Pekowsky, Robert Oral History 03312016
Transcript of Oral History Interview with ROBERT PEKOWSKY for the Dane County Bar Association
Interviewer: Ed Reisner
Transcribed by: Ann Albert
Good morning. This is Ed Reisner. I'm here for the Dane County Bar Association History Committee to do an oral history with Bob Pekowsky. It is March 31, 2016
Q Good morning, Bob.
A Good morning.
Q We were discussing the similarities in our background. They even extend to the fact that we come from Central Wisconsin. I come from a farm family. Tell me about your background.
A Born in Springfield, Wisconsin, which is outside of Westfield. Moved to Westfield and grew up and went to school, high school in Westfield. Left Westfield to go to Madison to school.
Q So you graduated from high school in Westfield?
A Yes, sir.
Q You came to down to Madison?
A To school.
Q And earned your bachelor's degree in psychology in 1961?
A Yes.
Q And then I saw something very interesting, that you were headed in a very different direction before you started law school.
A That's right. I was going to medical school. Both my wife and I took all the premed requirements in addition to whatever else we were doing. She was a much better student than I was, understood science better than I did. But I was accepted at Marquette. She interviewed with Wisconsin. She, I believe, spoke with an assistant dean. At that time we had two children. So he -- I'm sure it was a man -- discouraged her from pursuing a medical career because she would be a devoted mother and wouldn't be devoted to being a doctor.
But I was accepted at Marquette, and I received a bill for the microscope for $350 and didn't have any money to pay for that microscope. And I realized this isn't going to work, we don't have any money. And we were not about to ask her parents for any aid, and we were too stubborn to ask anyone or do anything, didn't know what to do, so I declined the spot. And I walked over to the law school and saw Baldwin, who was the assistant dean I think at that point, and talked to him and ended up taking the test and went to law school.
Q So you did have to take the LSAT test?
A Yes.
Q That was about the time when they began requiring the LSAT?
A Yes.
Q But admission was still a little more casual than it became years later when you had deadlines to apply and --
A I think very different. I literally could have taken that test anytime. And I'm sure that's different. And, of course, there were almost no women in law school at that point.
Q And you were in the old law building?
A Yes.
Q Prior to the –
A Yes.
Q -- 1963 building.
A Yes.
Q Do you remember particular professors or particular classmates?
A Professors, I've been thinking about that. I took Margo Melli. Very good, but she became a friend. That's one reason I can easily remember her. Jim McDonald was one of the easiest-going. He was also an assistant dean who kept giving me little scholarships and things. If I needed money, I went to see him, which was often. I think he did give me a loan or something. It wasn't a loan 'cause I never paid it back. But he certainly was one of my most favorite people.
Dean George Young scared the hell out of me, but I really thought he was very good. I mean, when you were about to be called on, I was terrified of that man. But overall, as I've thought about this, there are many fine people. Professor Nathan Feinsinger. I only had one course with him, but it was one that left the largest impression. It was labor law. And he brought in Harry Bridges from the Longshoreman's Union. I just couldn't believe that. The career that Feinsinger had that he could describe to us was just amazing. Anyway, as I thought about it, I think as I reflect on it, he was probably one of the outstanding minds at that time, and it was telling. It was incredible to hear and see that man.
Q George White who practiced with Quarles & Brady I think was a year behind you in law school, 1965. He remembered Nate Feinsinger bringing Jimmy Hoffa in --
A I believe it.
Q -- as a guest speaker. And I remember George White telling me that Jimmy Hoffa had an entirely different persona in a classroom, that he talked like a professor instead of like a truck driver. But you didn't see him?
A No, I did not.
Q I also had Jim McDonald for Trusts and Estates. And that became one of your areas.
A Yes.
Q You were well after the famous Herbie Page, but you may be familiar with some of the stories about Herbie Page too.
A Just vaguely familiar, yes.
Q My favorite and the one I thought of when I thought of you serving as a judge for years is that Herbie Page, the famous author of Page on Wills, did such a poor job of drafting his own will that it had to be constructed in court seven times.
