INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT THOMAS G. RAGATZ

                             By:  Teresa Kobelt                                                                                               June, 2014

Tom:     My name is Tom Ragatz.  I was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1934, grew up on the west side of Madison, attended Nakoma School for k-8th [now Thoreau], West High School, where my major activities were competitive athletics.  Then I attended the University of Wisconsin, earning a BBA degree in Accounting and Finance with Honors, and was inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma honorary society.   As an undergrad I served the local chapter of Sigma Chi as Business Manager and then as President (Consul).  I also spent a summer with General Electric at its large steam turbine plant and then corporate headquarters in upstate New York.

          Following graduation, and after a tour in the U.S. Army and working for Peat Marwick Mitchell CPAs in Minneapolis, I came back to Madison to attend Law School, graduating in 1961 as a member of the Order of the Coif.

                After majoring in accounting I helped my father, who had established his own tax consulting service, before I entered the Army.  My accounting degree proved valuable all through my career in practicing business law.   When I finished my degree, my father insisted that I take the CPA exam even though I was not interested in practicing accounting.  I took the exam and passed it; but a certain amount of experience was required to be awarded the CPA certificate, so I went to Peat Marwick in Minneapolis, which was then one of the big 8 accounting firms.  It was a good experience, but it confirmed my belief that I did not want to practice accounting.  I thought initially maybe I’d like to get an MBA at someplace like Harvard, until I found out how expensive it was.  My father had my two younger brothers to educate, and I didn’t think it was fair to ask for his help.

              Earlier I had been offered what was called a fellowship by the Dean of the U.W.  School of Commerce and had turned it down. That would have involved going on for at least a Masters and probably a PhD in accounting.

              But when I discovered that maybe my alternatives did not include going to someplace like Harvard, I thought maybe I’d go to Law School.   Law looked like where the action is, and I thought I’d like that.  So I wrote the Dean a letter, but got no response.  Then I called and said I’d   like to reconsider and accept his offer, but if he didn’t mind, I’d rather go to Law School.  He responded favorably, and I came back to Madison for Law School thinking I was going to be handing out papers in an accounting lab, like one of my now longtime friends and law partner Bernie Kubale, only to discover that I was teaching the basic accounting course 6 hours a week.   I did that for two years during Law School.  That and the regular law curriculum made it very demanding.

         Then I got involved with the Wisconsin Law Review and at the end of my second year I was elected Editor-in-Chief.   In the third year there was no way I could also teach.  But the Law Review experience, while extremely demanding, was also very good.

Teresa:  What time period are we talking about?

Tom:  1958-‘59, 1959-‘60. My third year, 1960-’61, was when I was Editor-in-Chief year of the Law Review.   In my second year I was appointed to go to Colorado to a Convention of the National Conference of Law Reviews and directed to put in a bid to bring that annual event to Madison the next year. I knew at that point that I was a candidate for Editor-in-Chief, but there had not yet been the election.    If our bid was accepted, and if I got elected Editor-in-Chief, I could well imagine who was going to run the National Conference event. And it all happened. and was very demanding, as I was all of a sudden not only Editor-in-Chief but was also Chairman of the National Conference of Law Reviews for 1960-’61. I remember when I put in our bid that one of my pitches was: “You know, if you come to Madison next year we’ll give you real beer, not the 3.2 Colorado beer.”

Teresa:  That was the selling point.

Tom:   And I made the sale, and ran a very successful conference. 

           When finishing Law School I was still single, and along came George Currie, later the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and the best mind that Court has ever had.  I don’t think people real familiar with the Court would argue that.  He had a tremendous mind.   I had argued a moot court appellate advocacy case and he was on the panel.  The other team won but I got the Mathys Award for the best argument. 

              I accepted Currie’s offer and became his law clerk for one year.  It was the first year the Court had law clerks.  At first, the Justices did not really know what to do with us. But it was a marvelous experience.  In those days the Justices’ secretaries just had manual typewriters.  And there was a secretarial office outside of each Justice’s chamber, and they put a table and chair in there and that was my place. That poor secretary suffered when the Justice asked me to edit his opinions, as she would have to repeatedly retype the draft opinions.  I had been using a sharp red pencil for Law Review editing.   The first time I sort of gently made a few marginal notes and he said “Is that all?”  I said, “Do you really want me to edit it?” He said “Yes.”  So I took it home and really edited it -- red marks all over the place.  I brought it back and showed it to his secretary and she rolled her eyes. Then the Justice took it into his office and closed the door.  She and I sat out there sort of looking at each other. But when he came back out, he said, “That is really good.  I want you to do that with all my opinions.”

