level.

Q           Yeah. So you arrived in the law school in 1968?

A            Yes. I was married in August of 1968. Two weeks later, there I was in Professor Campbell's torts class.

Q           And you already mentioned the scarcity of women. I think there were a handful in your class and even less in the classes ahead of you.

A            That's exactly right. I no longer remember the exact numbers, so these are estimates, but I think there were maybe less than ten, ten or less; fewer in Jeff's class. He graduated in June of 1968. I started in the fall of '68. And I think we were in the high teens.

Q           That would be about right.

A            So it was starting to increase in the years immediately after my graduation in 1971. The numbers ballooned until, oh, maybe ten years later it was half the class or nearly half the class were women, so –

Q           Did that create problems? Was it difficult for you to find people to study with, to befriend?

A            No. Yes and no. Obviously, the women were an anomaly, something unusual, and I think the fellas that were in the class were “what the heck is up with these women, why do they want to go to law school.” So there was a little bit of we/they, but nothing like sitting in classes. As you may recall, the law school divided you into the first half of the alphabet and the second half of the alphabet, and that was your cohort, which means that you were with many of the same people in your    classes throughout law school. So that helped break down the barriers.  But the barriers were real. And I'll relay a story. And maybe others of the era would remember it differently, but this is the way I remember it. I was a very high-achieving law student and ended up graduating first in my class. So that was the subject of some discussion among my classmates. And I ran for editor-in-chief of the Law Review. I had been articles editor with Walter Dickey and met many close friends on the Law Review. And when it came time to elect between the two candidates, I was not elected. And who knows what the facts were exactly, but I was told by friends who were at the secret meeting of election that the concern was that I was a married woman and would not be able to spend the time at the Law Review office and so did not become editor-in-chief of the Law Review.

Well, that didn't keep me down. I'll tell you that. And that law school, that Law Review experience was very valuable for me to edit the articles of wonderful authors for the Law Review and had the experience of sitting down with feedback between them and me. And it was the start of or continuation of my internalizing goals of a high level of expression and writing which I needed every day the rest of my law career, including the 30 years on the bench.

Q           Yeah. You've already mentioned three faculty members just in passing, Shirley Abrahamson, who became a partner of yours later on.

A            Yes.

Q           Willard Hurst, a famous historian, and Dick Campbell. Were those the three faculty members that you would say you remembered most?

A            Oh, Abner Brodie has to go to the top of the list of the most memorable. I didn't necessarily know him as well as I know Shirley Abrahamson or Willard Hurst, who was my neighbor. George Brauden (ph) was just a wonderful, open, friendly, highly intelligent leader at the law school. He became the dean ultimately. So those were the ones that are standout.

And, of course, Professor Campbell, who is just an icon. I can't say that -- well, Ted Finman. Nothing surprised me more than when I went up to the lectern to ask him a question and was on an eye level with him, his piercing black eyes. He was an extremely intelligent man and very challenging. But Abner Brodie was the master of the Socratic method, the Socratic method which was all questions and challenges from the professor was the traditional mode of education for new lawyers. I would say it was declining. Professor Campbell also was a master at it. But Abner Brodie could cut and quarter you right in front of class, and you liked him for it. So he was terribly memorable.

Q           Yeah. Well, graduation came, 1971. What was the next step in your career?

A            Well, I had the remarkable good fortune to receive a clerkship with James E. Doyle, Federal District Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin. And I actually had two offers that year. I had an offer from the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to be his law clerk, Nathan Heffernan, long-term mentor and friend as well. And one of the hardest things I had to do as a young woman lawyer was to tell Nat Heffernan that I would be not taking his offer of clerkship. And my reason was, I explained to him, was that I wanted to be in the practice of law, and I felt that clerking at the trial level would give me a vicarious chance to learn at the feet of the best lawyers to appear in the Federal District Court in the trial situation and watch fact finding. At that point I was not planning on being a judge. But that decision is really seminal to expose me to one of the icon trial judges in our state's history, James E. Doyle. Not the governor. The dad. And at the end of that year of clerkship, when I began my practice with LaFollette, Sinykin, Anderson & Abrahamson and experienced other trial judges, I made an internal goal to try to follow in the footsteps of my great mentor, Judge Doyle, and become a trial judge.