A Interesting.
Q Yeah.
A Interesting.
Q But you did develop a specialty or a particular area of interest in probate and trusts and estates?
A I did. I did. I entered the estate planning contest and won the contest in law school. I went on to join Wheeler, Van Sickle, Day & Goodman at that time, and left there and was hired by the bank, at that time First Wisconsin, I believe, First National, First Wisconsin, and into the trust department. Phil Smith came over and asked me whether I'd leave the firm and come over there 'cause he had some plans. Anyway, I started after being at Wheeler, VanSickle in general practice, went over to the bank and ultimately became an assistant vice-president in charge of the trust department. Learned a lot. Kept very active in the area of estate planning, doing probate. I actually did a lot of probate. I really had some very practical experience, much more than you'd get in a firm where you might have an occasional probate.
From there I went over to the courthouse at the request of Chuck Jones, who had just been elected. And his interest was mental health, and he had little or no interest in probate and estate planning. And George Paulen, who had been the long-time register, was going to be retiring, so he asked me to come over there, and I ultimately did. I also was public administrator and court commissioner and register in probate.
Along comes informal probate enacted by our legislature. And I was able to feed information to people in the legislature who I became friends with and reviewed things and was very active in it and ultimately wrote a column in the Cap Times on probate, then wrote the book on how to do informal probate, two books, and a third book on regular probate. But several things happened. This all became very important because I -- at the courthouse I befriended Irv Kreisman, who was a reporter for the Cap Times, a long-time, he was the courthouse reporter. And we struck up a friendship, and I always had a good rapport with him. And I always spoke honestly with him. And he along with out of the blue, Gordon Sinykin, a lawyer, excellent, I hardly knew him, he was connected with the Cap Times. A number of things happened. The Cap Times endorsed me for an appointment to the bench. At that time it was a probate branch, county court. And the Cap Times endorsed. Irv Kreisman wrote extensive articles. I also gave the Capital Times permission to print the entire booklet for the whole public, so there was pages and pages in the Capital Times about how to do everything. I had a rapport with the Capital Times. Anyway, I got appointed.
It was to some extent important that I earlier had been with Wheeler, Van Sickle, Day -- Roland Day, ultimately the Chief Justice -- who were very connected into Democratic politics. And I even remember being involved in campaigns, doing paperwork and stuff. But that ultimately proved to be a critically important thing in terms of the appointment.
Q Let's go back just a second. Coming out of law school, going to work for a prominent, but still smaller Madison law firm, do you remember how much you were paid?
A Yes. $500 a month.
Q $500 a month?
A No benefits.
Q No benefits?
A Walked into the office first thing. They forgot I was coming. I had an office in the Anchor Building. It was just down the hall from the main office. And they hadn't cleaned it out. So I was all dressed up like I was going to be a lawyer that day, and I ended up cleaning up my office and moving furniture and straightening it out. And that's my first day. My in-laws were flabbergasted that I would work for $500 a month even then, no benefits. I had a wife and two children. They couldn't believe how little a lawyer could be paid. For us, it was still more than we ever had.
Q Yeah.
A We didn't mind.
Q I graduated eight years after you did. Foley & Lardner had just gone to the astonishing salary of $10,000 a year.
A See, it wasn't so bad then; was it? It really wasn't. I was also -- I did get a job offer from the Atomic Energy Commission with the guy (Admiral Rickover) that had -- that was in charge of it out in Syracuse, New York. I got a job offer there. But I also got this. And that was pretty good-paying and with benefits. But the prospect of moving our whole family out there was more than my wife could take. I couldn't either. So I -- my life, our life, would be entirely different had I accepted that position.
Q You were appointed to the bench, the county bench. Who did you replace?
A Well, Chuck Jones advanced to the -- -
Q -- circuit court and left an opening?
A Yes.
Q Okay. And this is 1976, which is just before court reorganization, or --
A It is.
Q -- about the same time?
