Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

for the Constitution and our system of laws. Even so, some of us on the committee staff came away from the experience sobered by the gravity of the process. The tremendous powers of congressional committees and special prosecutors were only as fair and just and constitutional as the men and women who wielded them.

Suddenly I was out of work. Our close-knit group of lawyers met for one last dinner together before we scattered to the four winds. Everyone talked excitedly about plans for the future. I was undecided, and when Bert Jenner asked me what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to be a trial lawyer, like him. He told me that would be impossible.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you won’t have a wife.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

Bert explained that without a wife at home to take care of all my personal needs, I would never be able to manage the demands of everyday life, like making sure I had clean socks for court. I’ve since wondered whether Jenner was pulling my leg or making a serious point about how tough the law still could be for women. Ultimately it didn’t matter; I chose to follow my heart instead of my head. I was moving to Arkansas.

“Are you out of your mind?” said Sara Ehrman when I broke the news. “Why on earth would you throw away your future?”

That spring, I had asked Doar for permission to visit Bill in Fayetteville. He didn’t like the idea but grudgingly gave me a weekend off. While there I went with Bill to a dinner party where I met some of his law school colleagues, including Wylie Davis, then the Dean. As I was leaving, Dean Davis told me to let him know if I ever wanted to teach.

Now I decided to take him up on the idea. I called to ask if the offer was still open, and he said it was. I asked him what I’d be teaching, and he said he would tell me when I got there in about ten days to start classes.

My decision to move did not come out of the blue. Bill and I had been pondering our predicament since we started dating. If we were to be together, one of us had to give ground. With the unexpected end of my work in Washington, I had the time and space to give our relationship―and Arkansas―a chance. Despite her misgivings, Sara offered to drive me down. Every few miles, she asked me if I knew what I was doing, and I gave her the same answer every time: “No, but I’m going anyway.”

I’ve sometimes had to listen hard to my own feelings to decide what was right for me, and that can make for some lonely decisions if your friends and family―let alone the public and the press―question your choices and speculate on your motives. I had fallen in love with Bill in law school and wanted to be with him. I knew I was always happier with Bill than without him, and I’d always assumed that I could live a fulfilling life anywhere.

If I was going to grow as a person, I knew it was time for me―to paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt―to do what I was most afraid to do. So I was driving toward a place where I’d never lived and had no friends or family. But my heart told me I was going in the right direction.

On a hot August evening, the day I arrived, I saw Bill give a campaign speech before a good-size crowd in the town square in Bentonville. I was impressed. Maybe, despite the tough odds, he had a chance. The next day I attended the reception for new law school faculty held by the Washington County Bar Association at the local Holiday Inn. I had been in Arkansas less than forty-eight hours, but I’d been given my assignments. I would be teaching criminal law and trial advocacy and running the legal aid clinic and the prison projects, both of which required that I supervise the students providing legal assistance to the poor and incarcerated. And I’d be doing what I could to help Bill in his campaign.

Bill Bassett, President of the bar association, took me around to meet the local lawyers and judges. He introduced me to Tom Butt, the chancery court judge, saying, “Judge, this is the new lady law professor. She’s going to teach criminal law and run the legal aid programs.”

“Well,” said Judge Butt, peering down at me, “we’re glad to have you, but you should know I have no use for legal aid, and I’m a pretty tough S.O.B.”

I managed to smile and say, “Well, it’s nice meeting you, too, Judge.” But I wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into. Classes started the next morning. I had never taught law school before and was barely older than most of my students, younger than some. The only other woman on the faculty, Elizabeth “Bess” Osenbaugh, became a close friend. We talked about problems in the law and in life, usually over turkey sandwiches on kaiser rolls from Fayetteville’s closest thing to a real deli. Though in his seventies, Robert Leflar was still teaching his legendary conflicts of law course in Fayetteville, and an equally renowned course in appellate judging at New York University Law School. He and his wife, Helen, befriended me, and during the first summer I was there, let me stay in their native stone and wood house designed by the prize-winning Arkansas architect Fay Jones. I had good-natured debates with Al Witte, who claimed the title of toughest law professor but was really a softie underneath. I appreciated the kindness of Milt Copeland, with whom I shared an office. And I admired the activism and scholarship of Mort Gitelman, who championed civil rights.

Just as the semester was beginning, Virginia’s husband, Jeff Dwire, died suddenly from heart failure. It was devastating for Virginia, who was widowed for the third time, and