Q           You mentioned your first legal position after the clerkship was with the LaFollette law firm.

A            Yes.

Q           How long were you there?

A            I was there five years.

Q           And during that time –

A            I might point out, barely the minimum required to qualify to be a circuit court judge. Barely.

Q           While you were there, what kind of practice did you do?

A            It was a general associate's practice. I worked on many cases with the senior partners at the law firm. I'll add a little footnote here that Gordon Sinykin is one of the toughest mentors you’ll ever have in your life, and if you didn't get to the bottom in your research or write with the most direct and persuasive style, he'd be all over you. And, you know, it's the old story, though. The teachers that were the toughest are the ones who did you the most good and that you end up feeling closest to. So Gordon Sinykin was a very, very important teacher for me. Shirley Abrahamson. Earl Munson. A. Roy Anderson. These were the senior partners in that firm, and they were all wonderful mentors for me and leaders for me.

And I began to attract some of my own clients. Some were handed down by senior partners, and some of them I'm still in contact with, my clients from back then, if you can believe it. I have a good friend,               Barbara Yaffe she was then known as, now Barbara Marshall, who was a neighbor of mine out in Tucson, Arizona in the winter. So between my old clients, I did a lot of real estate on my own coin and a lot of family law. These were areas of entre. I will say that the people who mentored me, including Judge Doyle and those senior partners I mentioned, were people who had no doubt that women would -- could excel in the law. The fact that Shirley Abrahamson was a partner in that law firm was, I think, critical to their education and understanding and, of course, an important role model for me as I began my career.

Q           Did you happen to take Tax from Shirley?

A            Yes, I did.

Q           So did I.

A            Yes, I did.

Q           You were about to add something.

A            I want to talk about the job search at that time --

Q           Yes.

A            -- which was a real gauntlet of fire. That's the only way to explain it.  Now, the people that I was interviewing with didn't mean to be overbearing or doubtful or rejecting. These were, you know, fine law firms. They simply had no experience with women in private practice. And private practice is a business, and it depends on your ability to attract clients and to perform, expand your practice, ultimately to be a rainmaker. And they had never seen a woman do this in our town. I do remember that Jean Lawton was an associate in her dad's firm. And Shirley Abrahamson was extraordinary then, and she is extraordinary now, that she had a successful practice and combined it with a professorship at the law school. That's just her. She's extraordinary.     So that law firm was receptive to young lawyers of promise, regardless of their gender.

But I can tell you that the rest of the law firms in town were not convinced, and doubtful. And I interviewed with many of them. I had one offer. I was the first in my class. I was an editor of the Law Review. I had outstanding credentials. I was not shy. There would be no reason, but for gender. I was -- the details of it, I guess, aren't important, but one of the funny anecdotes, at one law firm I was told that, well, I wouldn't be able to play basketball at noon with the lawyers, and I probably wouldn't fit in. And in those days, you could ask those forbidden questions like are you going to have children and all of this.

I've left out one person that I do need to talk about in terms of my fortification to seek this career in these challenging times, and that was Margo Melli, Marygold Melli.

Q           I was about to mention her because she tells similar stories about when she graduated 1952. Now, that's 20 years before you.

A            Yeah. Not much had changed.

Q           The dean of the law school told her as they were walking down Bascom Hill, "Well, you're going to have a tough time finding a job."

A            Right.

Q           Margo remembered that 50 years later.

A            Well, I remember a comment of another editor at the Law Review, not Walter Dickey, who said, "You're gonna make a hell of a legal secretary." Fortunately, I'm a peaceful person. But Margo Melli -- let me just say that before I went to law school, I met with Margo because she had a family, she was raising children and was a leader in the law school and a pioneer in domestic law, divorce law, was one of the leaders ultimately of no-fault divorce in Wisconsin. She was a giant. And so I went to meet with her, but not on the subject really of law so much as how do you work your life, how does your life work for you, what's your experiences. And she was very reassuring, very supportive that it was possible to combine family and career. That was the era when Betty Friedan was writing books like a penny in her shoe, which I read voraciously because I knew where Jeffrey Bartell was going to be 20 years down the road, but I didn't know where I was going to be. But I wanted to be someplace important, though. So Margo was a very supportive figure even before I went to law school.