A I was appointed as a county judge in '77, took office early '78 and then was in that role for a period, a relatively short period of time. '78 I think is when the legislation ultimately became effective. And I became a –
Q A circuit judge.
A -- a circuit judge.
Q And when you became a circuit judge, were you still doing primarily probate work at that time? Or was it then a general rotational system?
A It kind of developed slowly. The rotational system really didn't develop right away. I did continue to do the probate, which included all the mental health hearings, the alcohol hearings, and most of the probate. Not many of the other judges wanted anything to do with probate, and frankly, they hadn't been doing it or hadn't been active in it for a long time. So I didn't mind doing it. So immediately I started, even before the legislation became effective, I agreed to do my round in traffic court and everything with the other county judges. And I was already trying to work myself in. I didn't want to get so I could only do one thing. It was a while to get involved, and the whole process was bumpy, really. I don't want to -- I won't use any names, but, you know, some judges did it very differently than other judges. Some were more than willing to dig in and whatever, and others were not. Initially, we started off with a rotation system that you took it for two years, you left your cases and moved on. That was a tremendous incentive not to do anything, and only a few judges fell into that trap, but everyone knew who they were. Somewhere along the line after I got to be chief judge, I changed a lot of things, knowing what I knew. It was a shock to my system to be actively involved in criminal law, which I had little or no training in. But I found it to be fascinating. I developed a real interest in juvenile law where I spent a lot of my career. So fascinated with all of that. I had -- the hardest cases I have ever done were typically in the criminal cases. They're the most difficult. I don't mean trying them, that kind of thing. I mean sentencing. Imposing sentence is a God-awful task, just a gut-wrenching task. And maybe it wasn't to others, but it was to me, passing judgment on someone like that. It's -- it's difficult.
Q Sure.
A And are you ever sure? You're never sure. But the transition was not smooth. And, you know, some of the judges across the state who were probate judges quit. I can only think of one, Judge Dancey, I think, in Milwaukee, who just said, "I don't want any part of the rest of it.” But most people made the transition -- it was bumpy, I really think it was -- where they tried through judicial education to give us, you know, to bring us up to speed, so to speak. And that certainly helped.
Q Did you spend some time out in Reno at the Judicial College?
A I did. I spent four weeks out there real early on. And this is gonna ultimately be available to the public --
Q Yeah.
A -- so I don't want to say anything. But I did get to go early on ahead of some other people. And I don't know why. I always -- I think it's safe to say I had a real good relationship with the Cap Times, and they were very supportive in everything I did. And editorially, I was given very good coverage for a long time, ever. But, well, go on.
Q You were a judge for over 20 years, so you must have stood for election several times?
A Three times.
Q Did you have opponents in any of those three?
A No.
Q You did not. Makes it a little easier; doesn't it?
A Yes. But I can tell you that you don't know until the very last minute whether someone will jump in.
Q Yeah.
A So you're always worried about it. I remember a guy at the -- now the governmental --oh, that's gone too -- the governmental board over there, Kennedy, who said that judges are the worst worriers of all the politicians. I said I'm not a politician; that's the problem. I don't know how to be a politician. But I guess we were to some extent.
Q I have a friend who just lost a contested judgeship race in a different county, and it's interesting to hear them talk about not only what it takes to be a politician and run for a judicial office, but the aftermath, trying to practice law in a county with ajudge who just beat you. It's very interesting problems that develop.
A I would think so.
Q I should also point out that the first time I met you, you were in the Register in Probate's Office, and I was working for the State Bar and with a Madison lawyer, Bob Lehman, we were drafting the first probate system for Wisconsin. And I remember you being a great help.
A Well, that's good.
Q We were trying to develop methods that would make probate more -- easier and more routine, and to some extent we were successful. But that was also the time when informal probate was being enacted, and things changed a lot over a short period of time.
A They did. But that -- what you were putting together which ultimately became law stayed pretty much the same. The only thing that affected it was case law, that informal. I mean, I remember teaching probate to lawyers -- I used to teach the registers in probate. I did more speaking engagements because of that informal probate. I went to Minnesota. I went to Illinois. I did the bankers' tour teaching informal probate. It gave me a huge opportunity to speak all over.
