A fond remembrance of Sam Williams
From the president
By Sheldon Sloan
President, State Bar of California
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Sloan |
Last month I received a note from one of my law school classmates who reminded
me that I was the second member of our class to be elected President of the
State Bar of California, the first being the unforgettable Sam Williams. I
decided to write an article remembering this very special man, and enlisted
my good friend, Justice Laurie Zelon, to write also, as I remembered that Sam
was a mentor to Laurie during her early days at Beardsley, Hufstedler & Kemble.
When my friend Sam left this world for a better place 13 years ago, sadly
at the very young age of 61, then State Bar President Margaret Morrow called
him a "natural leader." Sam was much more than that; he was a role
model and mentor for several generations of California lawyers.
Today, nothing could still be truer. Sam faced many challenges in life, created
many opportunities for himself and tackled huge obstacles one by one, forging
a path for future generations.
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Sam Williams, 1933 - 1994 |
He is often remembered as the first minority president of the State Bar, but
his legacy is so much broader: a superb athlete who played quarterback for
Cal as well as baseball and was an Academic All-American; one of just a handful
of African-American students at USC Law School; a person with a strong and
never-waning interest in young people and their personal opportunities; the
good friend of then- Attorney General and later California Supreme Court Justice
Stanley Mosk; a senior partner at Hufstedler & Kaus until his retirement
in 1990.
And his service to the community was nothing less than tireless: President
of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners; staff attorney for the McCone
Commission that investigated the 1965 Watts riots; service on the boards of
Walt Disney, the University of Southern California, the California Afro-American
Museum, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and both the LA Chamber
of Commerce and LA Music Center.
I first met Sam in 1958 as we both entered law school. Sam was a magnet for
friends and had more than he could handle, but we started a friendship that
lasted up to his untimely death.
Sam was rumored to have passed up the opportunity for high judicial office,
when then Gov. Jerry Brown wanted to appoint him to the state Supreme Court
in 1981. I know that it was no rumor, but the truth, as Sam and I spent almost
an hour late one afternoon talking about the plusses and minuses of service
on the bench. I had earlier called him to gauge his interest in the USDC in
the Central District and we debated the issues and he just concluded that the
education of his children had to come first.
Earlier, when Ed Davis decided to retire as Chief of Police of the LAPD, I
represented an unhappy Command Staff, who were faced with a Police Commission
that did not want to hire a replacement from within, while the Command Staff
all wanted Daryl Gates to succeed Chief Davis. At times, the brief exchange
of comments were tense between the parties, but Sam and I continued a friendly,
cooperative dialogue throughout, just two old friends trying to work it out
amicably. That was vintage Sam Williams.
Sam was the youngest of six boys, born and raised in Los Angeles. His father
drove a taxi. He won both academic and athletic scholarships to the University
of California at Berkeley. After earning his degree in criminology, he enlisted
in the Army and spent two years as an officer in the Military Police.
Sam's interest in criminology led him to the Los Angeles County probation
department, where he worked with juveniles and discovered what he called a "tremendous
gulf between the perspective of a probation officer and the perspective of
the legal system." As always, Sam was true to not just his words, but
also to his ideals. He immediately decided to become a lawyer.
That was not an easy decision for an African-American in those days. As we
all know, the late 1950s was a different era, and the opportunities for minorities
in our profession, as with all professions, were miniscule. Sam had made up
his mind, though, and truly can be seen in retrospect as a trailblazer.
When he graduated from law school in 1961, not only were law firms not hiring
black attorneys, they weren't even interviewing them. Sam persisted.
He became a deputy attorney general in Los Angeles, where Stanley Mosk not
only became his friend, but also his mentor. Four years later, Sam joined Beardsley
Hufstedler & Kemble, where he became a partner in 1969. He became the first
person of color elected President of the Los Angeles County Bar Association,
and, by the time he was elected the first African-American indeed,
first minority of any ethnicity President of the State Bar in 1981,
he had become that natural leader who would pave the way for many young people
to enter our profession and succeed in private practice and large law firms.
From a protégé
By Laurie Zelon
Justice, California Court of Appeal
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Zelon |
The Sam Williams I knew was not capable of being summed up on paper or by
his resume; he was a big man physically who was even bigger in heart and mind.