Q           We're talking about discrimination against young women lawyers at that time. Did it carry over into – first of all, did you get a sense that you were paid less?

A            No.

Q           You weren't. Well, of course, your firm –

A            No, it was my firm, and then I went from my firm to the county court, not the circuit court, of Dane County where all judges are paid the same. So while I experienced overt discrimination, that's the only thing I can say. And I don't blame anybody. I mean, I’m not mad about it. But that happened to me. I also avoided a lot of less obvious forms of discrimination, certainly in pay. I never had that ever.

Q           Well, five years went by in private practice, and you said that was the minimum to become a judge. What led you to become a judge? 

A            Well, I told Gordon Sinykin when I interviewed for the job that someday my goal was to be a judge. I think he hoped it wouldn't be true. When he was my presenter at court for my swearing-in ceremony, my investiture, he made a joke, he said he was tired of being the bridegroom to the bride because Jim Doyle, his partner, had gone on the bench, and then Shirley Abrahamson had gone on the bench a year before I did, and then me. Of course, he was then still to suffer yet another loss when Margaret Peggy Vergeront went to the Court of Appeals from that law firm. So he felt he was the training ground, and he lost of lot of lawyers to judicial careers.

Q           You were appointed to your first seat on the bench?

A            Yes. Yes. So the immediate thing that preceded that was I will say now my dear friend Archie Simonson who stuck both feet in his mouth and triggered in that very active political environment a recall. And the recall laws then were different than they are now. It was a one-shot deal, and it made -- a petition had to be filed, and then anybody could run against him. And there were six people that ran against Archie.

Q           And I was the campaign manager for Dan Moeser, who finished second.

A            Yes. Yes. Dan Moeser, who went on to have a distinguished career as a judge as well. And, of course, the victor was Moria Krueger. And I hope you're going to interview Moria.

Q           I think she may have been already, yes.

A            Okay. She has stories to tell. So we had our first woman judge in Dane County. And other than Vel Phillips over in Milwaukee, and I think there was a woman --

Q           Anna Blum in Green County, Monroe.

A            Oh, really?

Q           Yes.

A            Okay. I may have forgotten that.

Q           She might have been the first.

A            There was another woman up north who was a wife who may have been on the bench.

Q           Yeah.

A            But it's -- the years have gone by.

Q           Yes.

A            So Marty Schreiber -- Bill Eich -- we had a two-level trial court. We had county courts and we had circuit courts. And there were six county courts and four circuit courts. Was it Jackman who retired, Judge William Jackman, leaving an open seat? And Bill Eich, a fine judge who had been elected county judge, ran for circuit court and won. And so that left an opening on the county court. And there was a lot of interest, and there were other women candidates. And Martin Schreiber was, he was my guy, Acting Governor Martin Schreiber. He was from Milwaukee. And he stepped into the governorship when Pat Lucy went to be ambassador to Mexico. And so he was there not all that long, and he was not reelected after. But during that time period, Martin Schreiber appointed me to the               county bench. And he was a friend, acquaintance before that, and a dear friend after that, of course. And he's always paid me the compliment to say that I was one of the best decisions he ever made. So he's how I got there.

Q           We had the two levels of courts, the circuit court and the county court. And while you were a county judge, your husband was busy reforming the court system.

A            Yes. No relation, honestly. I don't know, he probably started that before.

Q           '72 or '73, perhaps. I remember working a little with him on that.

A            I think that was the report. But, hey, they'd been going for a couple years, he and Conrad Goodenite (ph).

Q           Yeah, yeah.

