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As most of you know, I have been associated with the University of Illinois for half a
century. I started as a student in 1940, was
gone for about four and a half years in World
War II, came back and finished after the war
and started my teaching career here in 1947.
I'm sure that is not a record, but it certainly
comes close to it as far as the University of
Illinois College of Law is concerned.
I have been fond of saying recently when
various people were presenting me
with plaques for this achievement or that,
that I have always felt there were three
ages of man. The first age was the age of
preparation — while you went to school and
became prepared for a professional career.
The second was the age of achievement —
when you reached the point where you
really were able to accomplish something
and put your education to use. And finally
was the age of plaques when people say
how good you look and give you a plaque,
and you know then it is time to begin to wind your career down. I guess I've now
added a fourth, and that is the age of video
tapes, when they are afraid you won't
last much longer so they want to provide
something that will at least last as long
as the rule of perpetuities.
I was asked to make a few comments, and I am pretty much geared for the 50 minute hour, and so I may not be quite as succinct as the request from Gene Wurth would indicate. There is a teacher of English here at the University of Illinois who once told her students that they should learn to write very succinctly. She said, "I want you to prepare
a short story for me in not more than two
pages. I want it to deal with theodiety, with
aristocracy, with sex, and with mystery." One
student held up his hand and said, "I've got
it already in one sentence." He obviously was
not a prelaw student. She said I don't believe
it, let me hear what it is. He said, "Well, it
goes like this: 'Great God,' cried the Duchess.
'I'm pregnant, and I don't know who done it!'
Well, I really don't have any intention of being
that succinct but I do want to share with
you a few of my favorite stories that most
of you have heard over the years. You won't
be surprised to learn that I have quite a file
of these, indeed one of the wonderful things
about teaching someplace else is that all
those stories are totally new and aren't even
in the students' notes. It's like the minister
who goes to a new town and can use all of
his old sermons all over again.
But these stories all had a point, and they
fit in at the appropriate point in the course.
Told separately, they may lose a lot of
their punch, but at least there are three or
four of them that I have had so many
requests for, that I wanted to tell them at
least one more time.
The first of these goes back to my very
beginning as a teacher when I told the
Big Picture Story, which in many ways,
has become somewhat of a hallmark.
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