Q Did most other states ultimately enact some form of informal probate?
A Minnesota did. I know it was in effect 'cause I went up there and did. Illinois was apparently talking about it. I went there. I spoke to a Bar group. You know, it's so long ago. But I really did a lot of public speaking, which I enjoyed doing.
Q Yes. Yes. And you retired in 2000?
A I did.
Q But you continued to hear some cases as a reserve judge?
A For another 12 years.
Q Another 12 years. Wow!
A So -- and I did sit a lot in Dane County, but I spent a lot of time in Milwaukee County and also in the other counties in the district. I was in Darlington. I was in Monroe. You know, I was a quick fill-in all through. I wanted to get into other counties. I wanted to get back to my home county, but there was never an opportunity to do it. And I just wanted to go there because that's where I had grown up, although it was in Montello. But I would like to have done that, but I didn't do that. I picked up, as reserve judges tend to, controversial cases. Particularly out of Milwaukee I got a lot of controversial cases, which I didn't mind doing. It was easy for me to walk away from the county. The sheriff would -- the deputies would usher me out. Seriously. And my wife always went down with me, and we drove back home. I mean, it was an experience to have. Milwaukee is very different. But I did -- I remember going to Darlington at the courthouse, and one beautiful, sunny day I said on the steps of the courthouse, "I can't believe I'm able to do this. I'm actually a judge in this magnificent building." It's a beautiful building. It was to myself, all alone. "I can't believe I had this opportunity."
Q Yeah.
A So I was proud of it, very proud. (Brief Pause)
Q We're back on track here now. Thank you. We were talking about your service as a judge in other counties. Before we went on tape we started talking about some of the things that you've done after you were fully retired. You're an avid reader. You're into genealogy. And we have some similarities even in our backgrounds.
A That's true, yes.
Q And you have traveled back to the area where your family is from?
A Yes. My mother's side was relatively easy to trace because the Catholic Church records are intact, and the government there -- this is years ago -- would do it for almost no money at all. So they did all the research. And then we went over in small tour groups, friends of ours, and went to the countryside and saw everything -- yes, we went to many homes that they're still standing. They're still -- you mentioned cemetery hunting. At least in Bohemia, part of Czechoslovakia, when -- they just used the same grave over and over again and put a different stone up so that it's almost impossible to find any old stones that reflects -- there was no, we had no luck at all doing that 'cause they just reused the ground.
Q Some of the gravestones that I saw were the first time that I'd ever seen a gravestone that had a photograph in it.
A It was common; wasn't it?
Q Yes. Yes.
A It was very interesting. That part of it didn't help us. But the Church records were incredibly good and gave us a lot of information. They were Catholic through and through. But I have to tell you, when they reached Wisconsin ultimately in the 1870s, they were not active in the Catholic Church.
Q Do you maintain some computer records for your genealogy?
A Yes. But most -- I've only become adept at the computer since retirement, and I haven't gone so far -- would really like to put it on. But everything is in paper form now, so I haven't. We have a ton of research. My wife has a much bigger lineage 'cause she's -- her ancestors were in the states since 1620.
Q Makes it easier.
A Yeah. But mine is -- the other side of my heritage, and I'll say this anyway. I've done all the DNA tests.
Q I have too.
A Interesting. We really are similar. I did Ancestry, and it gave an odd result for me. You too.
Q Mine too.
A Well, here goes, 'cause I don't know if you're interested in this, but my sister is still alive. She's going to be 89 this month. And I said to her our genealogy, our DNA is not the same, and would you be willing to have your saliva tested. I would never do that, I would never do anything to harm our mother's reputation. I said my mother's been dead since '67. There isn't anyone who even knows who she is or was.
But the next morning after talking with her kids, she decided. And we do have different –
Q That's interesting.