A            So anyway, Jeffrey and his blue-ribbon study committee concluded that our court system was not efficient. And it wasn't. I can tell you that when I became a county judge, we could try civil cases up to, like, $3,000. We were limited to preliminary hearings in felony cases, and we did small claims and traffic. So you had six judges who were directed at the less, I don't know, not lesser important, they're not less important, but the smaller matters, and then four who did the large civil cases and the felonies. It was a very rigid system. And that blue-ribbon committee said it should be -- everybody should be the same. You should have generalization. People should be cross-trained. And that ultimately resulted in constitutional amendments to the State Constitution. So you can see it really had very little to do with Jeff and me. But in August of I think '79, only 18 months – I took the bench January 3, 1978. August 1st of 1979 by virtue of the constitutional amendment, I became a circuit judge, didn't have to run for the position, and stayed there and ran for reelection five times. I served five six-year terms and served just over 30 years on the bench.

Q           Were you opposed at all?

A            Never.

Q           Never? I'm not surprised. So when you began, there were ten circuit judges, or when you went in.

A            Yes. So then I was Branch 10.

Q           Branch 10.

A            Last one, last duck on the boat.

Q           I think now there are 22?

A            Yeah. You'll have to ask someone else.

Q           And you had said everybody should be a generalist and should be cross-trained. That has been maybe amended slightly now because, well, there's a rotation, so I guess eventually everybody gets -- all the judges get all the different experiences.

A            Well, I can't speak to the current system. I just don't know what tweaks they've made. But the bones of that system were created by me here in Dane County.

Q           As chief judge.

A            As chief judge. I was appointed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to be chief judge in 1982. Now, think about the years that we're talking about and how rapidly this went.

Q           Three years.

A            Well, I was a county judge January 1, 1978, a circuit judge August 1 of '79, and chief judge to replace Richard Bardwell, a judge of many decades experience, in July of 1982 and served until the end of June, 1988. When the whole generalism policy as a state required by the Wisconsin Supreme Court came into being and had to be implemented, and I was the chief judge of the Fifth Judicial District four counties, Dane, Rock, Green, and Lafayette. And that was a challenge. Not only am I a very young woman with whatever differing attitudes people might have had to me because of that, with independently-elected trial judges who have run their courts, for better or worse, as completely independent institutions other than the fact that they've received funding from the state and the county. There was a very -- there was not a strong chief judge system.

So the board of judges and I agreed on a modified rotation system where we'd have three divisions, and this has probably been -- I know it's been tweaked to some degree. It was the criminal division, the civil and family division, and the juvenile division. And under my regime, other than the juvenile division -- I take that back. All of the judges drew civil and criminal cases in different proportions. The criminal judges were specialists in criminal, but they had some civil cases. And I think that's changed. I think now they are more pure divisions. But I had people keeping in touch with the jurisdictions at all times. The only exception was juvenile. That was a full-time job, and that was all those people did was to do juvenile. And family was spread throughout the rest of the judges. So in some form, that still is the skeleton that I believe is in place up in the Dane County Courthouse.

Q           In addition to your administrative responsibilities, you, of course, were trying cases?

A            I was also writing the Judicial Benchbook.

Q           Well, you were busy. So what -- do you remember any cases? Do any cases stand out?

A            This interview may go on all day. It's not going to. But I remember the case of LaRon McKinley. That was a felony case. And he had endangered somebody's life. These were major felonies, a very violent assault. He didn't kill anybody, though. It wasn't a murder case.  But he was in my court and was reputed by the bailiffs to be one of the most dangerous people that Dane County had ever seen. He had been convicted of stabbing an inmate in the California system through the bars with a pen and blinding him. This was a violent person. He was uncontrollable and violent.

And there was extraordinary security in my court. We had wand screeners at the doors, and he was shackled. And to try to assure the fairest trial and not have it appear to the jury that he was an extremely violent man, a couple things I ordered was he had to write with a crayon so he couldn't stab anybody, and he was shackled. One arm was to his waist, and his legs were shackled together. And around the counsel table we did like an ice cream social bunting, you know, to shroud. This guy picked up his leg, crossing it to show the jury the shackles on his ankle. What a guy. When he took the stand -- he testified in his own behalf -- he had to go to the stand with the jury outside of the room and leave the stand because he was shackled. So it was a remarkable case. It was covered broadly in the press. High profile means high pressure for the judge to make sure that everything will stand the test of very close scrutiny.  And at his sentencing, he was given the right of allocation, and he turned to the crowd -- he didn't turn to me; he talked to the crowd -- he raised his hands like Jesus Christ and basically said, "If you haven't walked in my shoes, you cannot judge me." He was something.

