Graduation and Commission

Recently I had the pleasure of attending both the college graduation and the ROTC commissioning ceremony of my GF’s son, Alex.  I had been at his high school graduation (Bergen Catholic) four years earlier and witnessed him progressing through four years at Rutgers (the state university of New Jersey, main campus located in New Brunswick), and three of his four Air Force ROTC awards ceremonies.

            We had a special treat, as the commencement speaker for Rutgers was none other than Barack Obama, the President of the United States, and Alex’s school commencement speaker – the subsequent ceremony where each student is called by name (diplomas sent by text message) – was Bill Moyers, the White House Press Secretary for Kennedy and LBJ.  I did not know that Rutgers predates the American Revolution (1766), but back then it was called Queen’s College; King’s College is now known as Columbia University.  Nor did I know that Henry Rutgers himself, the Revolutionary War hero and early benefactor, and after whom the school was renamed in 1830, owned slaves.  (“True story.”)

            A few days later, Alex got his gold bar of 2LT, making him an officer in the US Air Force, or as I call it, the American Luftwaffe.  Although he won’t be a pilot, he does have a bright future ahead of him in the service, so we’re all very proud of him and hopeful on his behalf.

This makes me look back on my own track record.

Grammar School. 8^th Grade, Marymount, Paris, France, June 1982.   This was a small, private Catholic school in Neuilly.  Our class was 4 guys and about 12 girls.  There was no special speaker that I recall, but I think I still have my little blue “diploma”.

High School.  American School of Paris, June 1986.  Thanks to the good weather, the ceremony was held at the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial just down the road from St. Cloud.  Here is the one picture where my hair is unfashionably long – and never since.  I don’t recall the commencement speaker.

College.  University of Maryland, College Park, December 1990.   Because I took summer classes rounding up my senior year and technically graduated in August 1990, I attended the December ceremony.  I skipped the general commencement ceremony – I don’t recall who the speaker was – and only attended the specific ceremonies for the Behavior And Social Sciences (BSOS) school (GVPT major) and a few hours later for the undergraduate business school (BMGT major).   I can’t recall either speaker, but neither was someone famous.  They handed out posters and not actual diplomas.

Law School.  George Mason University, May 1993.  This was at the Center for the Arts at the main campus in Fairfax, Virginia, and our speaker was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at the time still on the US Court of Appeals, but very shortly would become a US Supreme Court Justice.  I don’t recall her speech.  What I do recall is being surprised at receiving my actual diploma on the spot. 

Unfortunately, getting a Juris Doctor (JD) does NOT give you much except the right to apply to take the bar exam.  I then had to take those exams in July 1993.

Bar Admission.  As Alex had his commissioning ceremony, one of eight cadets to do so, I had my bar admission ceremonies.  These are full of pomp and vigor, and typically involve much more than 8 lawyers at once.

Maryland, December 1993.   I passed the July 1993 exam and earned the right to be admitted in December. I took a full day professionalism course in Baltimore.  The ceremony was at the actual Court of Appeals (Supreme Court) in Annapolis.  They staggered the applicants in groups small enough to fill the fairly small chambers (plus guests). 

            Since this was my first, it was the most important.  Now I was an attorney!   Granted, I could only practice in Maryland, but I could call myself a lawyer.  Three years of law school and several months of studying for the bar exam, plus a trip to Timonium (just north of Baltimore) for the bar exam itself, paid off.

Virginia, June 1994.   While I passed the July MD bar, I failed Virginia’s, by mere points.  The Bar Examiners refused my request for a recount, so I had no choice but to study harder and try again in February 1994.  To make matters worse, they upped the application fee from $200 to $600 and added an obnoxious character inquisition which was previously fairly cursory, though no worse than what I endured for Maryland the prior summer.  Finally, and this was the most difficult, they completely changed the format of the exam from short essay (easiest) to long, detailed essay and fill-in-the-blank, so the bar review people had to say, "we got nothing, just study as hard as you can and hope for the best."  The February exam was in Norfolk, so I met my buddy Greenside for lunch.  John had graduated from GMU with me the prior May, but he had passed the July exam and swore in already.

            Upon returning from Norfolk, my boss informed me that he was laying me off. He gave me March 1994 off as severance.   Somewhat despondent, I didn’t realize what the small letter was from the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners was in my mailbox in April.  Having been burned on my last call to the Virginia Lawyers’ Weekly in October, I didn’t bother asking them this time, so it was that letter which let me know… I had passed!   I went down to Richmond in June, for a ceremony held not at the Supreme Court, but just in a hotel ballroom.  Either way, I was now licensed in Virginia as well as Maryland.  Woohoo!  This became more important the following December when my prior boss hired me back again.  From then until May 1998 I was actively working as an attorney in Virginia (60%) and Maryland (40%) mainly doing traffic, criminal, business planning, and divorces. 