Teresa:  All right!

Tom:  I formed a relationship with Justice Currie that lasted for the rest of his life.  In fact, when he ran, unsuccessfully, for re-election, I helped lead his campaign.  He was only the second or third sitting Justice ever to be defeated.  He was professorial and looked like an elderly man, but he was only 67.  He was beaten by a politician and I felt terrible, but obviously could do nothing about it.   I maintained my relationship with him and when he did some reserve judging I argued a couple of cases in front of him.  I actually got him to change his mind once after he had first ruled on a case.   That was a great relationship for me, and after he died and his portrait was hung in the Supreme Court Chambers, I made the presentation on behalf of the Justice’s family.

              During my clerkship I thought about going back to Minneapolis to practice law, but then realized I was on a first name basis with the Wisconsin Supreme Court while nobody in Minnesota had ever heard of me.  So I decided to stay in Wisconsin where my loyalty was.  However, at that time I didn’t like Milwaukee and didn’t want to practice there, so I elected to join the firm I had clerked for during the summers of 1959 and ’60, then Roberts, Boardman, Suhr, Bjork & Curry.  Glen Roberts was a good man but semi-retired.  Wade Boardman, Fred Suhr and Wally Bjork, were wonderful people and great mentors.  I practiced there from mid-1962 until February 1978.

              My practice grew very fast from the beginning.  Having Madison connections and my law and CPA background helped some, and some initial success in litigation also helped.  I tried cases because I thought that would be good experience, and that law was where the action is.   Fortunately, I was successful with them, including several wins in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the U.S. Tax Court and several Federal Court cases.  But by 1977 I was outgrowing the firm in terms of my practice, and it wasn’t eager to hire more people to help me.  I was about killing myself and had disagreements with some of my contemporaries there who liked the idea of going home at 3:30, but wanted all partners to be paid the same. That just didn’t fly, and I decided life was too short for that.   In late 1977 I announced that I intended to leave and form my own firm.

              I then started organizing my own firm with David Walsh.  We had about 8 guys but didn’t have the help I needed for   my practice.  Then Foley & Lardner came along and recruited me, concluding with our annual ski trip to Vail, a trip of which I had been a founder and which went on for 30 some years.  Great times, great guys, a number being Foley, other Milwaukee businessmen, and some friends of mine   It was December 1977 at a dinner with my friend Kubale that we talked about me joining the firm.  Dave Beckwith, a friend and a great trial lawyer, Kubale and two others recruited me.  I finally came to realize that I could work for 20 years and not build the resources I could walk into at Foley.  It was a very good decision.

              I came into a very young Madison Foley office where there were 3 lawyers, but I was senior to them.   They didn’t have much practice and I had a lot.  I came in as senior partner and we grew the office.  Within a year we had 8 lawyers and we kept growing up to over 70, I’m not sure where they are now.  But I worked hard and had good success.  During my 25+ years with Foley I served terms as Managing Partner of the Madison Office, a member of the firm’s Management Committee and Chair of its Budget Committee.

              I liked participating in Bar activities, and after I came to Foley in February of 1978   Dane County Bar President-Elect Paul Gartzke went on the Court of Appeals.   Paul and I had become friends, and I got the opportunity to run against a City Attorney woman named Eunice Gibson.  I won and became President.  

              That was a time when lawyer advertising was just coming on.  Attorney Ken Hur appeared in early TV ads climbing out of a swimming pool bedecked with jewels, and he also had his “10 bucks for a will” slogan on the side of his model A Ford.  He was a real character but a totally incompetent lawyer.  In putting out the Dane County Bar Newsletter I thought the President ought to write columns and I started doing that.  I recall a piece about lawyer advertising where I referred to Hur’s antics as “buffoonery.”

              Earlier when Milo Flaten was helping put out the DCBA Newsletter, he tended to write most anything without regard to whether he knew if it was true.   The Dane County Bar was not incorporated at that point, but a couple years later I incorporated it.  As President, I worried about liability protection from libel claims, so I insisted that Milo submit his stuff to me for review before publishing it; and I then would tone it down and correct his facts.  I don’t think it adversely impacted our relationship.