Q           So he was obviously convicted.

A            Oh, he was convicted, yes.

Q           He didn't threaten you?

A            No, no.  And I remember the case of -- I should have thought more about this one. I don't need to tell too many war stories, but this was a fellow who had fled to Belize who had ordered the contract killing of his business partner over a dispute over an airplane. He was another real gem. And he was arrested by Interpol and taken forcefully and returned to the United States. And under agreement with the country he had been seized from, he couldn't be -- the State agreed or the Federal Government agreed that he would not be sentenced to more than the maximum penalty in that country for murder. So we tried that case. And he had been gone for three years. He was in my court charged with this crime, fled to Belize. Three years later he's back in my court and we continue with the prosecution. And he was a real slippery character too. So I sentenced him to something considerably longer when he was convicted, of course, than the 20 years. And then the governor commuted his sentence.

Q           Well, both of those cases were sad, is the wrong word, but tragic cases.

A            Extreme cases.

Q           Were there any happy memories?

A            Oh, yes. Oh, many. Oh, yeah. When I served a rotation in the juvenile court, I use the word "adopt," but when we left the juvenile court, we were supposed to -- no, I adopted these kids. Not legally. It was a boy with a very difficult and violent background who acted out and was a very tough little guy. And there was a young girl whose mother was a prostitute, and that was a dependency case, and the goal was to keep her from becoming a prostitute.

Well, these two were in my court repeatedly, so when I left the juvenile court, I asked the chief judge, who must have been -- I was done being chief judge at that time -- Moeser, Judge Dan Moeser, if I could keep those two cases, in violation of the rules for rotation, and he gave me permission to do that. And so I did keep them.  Now, the young boy did ultimately commit a felony and went to prison. But the young girl went beyond high school education. So, you know, one win and one loss of two kids that had, you know, meant a lot to me while I was struggling with their problems as a juvenile judge.

Q           Yeah. You served 30 years and then decided that was sufficient?

A            Yeah.  So I was 62. I'm still young. I fought the good battle on many fronts for many, many years. And one of the areas of tension, which is perfectly appropriate, is the question of county funding of the court system. It was a split funding system. I think it still is. And in the early years when I was chief judge, the county board didn't like this mandate from the state that they fund the courts, which meant that they pretty much didn't like the courts. And, you            know, there's a lot of strong personalities involved. That's over-generalizing, I know, because there were people who were supportive. But it was always a battle at budget time. And I remember a county board member saying to me, a crusty fellow who will go unnamed, who said, "Don't forget you're a state judge." And I said, "You don't have to tell me what I am. I know what I am, but you're half the funding of the courts, and I expect you to live up to that." So this was a history of split power and courts have needs and they thinking that we were bossing them around and not liking that. And this battle repeated itself from my chief judgeship through Moeser's chief judgeship through Foust's chief judgeship. And as we were going into about the, oh, when we built the jail, we built the courthouse, and all these same tensions, when we were starting about round seven in my career of another contentious go-round with the county, and I was really tired of it, I just sort of felt I needed to have a little more freedom in my own life. My kids were growing and grown. I was starting to have grandchildren -- I have ten of them now -- and I thought, well, it's time to give some of the other important things in my life more time and attention than my full-time judgeship, which I gave it full-time and more.

I mentioned the Benchbook. We can talk about that too. And I was assistant dean of the Judicial

College. I was teaching Evidence and Judicial Craft and I was doing a lot of extracurricular things in support of the profession that I truly, truly loved.  But I decided to cut myself loose at the age of 62. Thirty years and a month and a day is enough to call            it good. And so I then recovered for about four months of       doing nothing, and then I started a mediation/arbitration business.

Q           Mediation and arbitration business, which you've continued.

A            Yes. I'm still -- my license plate says MEDIATOR.

Q           I did I think about arbitration, lending law arbitration cases for the Better Business Bureau.

A            Really?

Q           And they were very interesting.

A            Yeah. I'll bet.

Q           So, yeah, I know a bit about what you're doing now.  You also mentioned ten grandchildren. Five children?