A My father probably is not my father. And I -- the reason I did this is that he was very ill for 13 years prior to my birth. And it always seemed unlikely that I could have been conceived under those circumstances with him. We have records from the hospital, the state hospital, now the University of Wisconsin Hospital, even pictures of him, and he was literally frozen with ankylosing spondylitis and other difficulties. He would not have been able to several years before, so --
Q In my case, my DNA showed a percentage of Sub-Saharan African, which I have no idea where that came in. My wife, we had her DNA checked also, and we were quite interested to find Native American DNA. And her family, part of her family lived in northern upper Michigan, upper -- the upper peninsula of Michigan, and I could see possibly, you know, that, yeah. So if we would have only known that when our kids were applying for scholarships.
Well, but let's go back to law a little bit. You mentioned some of the professors that you remembered in law school. Were there any classmates that you stayed close to, any cases that you remember particularly as interesting or notable?
A Classmates are spread all over. And really, other than an occasional Christmas card exchange, which petered off after years, I didn't have contact much with classmates, although we had a study group of seven of us that went all through law school and would go down to the bar and have a beer, which I don't even like.
Q Do you remember some of them, who those seven were?
A John Thiel; Paul Wagner; Gordy Ware. Gordon Ware is up in -- John Michler. They're both in Wausau, less so involvement with them. Chris Koepke; George Simon. I may be missing a few. Oh, Harry Sauthoff. Harry Sauthoff.
Q Who practiced in Madison.
A Yeah. And Harry I can tell you was one of the best prepared. He would come prepared to every one of these, and he would tell us all about it, and we really gained valuable information. He had done all the outlining, all of which he shared.
Q How about cases that you may have tried that stand out in your memory?
A That I tried as a lawyer?
Q Or that you were a judge that you presided over.
A Ah, well, I had a number of murder trials which were terrible. One of the first startling cases to me was I'd been out at Mendota for hearings, and the young man, 18 years old, attacked me and the doctor, had us both on the floor. We had no -- never did have security at Mendota. But anyway, he was being treated with various drugs.
Within days of that event, whatever drug he got ahold of put him into a terrible coma. And then out of this arose appointment of a guardian and a full hearing with court sketchers, CBS and all these things, whether I should pull the plug. I had medical people come in from the University and otherwise talking about it and that he was brain dead. I was getting mail from people who said don't you dare do that, that's up to God. And it is. But it was, for me, it was very early in my stage, my career on the bench. I remember walking into the courtroom, going into the courtroom, and I saw an attorney and I said to him, "I don't know what I'm doing here. I can't believe I'm now going to make a decision like this. I can't believe I'm here." Anyway, I went in and I made the decision, and I allowed them to take off all life support. I did get a fair amount of negative mail because the case was widely covered. It was a big thing in the press. It had been the first one in this area that had been tried. I've never doubted that I made the right decision. But I learned that there was a very differing view on it in the population. That was certainly remarkable. I had the murder trial for the courthouse when the coroner was killed.
Q Bud Chamberlain.
A Yeah. That was a horrible thing. And I did it twice. It finally went on to the Federal Court of Appeals after ten years. The Federal Court of Appeals reversed on a 2-1 decision and sent it back on the strength of a ruling on the psychiatrist. I didn't think I'd be trying it again. I did. But it was so much simpler the second time, frankly, because everything had passed. We were past the terrible deaths. The anger and the lack of the security in the courthouse, that had all changed. So it was almost an afterthought. Ultimately, the jury found him guilty very quickly because the theory by which he was not guilty was a new theory, so to speak, and it wasn't readily accepted at all. The jury never did accept it, actually, not even quickly. But it was gut-wrenching.
I had a lot of cases. Since you know you're getting coverage in the newspapers and on TV, I would every time I made any kind of decision of note, I would listen to hear what was being said about me and what was being written. I never felt comfortable, never was comfortable. I never for a minute thought this was an easy job. It wasn't. It's a gut-wrenching, terrible thing to have to do.
Q Yeah.
A No regrets. But it was horrible.