               I had already served the State Bar as elected Secretary and then on the Board of Governors for about 5   years. Following that I was Chairman of the State Bar’s Finance Committee for about 7 years.  I worked with Phil Haberman, who was the original Executive Director and a wonderful guy.  He was succeeded by Jim Huff, whom I assisted then Bar President George Steil in firing.

               I had a lot of good experience with the State Bar as well as with the Dane County Bar and enjoyed it and got to know the active lawyers.  In the early days you knew the local lawyers who were really active, and you also knew there were a couple you couldn’t trust, but that you could trust the rest of them.  If you wanted an extension of time, you would call and get an “OK,” or vice versa, and not have to go get an order signed.  This was the way it worked, and very comfortably.  Lawyers frequently would have contested arguments, and then go out together for beer.  That was a wonderful way to practice. The Dane County Bar was wonderful.  It had a summer picnic at Nakoma Golf Club, and later at Cherokee after we became too big for Nakoma.   We had Lyle Beggs who was a superb Toastmaster, though   not much of a lawyer but a real nice guy. He was the MC and would bait William Evjue, the Capitol Times Publisher, all the time.  Then after Evjue died Beggs would come up with purported telegrams from Evjue.  Beggs’ sense of humor as wonderful, everybody enjoyed that, and many Bar members showed up to attend.  That’s probably why we got too big for Nakoma at some point.  By the time I was President the picnic was at Cherokee.  Later it kind of went downhill unfortunately.

Teresa:   I had heard rumors that it got a little too rowdy and Cherokee asked you guys  not to return.

Tom:  Oh, I’d never heard that, so I don’t know.  Well the comradery in the Dane County Bar was really positive and comfortable.

Teresa:  When do you think that started to change?

Tom:  As our Bar got bigger it got more bureaucratic. Initially we all knew the local judges because they’d been practicing, or were in one of the city or county attorney offices.  Then we started getting people who had never practiced getting judgeships, and the number of judges increased.  There were 3 Circuit Judges when I started and several County Judges, a criminal court, a probate court, a children’s court, a small claims court and maybe some other one.  Now I think there are about 17 Circuit Judges. My first cases were in small claims court.  My firm did insurance defense work, and had a couple of guys who were strictly trial lawyers.  Wally Bjork had been a fabulous trial lawyer.  At one stretch he won 24 of 25 cases in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, when there was a direct right of appeal to the Supreme Court;  but in 1960 he left to become general counsel for an insurance company.  There were a couple of younger guys who were designated as trial lawyers, but soon I began to get some of the significant cases.

              I was interested in trying cases and thought I’d better start with small claims to see what I could learn.  First case I tried was for a very good friend.   The Plaintiff was a firm that sold furniture and interiors who hadn’t produced some goods but sued my client on his bill.  I tried it in front of Judge William Sachtjen.  First time I had ever seen a live trial.  I laid out very carefully an exhibit showing what I thought the result should be, and I prevailed.  I also had Judge Sachtjen on some other cases, including a case that went to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  It involved a swimming pool construction at a new apartment complex.   The contractor, within about a week or two of when the owner had promised the tenants they’d have a pool, stopped work and said he wanted more money.  He refused to go any further, and he didn’t for a year.  So my client finished up the pool construction and we had a lawsuit, and the contractor lost. I had also claimed delay damages.  Not a lot because at $500 a day I knew I wasn’t going to collect for a whole year. So I made a modest request and I got it. The Judge was a common-sense guy, no scholar, but had a great court room manner.