A            Five children.

Q           So during the course of your legal career, you were a mother?

A            Yes.

Q           Describe that too.

A            In 1979 I was pregnant with twins on the bench. Probably one of the few judges who grew out of her robe. And those children are now 37 to 44 years old. And I have ten grandchildren.

Q           Are any of your children lawyers?

A            Yes. Two.

Q           Two?

A            Two of them.

Q           And where are they?

A            Three of my children are in Madison, Wisconsin, six of my grandchildren. And one lawyer daughter is in Chicago. And the one teacher daughter is in Portland, Oregon, married with two of my grandchildren out there.

Q          We've talked about everything that's on my list, but I'm sure you have other things you'd like to talk about.

A            Well, just briefly about that twin pregnancy, there was no maternity leave policy in the court system at that time because it had not come up. And so in consultation with the Supreme Court, I told them, well, I actually had to leave the bench because the twin pregnancy can be a little iffy at the end. So Judge Sachtjen stood in for me during my leave. And I had a total leave of four months both before and after the birth.  And, I mean, the State was completely nonjudgmental or nonplussed. I mean, they said “you take the time that you need.” I don't know that it was based on my character, but I wanted to get back there as soon as I could. I felt a huge responsibility to the litigants and the lawyers in my court. So that was done handily. I suppose they must have a formal policy now, but there was none when I asked for a leave.

And the Benchbook, I do want to talk about the Benchbook.

Q           Yes.

A            Sofon Nodilski ?? was the clerk of the Supreme Court.

Q           I remember.

A            Sofan ???? I'm pausing because I think he may have been a clerk to James E. Doyle. There's an early connection there, and he went from there, I think. I knew Sofan??? Before he was clerk of the Supreme Court, so -- and he knew me. And he had a dream of developing a Judicial Benchbook for the trial judges of the state. This was long -- he must have been there during court reorganization, and that may have been the reason he felt it was even more important since we had this big upheaval that there be developed a Judicial Benchbook.

And there was a Judicial College, and Bill Eich, Judge Bill Eich was a teacher there. And he prepared outlines in the most interesting way. He had the citations in the left margin and then spare outlying form in the right-hand margin. I thought it was great. And when Sofan Nodilski asked me if I would be the editor of the new Judicial Benchbook -- this was all extracurricular activity -- I, of course, said “yes” and listed Bill Eich, not sufficiently credited, with the format which is still the format of the Judicial Benchbook.  And we had three different committees, the family, juvenile, civil and the criminal. And it was at the beginning a big community project to assign out subject areas, develop outlines. And my role as editor was to see that there was a uniformity of leanness and conformity to this different kind of an outline, which is easy to use on the bench 'cause you not only have the black letter rules, but you have the citations. So if you're getting an oral decision and you've got the Benchbook in front of you, I mean, you're ready to rock and roll. I called it the recipe book for trial judges. It didn't -- it gave you the basics. And the hope was that if everybody performed at the level that was represented by the standards in the Benchbook that we would have more uniformity in the trial courts in the state. And I believe that it certainly pulled in that direction.

Q           How long did it take to do that?

A            Well, I'd have to look at the Benchbooks, which I don't have at hand, to see when their first publication was. It was two years in before the first publication that we worked on this.

Q           And it's constantly being revised?

A            It's constantly being revised. In the first edition, Shirley Abrahamson called me. She said, "You know, the family area is a little thin." I said, "Shirley, give me a break. You know, we're lucky we got this out." I said, "There will be additions." It was looseleaf tabbed. We could put in pages or we could replace a section. And that is still the format that it's in today.  And so I worked on that I believe for ten years.  And the committees fell away, and sometimes we didn't even have money for a research assistant. And there was one edition where there was one person working on it, and it was me. And they did -- then we did have research assistants, and I would assign other editors to the various volumes. So we pulled it back up from the abyss.  And then they decided to actually fund it. And, um, I don't know exactly the structure for updating it, but I was ready to be relieved of this really large responsibility, and they were ready for a new structure. And so I retired from that particular project. And it still, I get the updates on it, and I'm so proud of my recipe book, you know, and I think it has served the judiciary very well 'cause people come to the bench with different experiences. And when I have mentored new judges, I've always said “if you're going into an area you're not familiar with, get with that Benchbook and be sure you understand everything that's in it, and then build, you know, go to the Judicial College and talk to your colleagues. But that's a baseline for you.”