            ** Note:  the Virginia Bar requires you to wear a suit and tie when taking the bar exam.

D.C., October 2012.   This came several years later, waiving in, as opposed to taking and passing the bar exam.  Some jurisdictions allow immediate reciprocity (waiving in from other states), some require 5 years active practice in another jurisdiction which has similar reciprocity (DC & NY), and some others like Louisiana and New Jersey have NO waive in at all:  you HAVE to take and pass their bar exam. 

Due to some issues concerning a prior attorney, my bar record was no longer pristine, but a small panel of DC lawyers decided to cut me a break.   I swore in before the DC Superior Court and became licensed in three jurisdictions.  However, my DC practice has been practically nil, and currently I’m inactive.

New York, June 2015.   NY also allowed veteran lawyers to waive in.  That same spotted past caused even more problems with New York.  I had to go up to Albany in December 2013 for an informal three attorney panel, which rejected my application.  I appealed and received a formal hearing in December 2014, also in Albany.  That panel – three completely different lawyers – found “no cardinal sins” and recommended admission, and the NY courts agreed.  So in June 2015 I went to Albany a third time, this time accompanied by my very proud and patient girlfriend. 

New York also has a special place for me, as my father’s side of the family comes from there – Brooklyn.  My uncle was a government attorney, but to my knowledge was licensed in Virginia, not New York. 

As yet I’m still looking for legal work in NY (preferably NYC) so if anyone has a lead, let me know.  

School Bus Memories

The other day I was stuck behind a school bus on a two-lane road.  It brought back memories of my own experiences on school buses.  No, no Ottos or crazy woman who can’t hear right, but I recall an African school bus monitor who told us kids to "shut your mouse!"  Here were my adventures.

 St. Martin’s.  This is a private, Catholic school in Gaithersburg, Maryland.   I went here from first grade (1975) until Fall semester of 5^th grade (late 1978).  The school bus – those big orange (or is it yellow?) things - really didn’t directly connect us to the school.  The bus stop was on Montgomery Village Avenue, at the entrance to the subdivision, Lakeside of Whetstone, which is a 5-10 minute walk from our house.  To make matters worse, the bus didn’t go to St. Martin’s itself, which is on 355 at the corner with Summit Ave.  We had to walk 10 minutes over to Gaithersburg High School.  You can’t really mess up getting ON the bus in the morning, as only one school bus will come to your stop.  But in the afternoon, I can remember what seemed like an infinite amount of buses, and having to wait for the right one, with a specific three digit number, while being surrounded by dozens of high school kids and having no one from my school living in my neighborhood and being on my bus.  Eventually my mom decided it was better to drive us to school.

 Marymount – Rue Van Loo.  We moved to Paris, France in January 1979, and started going to Marymount, which was a Catholic school in Neuilly, which is a suburb of Paris to the northwest, immediately next to Paris itself.  Our sea shipment took about a month to arrive from the US, in the meantime we were in temporary quarters in the 16^th Arrondisement (far western part of Paris).   The bus stop was at the Michel-Ange Molitor metro stop, and the way to the bus stop from the apartment was extremely convoluted, though I believe if you put me there today I could probably find my way.  This was also the last stop on the route.  It was a 30 minute walk.  Fortunately the school bus went directly to Marymount, so on that end there wasn’t a problem.

 Marymount – Neuilly Compound.  In February 1979, our shipment came in, so we could move into our apartment in the Neuilly compound for US Embassy employees.  Although both the school and the compound were in “Neuilly”, they were very far apart.  In fact, one day we missed the bus, so our dad made us walk the entire distance, something like a full hour.  But at least the bus did come to the compound – and this time we were not the only kids at the stop.  I remember having disputes with the other kids as we lined up for the bus, since whoever got on the bus first had a better choice of seats, but there were enough other kids to fight about this issue.  The buses were commercial buses (not the classic American school buses) which had some provision to convert the seats into beds, but we never had occasion to use them for that (no overnight trips by bus – all such trips at Marymount were by train).

 ASP – Neuilly Compound.  From Fall 1982 onward, I went to the American School of Paris, for high school.  Instead of Neuilly, this was located in St. Cloud, which is a suburb a bit further out, about southwest of Paris.  The private buses were nice, very similar to tour buses. 

            Now that I was in high school, the issue of extracurricular activities arose – how to get home from school after rugby practice.  Fortunately ASP had two “late” buses which actually did come to the Neuilly compound, so it wasn’t a problem.  However, I’d have had NO idea how to get from the compound to ASP by public transportation.