              As the Bar grew, I became less familiar with the judges.   Patrick Stone, was the U.S. Federal Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin when I started, but he promptly died and the judgeship was open for a while.  When Kennedy became President he appointed a Sheboygan labor lawyer, basically a political hack, to the judgeship but the Senate would not approve him.  However, he sat during the approval process, and I had a couple of matters before him, including my first jury trial. It was a three-car accident.  I represented the kid who drove the third car.  Everyone said car # 3 hit car # 2 and drove it into car # 1 where the injured Plaintiff was a passenger.  Willard Stafford, a prominent trial lawyer, represented the insurance company for car # 2.  He had tried to hire me and we were friends.  I first heard about the case a day before trial, which began on a Friday.   I was told it would be good experience, and I went over and was introduced to the judge.  Stafford took me under his wing and told me when to stand up and when to sit down.  I almost got nonsuited the first day but made it through.  We were in recess over the weekend, and I remember sitting in church on Sunday pondering what was my theory in this case; what in the heck was I going to argue?  I decided to look again at the photographs of the damage to the front end of car # 2.  It was a Sunday afternoon when the accident occurred, and a State Cop had been standing on the side of the road.  He testified that car # 3 drove into car # 2 pushing it into car # 1.  I argued physics, so if the driver of car # 2’s foot was on the brake when car # 2 hit car # 1, his bumper would be lower instead of meet with the rear bumper of car # 1; but if his foot was off the brake because he had already been hit by car # 3, then the car # 2 bumper and the back bumper of car # 1 would have met.  However, the photo showed that the front of car # 2’s grill looked like jaws, meaning that car # 2 driver’s foot was on his brake and car # 2 had not yet been hit by car # 3.  That’s what the picture showed, and I argued that to the jury.  I also thought I had to say something about that cop.  So I said, “Well, you know, the officer said he saw this but have you ever watched a football game from the end zone and seen how bad the depth perception is?” I didn’t say anything further.  At 10:30 that Monday evening the jury came back and the Judge read the verdict: “Is car # 2 driver negligent?  Yes.  Is driver # 2’s negligence causal?  Yes.”  [I thought, “Oh   boy, I got him, I got Stafford.”]  “Is car # 3 driver negligent?  Yes.  Is car # 3 driver’s negligence causal?  No.”  Stafford thought lightning hit, and appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed.   That’s how I started out practicing law.

              I tried a couple of cases for Madison Newspapers. One in the U.S. Tax Court that involved investment credit on a new printing press, and I prevailed.   I also defended the State Journal in a libel suit brought by a Madison lawyer based upon a story by a young Journal reporter.  Myron Gordon was the Federal Judge, and he was as arrogant as anyone could be.  He announced that the case was going to be tried in one week without asking us.  We had about 3-4 weeks of testimony planned.  Fortunately the plaintiff’s attorney forgot to ask for a jury which shortened it up.  Gordon was just very difficult.  He kept telling me to hurry when we were putting in our case.  We went one extra day, and then Gordon said we’d take a 15-minute recess and he’d give us a decision, which he did.  The lawyer plaintiff was an active outspoken democrat and Gordon was a known democrat, so I thought maybe we were in trouble.   If I have ever proved anything, I think that I had proved the truth of what was written, but Gordon held that I hadn’t.  However, he ruled we were free of any liability on two grounds of legal privilege, so we were relieved of   liability.  That night the publisher of the State Journal, Don Anderson, Wade Boardman, and I and our wives had dinner at Maple Bluff.   Anderson’s toast was “To the privileged few.”

              So I had good experience working with good people.  Wade Boardman was a marvelous mentor.  I worked very hard, perhaps too hard.  My oldest son, now a successful appellate prosecutor, thought I worked too hard; and I thought “But you like to live the way we live?”  During my career in practice I won all 6 cases I had in the U.S. Tax Court, about 10 of 12 cases in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, 3 of 4 in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, and nearly all of dozens of cases in the Wisconsin Tax Appeals Commission, along other many other trial and interim appellate cases.  Among my Supreme Court cases were an original action where I represented the State Judicial Commission, and two cases where I got the Court to reverse a lower court.  One of these involved the location of a new MATC campus near old Truax Field, and based on the decision today that is where it is.  Perhaps one of my best results earned was for Sub-Zero in a Boston trial court.  The defendant Bank had taken the S-Z product inventory held by a local distributor, and I proved by accounting exhibits that the Bank had illegally rendered the distributor insolvent.  The result-imposed liability on the Bank to return more than $1 million.

               I was not primarily a trial lawyer, but a corporate and tax lawyer, and also did some sophisticated real estate and estate planning; and was recognized in each category in The Best Lawyers In America publication.  I did not do criminal law except for successfully defending a prominent supper club owner charged with tax evasion.

Teresa:  What did you like least about practicing law?

Tom:   Probably the time demands, and that you could not really pick your clients.   You took whatever came along.  I think in my whole career I only fired two or three clients.  Unless I had a conflict, I did what my clients needed me to do.  But it was very, very demanding.  I regularly went back to work at night, and if I had a trial I would work all weekend.  My family had to get used to it.  But I’d try to get home at night for dinner, if I was in town.  We took nice vacations, and I supported all our sons’ athletic activities. Two of our sons were very good swimmers and the third was a very good soccer goalie.      