Q When you graduated from law school, classes were about 100, 125. We talked about the rather small income that lawyers made at that time. By the time you retired as a judge, law school was three times as large. There were people graduating from law school not necessarily coming to work in Madison, but at over $100,000 a year. The economics of the practice has changed remarkably. Any observations on how different things got in the relatively short period of time that you were involved?
A Well, yes. In the area of civil, fewer and fewer civil cases were being tried. All the judges were moving toward mandatory mediation. The lawyers were also finding that mediation was a far better system for them because juries were a little hard to predict I heard that time and again. I really realized that more when I was doing the mediation, and then I'd be working with the same attorneys who had been trying cases, and I could see why they were so concerned what juries would do. But that was one of the biggest changes. Less civil. Juvenile cases became much more complicated, many new laws, what you could do, where you could place them, under what circumstances, what you could do if a kid doesn't do what he was supposed to do. And these were hot topics all during that time.
One of the biggest changes was in the area of family law. Gradually, and particularly by the time I retired, many, many people were appearing without counsel, and they'd get help at a little law office which would give them forms and they'd file it, but then they'd be in the courtroom, and they didn't have a clue what to do, and they wanted the judge then to ask them questions, the right ones, and do everything. Very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable, especially if you were helping one more than the other. And then if they were asking a question and you didn't know whether you should assist the other one because they didn't ask the right question, very awkward. And I commented on that in a speech to the Bar at the end, and I don't know how that's going to resolve itself, whether ultimately, they'll take divorce cases, separation cases out of the courthouse. Maybe there's going to be an alternate system that might be a whole lot better.
Q Something like a register in probate for divorce?
A Yes. Those were never easy either.
Q In the general practice course that I took in law school, one of the lawyers said that the only two times a lawyer could feel really happy about representing people was -- one of 'em I don't remember, but the other was the adoptions, that you always could feel very warm when an adoption occurred.
A Absolutely right. As I -- as I went along, particularly with hindsight, and through mediation, I was seeing that more and more lawyers were less and less interested in the bread-and-butter type things, probate, real estate. Real estate had been taken over by the title companies. Pretty soon all the bread-and-butter cases were, particularly small-town lawyers, they were all gone. And they -- it seemed like everybody was shifting to get the big class action. A number of firms shifted to class action work and the bigger cases. And I watched that. I think that's amazing how it's on TV all the time, if you have this disease, you have this, you tried this medicine, etc., you could recover damages. These are huge changes in the practice of law. I don't know how many practitioners actually are sole practitioners anymore. I just don't know what they would do. They'd find a little area of estate planning. Some have done that and they're very good at it. I don't know how many are using that anymore. I think it's changed.
Q How about the Bar itself? My sense is that when the Bar was much smaller, lawyers were more collegial. And even as law firms grew, the personal relationship within the firm changed as they got bigger and bigger, and if you were on a different floor than your colleagues and you didn't run into 'em, you didn't develop the kind of contacts.
A That's right.
Q And I think that -- I'm worried that that changed the nature of the Bar.
A It probably has and will continue to do so. I -- I guess I was much more involved on the judicial side. I was a non-voting Bar member, being judicial, so my activity with the State and Federal Bar -- State Bar was very minimal because all my judicial education came from our own programs within that sphere. So I never took advantage of any of the State Bar Association programs. I was active in the Dane County Bar for the early years, but not later. But I'll tell you one other thing that was happening as security developed in the courthouses. And I did sit in various counties. And what I found in Rock County, they had a new system of security there. I mean, they had literally locked up the judges on second floor. There was literally no access to it. And frankly, the judges were too isolated. They liked having members of the Bar and having them shoot the breeze. That was gone. And I noticed that the judges didn't get together and talk, you know, having coffee. They were all in their separate offices. So that was a change.
So the Dane County Courthouse, when I knew it, people would walk into the office and say “hello.” And that's good and bad 'cause if somebody's standing out there waiting for the case and they see me talking to the lawyer, they think, oh, they're just in cahoots anyway. But that is a big change when we went to tight security.