 ASP – Malesherbes.   In spring of 1984 (my sophomore year) my family moved from Neuilly to Paris itself, the 8^th Arrondisement on Blvd. Malesherbes, which is northwest Paris.  The school bus picked us up a few blocks away, on Blvd Courcelles.  Unfortunately, this was the end of the line, and the school bus company had hired some incompetent clowns to drive that route.  Often the bus was late or didn’t come at all.  Around exam time of 1985 (junior year), we discovered the local train station was a better option.

            Moreover, the “late” buses didn’t come all the way to our neighborhood.  They’d stop at the Etoile, which was 4 Metro stops away.  However, I didn’t mind walking, as I walked past the huge record store, FNAC, on Wagram, and spent my excess lunch money on vinyl and cassettes (the latter I could listen to on my Walkman on the walk home).

 ASP – Malesherbes – Train.  The train station, Gare St. Lazare, was 10 minutes away.  Near the high school, there were two train stations:  St. Cloud, which was too far to walk (take a bus the rest of the way), and Garches-Marne-La-Coquette, which was a 5 minute walk down the road.  Much better.  Back at St. Lazare, there were three morning trains, all commuter/suburban trains.  The 8:00 a.m. train only went as far as St. Cloud, meaning you’d have to still take a bus.  No good.  The 8:15 train went to Garches, and got there around 8:45.  With the 5 minute walk, you’d get to school at 8:50, just in time for the first period which started at 8:55.  The 8:28 train would put you in the classroom no earlier than 9, so you’d be late for class.  If you missed the 8:15 train, you could at least try to catch the 8:28 train.  If you missed the 8:28 train, the next train was 9:15 or so, VERY late.  So I’d shoot for the 8:15 train.  Matt…well, he preferred to sleep later and take the 8:28 train.

            There were other advantages of the train.  In the afternoon, there was no “3:30” or “late train”, you’d just take whichever train left Garches when you got to the station.  No hurry to “make the bus” and no issue about a late bus which left you off 4 metro stops away from home. 

            The other (huge) advantage was that to pay for the train, you’d buy a “Carte Orange”, an orange ticket good for an entire month of travel, on every form of public transportation: Metro (RATP), RER, bus, and SNCF (train).  The same carte orange we’d use for the train to get to school would get us around Paris on the weekends on the Metro, without having to buy the individual yellow tickets. 

             By the way.  The bus route from Neuilly to ASP had to pick up two kids who lived in a neighborhood at the bottom of a hill where the streets were extremely narrow.  This was a major detour and caused the bus driver a ton of grief and inconvenience.  This was easily 30 minutes extra just to pick up and drop off these kids. If, for whatever reason, the two kids were not on the bus going home, everyone on the bus (not just the poor bus driver) cheered as we could completely bypass their damn neighborhood and get home 30 minutes earlier.   Anyhow.  When I started taking the train to school, I noticed the train went right through their neighborhood, and the local station was a block from their house.  D’oh!!  These idiot kids could have taken the train and made everyone’s lives (including their own) much easier.  We ALL could have slept another 30 minutes each morning.

 Headphones.  Nowadays, I’m driving in a car, not a school bus.  But I always listen to music in the car, which is why I make sure both the Neon and the Formula have good stereos.  Back in high school, I would listen to music on my Walkman – unlike Otto (above) I wasn’t actually driving the school bus (actually, I’ve never driven a school bus).  On one occasion I was listening to Speak of the Devil, the live album by Ozzy Osbourne in which he plays nothing but Black Sabbath songs.  Oblivious to the distinction, I thought these Ozzy songs were great!  One of the older students asked if he could listen to what I was listening to, and I said sure.  His reaction: “Hey, these are BLACK SABBATH songs!”  Clued in, I later checked out the Black Sabbath records at FNAC.  Hmm, this guy Ozzy Osbourne is on these albums.  And those songs are there!  Wow!  So after that, we asked for Black Sabbath albums for Christmas.  And we got:  The Mob Rules (with Ronnie James Dio) and Born Again (with Ian Gillan).  D’oh!  But I ended up buying the Ozzy/Sabbath albums at FNAC, on my way home from school.  It all worked out.

 Specifications.  Aside from “short buses” and larger transit-style buses, what we think of as the classic American school bus is the “class C”, or conventional.  It seats up to around 77-80 kids.  One of the major manufacturers, and among the few surviving ones, is Blue Bird.  Its current standard model, the Vision, seats 77 and has a Cummins diesel engine, inline 6, 5.9L, running anywhere from 200-260 HP.  The “yellow” color was established in 1939 as the standard color.