I left off visiting my life with my graduation from law school in May of 1978. On that May Day somewhere around May 10th I was 24 years old. I wouldn’t turn 25 until later in August on August 16th. I was a baby.
As I recall it was quite a weekend. My parents flew out from New York to St Louis for my sisters graduation from Washington University. That graduation was on a Saturday. I think I flew down from Chicago to join the family for a Elise’s graduation. Right after the graduation a number of us drove up to Chicago in Elise’s car, and my mother flew up to Chicago for my graduation which was on Sunday. It was a pretty big weekend with two back to back graduation ceremonies.
As I recall all these (42) years later, Elise drove back down to St Louis to finish up her time in St. Louis, my mother and probably Stacey flew home to NY and my father and I drove back from Chicago to NY in my favorite car of all time, a 1974 Dodge Duster. It was a metallic brown, slant six cylinder engine car and I loved that car. It got me everywhere I needed to go in what was considered style at that time.
And I immediately got started on planning the rest of my young life. The world was wide open for all sorts of possibilities. But first things first, I had to pass the New York State Bar exam. Believe me when I say that was no easy task, especially for someone like me who is not the best studier or test taker. So that May of 1978 I immediately started to study for the exam and I signed up for a bar review course at the Pennsylvania Hotel across from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station in NYC. I took the train to the city every day for six weeks in order to prepare for the Bar exam which was given the third week in July. I thought I studied pretty hard. Apparently not, I failed the exam. I found out in September and now had to retake the exam in February of 1979 six months later. We’ll strike two, I failed the exam again.
To complicate matters when I took the Bar exam for the second time I was working for the Town of Hempstead as a law clerk in the Department of Occupational Resources and they really preferred that I not be a law clerk but a lawyer. So much so that they granted me a leave of absence to concentrate solely on studying for my third try at the Bar exam which I could not take again until February of 1980.
Third time was the charm. I redoubled my efforts studied my you know what off and passed the exam. I was admitted to practice and received my law license in June of 1980. And I have been admitted to the N.Y. State Ba r for the last 40 years. In the blink of an eye. That is how fast the time seems to have gone by.
Those couple of years from 1978 to June of 1980 was a very interesting time. There are a lot of fun stories that I want to talk about, like working for the PBA attorneys and working on Al D’Amato’s US Senate campaign and working for I the Town of Hempstead. I also had some interesting experiences watching and learning about labor and education law from my father. There was some interesting stuff there. To be continued.