And I did receive the Lifetime Judicial Achievement Award from the State Bar I think largely based on that Benchbook. Now, that's not why I did it, but in fact, I never thought anybody really sort of noticed except that it came into their chambers and it was useful to them. So that was just a real lovely surprise.

Q           You have a lot of notes. Are there other things thatyou wanted to talk about?

A            Oh, no. I think we're --

Q           I have one question that I have to put to you. Do I recall an article about you and Jeff taking a long motorcycle journey?

A            Oh, yes.

Q           Somehow I don't picture you on a Harley.

A            Oh, it wasn't a Harley.

Q           Oh. There. Okay.

A            Okay. But it was a Harley-like bike, 675 pounds, a Yamaha V Star. So we had ten years of lovely adventures on our motorcycles. We rode around Lake Superior. We rode down --

Q           We'll edit Jeffrey out.

A            He's saying I rode my own motorcycle. I was not a passenger. I've never been a passenger. I've always been a driver.

Q           I had a total of five cycles. The last one was a Harley, but it was the smallest Harley ever made, a Harley Sprint H.

A            Oh, my goodness.

Q           250 cc's.

A            Yeah. I bet it was zippy, though.

Q           Oh, it was fun. But since I've been married, my spouse has discouraged my motorcycle.

A            Last year we had done a full ten years of safe motorcycling, knock on wood. And there have been some high-profile terrible accidents, and we realized that while we wore day-glow green and helmets and reflectors and all of this that many of the motorcyclists who suffered terrible things, including my dear colleague, Steve Ebert, are doing everything right and end up with terrible injuries or death.  So when that happened, when he died, Jeff and I said ten years of good luck is good luck. Let's cash in our chips and have our memories.  We do ride e-assisted bikes on the bike trails a lot, and we love that.

Q           I'm happy with what we've done –

A            Okay.

Q           -- if you are.

A            I do have one more thing from my notes. I was one of the first judges to use computers and word processing and printing my own opinions. I had complete control over the creation, the editing, and the issuance of them. And so I bought for my children an Apple II Plus computer 64k. Your calculator has way more power than that. I can't tell you the year, but I began issuing opinions with my dot matrix printer. Charlie Dykman called up and he said to me -- Judge Charlie Dykman of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals called up and said, "Dammit, Angela, can't the county buy you a better printer?" I said, "Chuck, the county isn't buying any computers for anybody, and that's my printer, and that's all I got, so you'll have to live with it."  Do you remember the dot matrix printers?

Q           I do. When I was in high school in West Allis, I got to take a computer programming course at UW-M on Saturdays, and it was an IBM-620 computer. It took up about the size of your house. And punch cards.

A            Oh, yes.

Q           And it had huge dot matrix printers attached to it.

A            Oh, yeah.

Q           It was a blast.

A            One of the questions you asked on your outline is how has the practice of law changed.

Q           Oh, yes.

A            Well, I, in my own life, we used to visit relatives who had outhouses in Pennsylvania in the coal mining country, and in my own life we've come up to my Apple watch. I mean, you know, it is extraordinary. Well, that degree of change has existed in my legal career, not the outhouse part, but, you know, old-fashioned, single-lawyer offices with secretaries and typewriters and carbon paper and legal research which was three-fourths or more of your time to find the cases in the digests and the various pocket parts of our               lives, and one-quarter or less of the time to analyze it, understand it, and use it to flash research where it takes way less than a quarter of the time. You can find it instantaneously and then spend seven-eighths of your time understanding it, sorting it, using it and writing your brief. It is nothing less than a revolution. 

But I remember old-time lawyers that were like, in my memory, like movie stars. They looked like lawyers and they had their bow ties and they -- you could tell they were a lawyer, you know, from a mile away to our really corporate law practice now. So I've seen a lot. And I've loved it all.

Q           Wonderful. I appreciate your time, and thank you very much.

A            You are welcome.