Q The courthouse that you practiced in primarily was the old courthouse?
A Yes. I did not preside in the new courthouse, except as a reserve judge. Although I started the ball rolling to get the new courthouse as Chief Judge.
Q And that courthouse is celebrating its tenth anniversary.
A Isn't that something.
Q That's amazing, yes. Yeah. I have asked the questions that I need to ask. Are there other things that you wanted to talk about?
A Advice for new lawyers starting to practice before the courts.
Q Sure.
A I think they should be very precise in citing cases. They should carefully state the holding of the case. If we do see research on the cases cited in whatever written material, brief, and it's not what the case says, you just lose everything in the face of that. I mean, once done, I was always suspect. If that attorney did that to me again, gave me a false, a wrong interpretation of the case, that would stick with me. And every time I ever talked to young attorneys, I said just lay it down, lay it down the way it is. Don't make the terrible mistake of trying to slant the holding.
I also told new judges -- I had law clerks that became judges, and I gave the same advice. If you're in the courtroom, since you always have to run for reelection, if you can do so, always compliment the lawyers on their work in front of their clients and I tell them they've done a good job. And I have since talked to them, and they do that all the time. And lawyers really want that too. They want their clients to hear the judge say you really did a good job. So I used to have a 14-page -- 14 items on a list that I would give to the new judges. I don't even know where it is now. It's not in my mind anymore either. Anyhow, it's been an interesting kind of thing. Exciting.
Q One thing I didn't ask right at the beginning was did you know any lawyers when you made the decision to go to law school? Were there any lawyers in your family or --
A No.
Q -- in your community?
A My father was sick for so many years, my birth father was sick. And so when he died four months after I was born, my mother had -- my sister was ten, my brother was five -- we went on aid. I was raised on what my mother called mother's pension, dependent children. I was raised on that. I was very lucky. Did I know any lawyers? No. The only lawyer I knew in town was John Conant. And on reflection, he was an interesting character. That's about all I will say. He's long time dead.
But Westfield was -- helped me a lot. I was apparently a pretty good student, ended up being salutatorian of my class, and I got a scholarship to the University, and I got the Knapp Scholarship from the University. A lot of things happened to me by good people. I had teachers in my high school who counseled me early on about taking the prerequisite college courses and take the harder courses. But anyway, so I was pretty lucky.
Q I think it's a combination of luck and hard work and --
A And a good wife.
Q A good wife.
A We've had a long marriage, and we were together – we knew each other when we were kids. And ultimately, my wife was a better student than I was. She's smarter than I am, and she should have been a doctor. She has a wonderful analytic mind, just like a steel trap. But ultimately, she bore our children and she worked to put me through school.
Q I would -- I'm sure no one would argue that you had a very successful career. I know you were respected in all the different positions that you held. And unless there's something else that you need to add, it's been an honor to talk with you this morning.
A It's been my pleasure. As you know, I was appointed Chief Judge for three two-year terms. Some of the changes made during these six years are still in place. Included are the following: 1. Long-range planning, first-ever, resulted in (ultimately) a new courthouse, additional new judges, and a Madison Municipal court. 2. We decided to abort Dane County Clerk of Courts' new computer program and, instead, joined with the State's CCAP computer program very early on, obviously the right decision 3. Made all Dane County count commissioners universal. The idea was to have commissioners learn and do all specialties. 4. Instituted a judicial rotation program which required judges to finish civil, criminal, etc., cases and remain knowledgeable of most areas of law. 5. Started a drug court, one of the first.
On another interview at a later date, I think it would be interesting to examine being chief judge and the power that comes with it and what happens in a courthouse. I think it'd be premature to talk about it. There are people on -- lawyers say everybody gets along well, don't they, as judges? And I was always hesitant to say very much. I said we all come from different backgrounds. We don't really know each other. But in fact, there were some interesting problems when I was chief judge. But I think those are best left for another day.
Q We'll keep that in mind.
A I think that many of them are living.
Q Well, thank you, Bob. It's been a pleasure.
A It's been my pleasure.