Teresa:  Tell me about your family, how did you meet Karen?

Tom:   At a party. She was someone else’s date and I was with someone I had been dating all through Law School.  I remember asking, “Who is that blonde?”  Then shortly thereafter, and before we had yet to date, she went to Japan to teach for a year on an Air Force program.  When she came back the guy that had been her date that night had married and I got her phone number and we started dating.  Later she was threatening to go into the Peace Corps, which people did at that time, and if she was going to do that, then we would not have connected.   Then one day she called telling me she had decided not to go into the Peace Corps.   That was in the summer and we were married in December.

Teresa:   Oh wow.

Tom:  We have a wonderful family. Three very successful sons and six grandkids that we just adore.  We did well in educating our sons, paying for three Stanford degrees, one from Harvard Law School, a Duke Graduate School of Business degree, and an Iowa State degree (where Bill had a swimming scholarship but made up for the cost saving by being married when he went to Duke for his MBA).

Teresa:  Who is the oldest?

Tom:  Tom.

Teresa: What does Tom do?

Tom:  He’s a lawyer in the Twin Cities, an appellate prosecutor.   He was recognized in a Minnesota Bar publication last winter for arguing his 151st appellate case.  He was Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford and Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School.

Teresa:  How many kids does he have?

Tom:  Two sons.  One will be a senior in high school, the other a freshman.  The senior is very athletic.

               Bill, our second son, was the Captain of the Iowa State Men’s Swim Team and married the Captain of the Women’s Swim Team.  He received the Big 8 Silver Medal for athletics and academics at Iowa State.  With his accounting major he passed the CPA exam, and went to work in public accounting, initially at Arthur Anderson.  When he went to Duke he wanted nothing more to do with accounting.  He’s now a marketing executive with Beringer Ingelheim, which is a privately held German pharmaceutical company. He has two children and lives in western Connecticut.  Son and Daughter.  Their mother, Bill’s first wife, died of cancer 7.5 years ago.  Just tragic.  Bill has finally remarried.    

               Erik also went to Stanford undergraduate and became Phi Beta Kappa.  Then he worked for Bain Capital, (Mitt Romney) in Boston, where he met his wife.  He worked for 4 years, and then went back and got his MBA at Stanford, and she followed him and got her MBA a year later.  Now they have two little girls, 10 and 7, that are very blonde.  I call them the “Super Chicks.”

Teresa:   Where do they live?

Tom:   South of San Francisco in a place called Woodside, very nice with large lots.  He works as a partner in the private equity firm Hellman Friedman in the financial district in San Francisco.

               All three are great guys. Fortunately, we’ve been able to do things for them and help them.  Particularly Bill after he lost his wife.  We are closer to those two grandkids than any of the rest because we tried to fill in and help him with them. Those two were 8 and 5 when they lost their mom, and their world nearly came apart.  But Bill has done a super job of raising them and we’ve tried to help.   Right now things are pretty good.    In August we are taking the whole clan to a family resort in  the Poconos.   

Teresa:  You spend a lot of time in Florida.  Where do you go?

Tom:   Sanibel Island which is in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Ft. Myers.  We took some super vacation trips with the kids when they were young. Two were Eastern Airlines unlimited mileage packages, where you could go anywhere that Eastern flew.   We made 5 or 6 stops the first year and 4 or 5 the next year.  Interesting places and the boys still remember that.  Then I used to take them skiing and when we got into scuba diving, Tom and I did a lot of dives at interesting places.  Bill was usually tied up with college swimming but he and Erik would go along when they could.    

Teresa:   Where did you go?

Tom:  The French Polynesian Island is the first that comes to mind.  We flew into Tahiti and on the next island over is a Club Med where we dove, and saw all kinds of sharks. We also dove in the Caribbean, Mexico, and some in the Gulf and the Pacific.  I had over 100 recorded dives.  Tom and I took the scuba course at West High School and then started our dive trips.   Grand Cayman was the first one. And we had a lot of fun.

 Teresa:  That where the Wall off Grand Cayman is?  Is that what it’s called?   Where there is like a 6,000-foot vertical drop or something?