He was my mentor, and my friend, but also my teacher, guide and advisor. And
I shared this with many others, as Sam was committed to people who were prepared
to make a commitment to the things he believed in. The trick was, you had to
be willing to give as much to the enterprise as Sam; his loyalty, for which
he was renowned, demanded the same of his friends.
I met Sam when I was a very new associate at the firm, and he was a legend.
Going into his office, you never knew whether he would be on the telephone
(he was always on the telephone) with the Mayor, the Governor, or merely the
CEO of a major corporation. But when the call was finished, he had the time
to listen, to offer advice, solace or a drink. Once Sam knew you, whatever
it was you liked to drink, from Diet Coke to something more serious, mystically
appeared in his office, to be ready whenever you dropped in.
Sam had overcome considerably more than I had to come to the practice of law
at Beardsley, Hufstedler, and had broken more trails than I could even understand
at the time. What set Sam apart is that those facts were never a visible part
of the relationship; they were the unspoken past. That unspoken past, however,
benefited the women and minority lawyers who Sam worked with and advised. He
was never satisfied, but wanted all of the barriers to fall. That he had pushed
down so many never meant that others needed to push without assistance; instead,
he stood against those barriers without discussion and pushed again to make
sure others could succeed. To have been the beneficiary of that support made
success easiest for me and many of my colleagues.
Our first real project came about because I complained to him about my perceptions
of the Eula Love shooting. I learned that the right to complain required action;
Sam challenged me to do something about my concerns other than standing by
and talking about it. As a result, I spent a number of volunteer hours
looking at records and logs, being driven at full speed in a police car, and
standing next to Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates while someone threw a
knife at us. Being Sam's friend was never just a time commitment; it
was a physical and mental challenge.
Luckily, I never learned that lesson. After that, we worked together regularly,
on client and community projects. When the time came that Sam decided I should
become involved with bar association activities, he called me into his office,
told me what it was I was going to do, and telephoned the person I was to do
it for. Saying no to Sam was never an option. He may have regretted starting
me down that path later, when my activities took me away from some other projects,
but Sam never complained about finishing what he set in motion, or about supporting
what one of his friends found important. The doors he opened for me and for
others counted as success to Sam, for moving others forward was a goal he did
not speak, but simply performed.
As a teacher, and a partner, Sam gave his best and demanded everyone else's
best. In long sessions with clients or co-counsel discussing cases, Sam listened
carefully, challenged everyone, and led the discussion to the solution that
seemed obvious once he vocalized it but that no one else yet had in mind. He
gave credit publicly and often where it was not deserved, but he gave blame
in private. Receiving Sam's critiques was painful, largely because they
were not only accurate, but were deserved. More importantly, knowing you had
let Sam down was unthinkable because Sam gave his best and expected the same.
But, no matter the discomfort, at the end of it, Sam had made you better, as
a lawyer or as a leader.
Just knowing what Sam was like as a lawyer tells so little of who he was. Some
of my best memories are the more personal moments. When I married, I had the
bad taste to choose a day of major college football play-offs. Sam didn't
miss the ceremony, but he found a spot during the reception where he could
watch the games. I may be one of the few people in California whose wedding
album includes Sam watching football.
Later, Sam was always available when my children came to work on Saturdays
with me. They were welcome to play in his office, to watch television, and
just to visit. His favorite story came about when my then 4-year old son, who
had known Sam since birth, finally asked why Sam was in the office on the weekend.
When I replied that Sam worked there, he asked, "Does that mean boys
can be lawyers?" Sam told this often, as a story on himself.
Losing Sam was a blow to the profession, to the clients he served, and to
our city. It was an enormous loss to his family, his partners and his friends.
Sam's legacy, however, is the continued commitment of everyone whose
lives he touched to carry on his projects and his hopes and dreams. We have
not finished changing the face of the bar or the profession, and his voice
should speak to all of us, reminding us not to stop pushing down barriers and
eliminating unnecessary obstacles. Twenty-six years after his bar presidency,
his work is not finished; if he were here, he would be proud of the steps that
have been taken, but remind us all that we can do better. And so, we are not
done.
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