Tom:  Yes, and all four of us went to Belize where there is the Great Blue Hole and an excellent coral reef.     Erik spent one summer in Sydney, Australia before he went back for his MBA, and Karen and I went down to visit.  Erik and I went diving in the Great Barrier Reef, rated as best coral reef in the world.  The conditions weren’t ideal but we still enjoyed it.  We also went to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja in Mexico with the whole family for our 40th wedding anniversary; and have been to Hawaii a couple times, San Diego, the Bahamas, Costa Rica and various other places as the kids were growing up.   When Tom and Erik each spent 2 quarters at Oxford on a Stanford program, I went over to meet each and we travelled in Europe.  Now we try to meet for family vacations every year and for holidays when feasible.

Teresa:   So besides your kids and your grandkids how do you stay busy?

Tom:  Karen and I have taken a number of overseas trips, but now my health curtails this.  I do a lot of reading, and have been active in all sorts of civic and charitable activities and Boards.   I have spent considerable time on writing projects, like my role as principal author of Lawyers Who Shaped Dane County.

Teresa:  Like what?

 Tom:  Well I’ve been active in every United Way campaign since 1961, and have been President of the United Way Foundation as well as involved in the campaigns, including serving as Associate Chairman, and I was on that Board for 8 years.  I’m still very active and have chaired their Alexis de Tocqueville Society, which consists of people who pledge $10,000 or more a year.   We are now responsible for about 17% of the total raised by the United Way each year.  I was one of the early chairs and have also been very active with Agrace HospiceCare.  I helped put together the corporate structure for Hospice before I retired, and then served 15 years on their Foundation Board, including a term as President of the Foundation.   I was one of the founders of the Badger State Games and was President of the organization.  I’ve been active with the State Bar and a lot of other organizations:  YMCA, Foundation for Madison Public Schools, and Madison Business and Education Partnership which I chaired for about 6 years.   I was also President and a Board member of the Madison Club and Moderator, Council member and Foundation President of our Church.  I’ve been very active in the community.  Karen and I were honored by the United Way as Philanthropists of the Year with a very nice program and award.  

               I served for almost 40 years on the Sub-Zero Wolf corporate board and as an officer, starting when it was a small company selling one refrigeration unit at a time, and now it approaches being a billion-dollar company.  I also served on a number of other Corporate Boards, handled a big case for Kaiser Aluminum and tried tax cases for major public companies like Exxon, U.S. Steel, A.O. Smith, Owens-Illinois, Kimberly Clark, Marathon Paper and Armco Steel.   I’m still active with Swiss Colony, another client.  Owner Pat Kubly is a good friend along with our mutual friend John Powless.  I got Powless into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame, and made the presentation at a ceremony in Milwaukee. 

               I once ran for the School Board, unsuccessfully (fortunately), and was active in those kinds of civic affairs.  I’ve also been on some other committees. When they built the U.W. Hospital I was Chairman of the Committee that decided where to locate it.  In the early 1960’s the Medical School senior faculty and the Legislature could not agree on a location, and were deadlocked.  Finally the Legislature passed a bill directing the Governor to appoint a 5-member committee to make the decision.  Warren Knowles was the Governor.  I got a call from the Republican chairman, and next thing I knew I was the Chair of this special Committee.   We reviewed architectural reports and held hearings.  It turned out there was no issue on the merits, it was political.  To put the new hospital on top of the old hospital on University Avenue, as sought by the doctors, made no sense.  Apparently no one had envisioned how big the new hospital would get.  I wrote a report and took it to the Governor.  I realized that day it wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it certainly was the right answer.  And that’s where it was built. They were going to build it in 3 phases for $100 million dollars. Turned out they spent $110 million on the first phase and have never stopped building. There is almost always at least one tower crane out there.  The medical resources that are available in our community are phenomenal, and we are so lucky to have that available to us.  I served as outside counsel to Dean Medical and its HMO insurance company for about 30 years.

              I’ve also been involved with many other community programs of various kinds, but you asked how did we get to Sanibel.  We used to go skiing. I loved to ski, both snow and water, but Karen was not an enthusiastic skier.  We had gone skiing in Europe a few times and to the west nearly every year. I had torn up a knee in college track, and the wonderful team doctor told me, “If it hurts, quit!”   That was the end of my high jumping career.  I was able to ski until the year 2000 but I could see this coming to an end.   Then I tore up the same knee on Ajax Mountain in Aspen, Colorado.   I was told no more skiing, no more tennis by the same doctor who replaced both of John Powless’ knees, but he must have used extra heavy-duty parts on John, who rehabbed 10 hours a day in a swimming pool, and still plays the best senior tennis in the world.  He is number one and has been for a number of years.

              Anyway, when I knew I could not ski anymore and knew I had to retire soon, we started looking.  Karen likes warm weather places and I like water.  We visited South Padre Island, Texas and discovered it does not have a gulf stream and so isn’t very warm in January.  We’d been various places in Florida and we visited several more.  My friend Kubale, who ended up as Chairman/CEO of Foley on my nomination, had been on Sanibel for years.  In 1998 we were staying on Fort Meyers Beach, just south of Sanibel, and went up to have lunch with Bernie and his wife.  We decided that next year we’d come there for our two weeks.   So in January of 1999 we stayed at a resort on Sanibel and also saw a realtor.  His firm had pamphlets of all the homes and condos for sale on the Island, so we went around on bicycles and looked.  We quickly concluded that we didn’t want the responsibility of a second house, so we looked only at condos and found a place called Yacht Haven, a five-unit condominium on San Carlos Bay (the water that  faces the mainland), and on the other side of the road coming in there is a canal with 5 docks,  one for each of the units; also 200 feet of beach frontage, a pool, and large units owned all  by Midwesterners.  When we left town we had an offer pending which was shortly accepted.  W returned in April to close, and have been there ever since.

               There is a wonderful library on Sanibel that Karen particularly likes.  I do a variety of reading. This may sound strange, but one of my subjects of reading is ancient archeology.  I’m very interested in the time before the pyramids were built.  It’s fascinating.   I’ve read many books on the subject and have formed some of my own views.  It’s clear to me there was a high level of civilization on this earth well before recorded history, which starts about with the Bible and Egypt.  There have been pole changes, 3 in the last 100,000 years, and continental drift.  In various cycles we’ve had big freezes and glaciers and then when the glaciers melted the ocean levels rose.  The last glacier melted about 10,000 BC, and the sea level went up about 400 feet flooding continental shelves where a lot of humans were living.  We may have brutally lost or nearly lost civilizations but there isn’t any recorded history on this. There were some old libraries that were destroyed in Greece and in Alexandria, Egypt.  The Romans destroyed the latter, beautiful library with all kinds of things that would be interesting to us.   Anyway, that’s just my intellectual curiosity.

              We used to travel much more than I am able to now.  In recent years we’ve been to China, Egypt, Spain, Eastern Europe, South Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, the upper Amazon and quite a number of places. I think I’ve been to Europe more than 7 times. My ancestors came to the Sauk Prairie from Switzerland in 1842, and we went there and found a Ragatz family that we are related to, and we saw where that 1842 family lived before they came here.  I have tried to trace genealogy of the family, and have published a book on our family, The Ragatz History II.  Also I was a substantial contributor to our Lawyer book, which was my second book since retirement.  The Ragatz History had actually first published in 1989 but I rewrote it, adding a lot of material I’d collected in our travels.

              I also traveled some with my business.  And I was fortunate enough to have clients, public and private, who had sophisticated problems.  Fortunate enough to argue in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Exxon.  Unfortunately the Court didn’t agree with me, as there was a Mobil Oil case from Vermont just ahead of my case that settled the law on the Commerce Clause tax issue subject, adverse to my position.    

Teresa:   That’s a good record.   As we wrap this up, what do you think makes a good lawyer?

Tom:   Someone industrious and intellectually able to cope with the complexity of the law. The best part of practicing law is solving problems for people. If you can come up with a better solution than the other side then you are likely to prevail.  Not always, but you are more likely.  And you are helping the clients by finding solutions to their problems.  Not all the time does the client like the solution you come up with, but you tailor the proposed solution to whatever the client likes and whatever works.  If they tell you they want something impossible, you tell them they aren’t going to get it.  I’ve done that.

               I’ve had a very good and very satisfying career practicing law.  Foley had mandatory retirement or I might still be practicing.  Probably just as well that we had it because I started having health problems right about that time.  We’ve had a very enjoyable time in retirement, and we really enjoy our family. 

              The practice has changed since I started in the 1960’s.  This is due in part to the addition of many new codes and regulations.  Technology has also made for changes in the practice, some good and some not.  There is much more specialization.  The days of general practitioners are about over except in small towns, and those GP’s can be dangerous if they venture into specialized areas.   Women have become a substantial and very useful part of the Bar.

              The law provided me with a very satisfying career, and an opportunity to work with some wonderful mentors, other lawyers, and great clients.  I am proud to have earned  the opportunity.