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Steve Sward '63
Attorney at Law
Brother Sward sent in the following circa 2006 :
"I graduated from the University of Illinois College of Law in June, 1965. Immediately thereafter, I started my legal career with the Chicago law firm then known as Stevenson, Conaghan, Hackbert, Rooks and Pitts which consisted of 18 lawyers. Office technology was primarily telephones (rotary dial), typewriters and carbon paper. I shared a small office with another young lawyer and the starting salary was $7500 per year. My work assignments were interesting and varied but over time I took on more litigation related assignments and somewhat to my surprise discovered that I enjoyed courtroom practice. Assisting Harlan Hackbert (a leading railroad trial lawyer) and Henry Pitts (trial lawyer for United States Steel in several major cases and president of the Illinois State Bar Association) was a great learning experience.
The firm grew steadily over the years and this provided a variety of trial and appellate work in state and federal courts. My practice included product liability, construction claims, insurance coverage disputes and a variety of business and commercial matters. Many of these cases involved extensive travel here and abroad and brought me in contact with numerous interesting (and occasionally well known) lawyers and non-lawyers. I became active in several trial lawyer groups including the Society of Trial Lawyers and the American College of Trial Lawyers and also served as president of the Board of Visitors of the College of Law. Prior to retiring in 2003, I served as managing partner of our firm and negotiated a merger with a Detroit based firm, Dykema Gossett. The combined firms have over 400 lawyers with offices in major cities around the country.
Marilyn (a 1963 U. of I. graduate) and I have two children (one of whom graduated from the U. of I. in 1989) and have an apartment in Evanston where we have lived since 1972. However, most of the time we are at our homes near Eagle River, Wisconsin or on Upper Captiva Island, Florida. For many years, Bob Root (Omicron 1964) had a home near Eagle River and we have frequently seen Guy Fraker (Omicron 1960) who still practices law in Bloomington, Il. Bob Pfeiffer (Omicron 1961) who unfortunately passed away earlier this year also lived near Eagle River and was a close friend. We shall miss him very much. I would enjoy hearing from any of the brothers from the early 1960s and particularly the class of 1963." (Editor's note: our condolences to the Sward family on the passing of Mrs. Sward in August 2008) |
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Guy C. Fraker '60
Attorney at Law
Brother Fraker ‘60, father of Matthew Fraker D.V.M ’89, has long been one of Psi U’s and the U of I’s favorite sons, having served both university and chapter for years. Past president of the U of I Library Friends Board of Directors, Fraker received the university’s William E. Winter Award for Outstanding Advocate Leadership. Brother Fraker is also an accomplished historian and author, concentrating on Abraham Lincoln.
In early 2009 Brother Fraker sent along the following note: "I am working on a book with SIU Press on Lincoln and the Circuit. I also was the consultant on a documentary on the subject by WILL that will be shown all over the state on 2/9/09 or thereabouts entitled Abraham Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency." Take a look at the companion website for this documentary . As this site notes:
As a lawyer traveling Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit, Abraham Lincoln made two simultaneous journeys. He gained respect as a skilled attorney and mesmerizing speaker, but he also built a political base and refined his views on the important issues of the day, many of which he would face in the White House. His experiences from 1837 to 1860 on muddy roads, in homes of friends and in courtrooms on the circuit guided him when he became president. WILL-TV’s Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency tells the story of the cases he tried and people he met during this critical period of his life. “That’s where he really got a sense of the various kinds of problems people faced,” said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of the experts featured in the documentary. “He got a sense of the exuberance of their dreams and their hopes. In a certain sense, I think it was the root of his political education.”
As this article from the Bloomington Pantagraph attests, Brother Fraker has been an advocate for nature as well.
“Lawyer linked to nature” by Scott Richardson, Bloomington Pantagraph – Saturday, March 12, 2005
It didn't seem like a big request. Guy Fraker certainly didn't think his answer would change his life. The year was 1967, and Loring Merwin, then publisher of The Pantagraph, was asking Fraker, a new lawyer in the Twin Cities, to handle legal work for the newly formed ParkLands Foundation. Merwin's goal was to obtain land and restore it to resemble the high density prairie that once blanketed much of Illinois.
Fraker said yes.
His life would never be the same.
Fraker, 66, became a leading advocate for conservation and restoration of natural habitat in the state. In addition to his work with the ParkLands Foundation, Fraker rose to statewide prominence as the chairman of the Illinois chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He was land protection director for The Nature Conservancy in the mid-1990s. Former Gov. Jim Edgar appointed him to the Nature Preserves Commission that oversees natural areas in Illinois. He maintains a seat on the Nature Conservancy board.
Fraker, a Republican, classes himself not as an environmentalist, but as a conservationist in the sense of former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, the father of our national park system. “I feel God gave us the capability to do good things or do bad things to nature,” said Fraker. “With that capability comes responsibility to preserve other species that don't have the power to do it themselves. It’s our duty to steward the natural world. …I know of no higher calling.”
Fraker was born in White Plains, N.Y., the son of parents who hailed from Peoria and Champaign. That connection brought him to Illinois to attend the University of Illinois in Urbana as an undergraduate majoring in history. He stayed to finish law school there before moving to Bloomington-Normal to start his law practice. He was taken by the community’s stability and its ability to keep its young people coming back to live for generations. That impressed a boy who came from a place where few residents were natives, he said.
Fraker also was a self-taught Lincoln scholar, who fell under the spell of the president from the Prairie State while on a trip with his great aunt to visit New Salem. He was 10. The chance to return and live in Illinois one day appealed to him.
Through ParkLands and his work with the TNC and the Nature Preserves Commission, Fraker became convinced of the need to conserve open spaces in a state second only to Iowa for having an altered landscape. Lincoln couldn't recognize the place. Fraker believed it was left to Lincoln's fellow Republicans, indeed all residents of Illinois, to preserve what they could.
Among recent actions, he was among leaders of the successful fight last year to save money in the state budget designated to acquire new natural areas when Gov. Rod Blagojevich wanted to transfer the funds to the state general fund to ease a fiscal crisis.
Fraker doesn't merely oppose Blagojevich because he is a Democrat. Fraker also speaks out against what he sees as anti-conservation policies of President George Bush, whose record Fraker calls, “an embarrassment.”
Still, Fraker is cautiously optimistic about the future. “There is an awareness that didn't exist before,” he said, noting a survey taken in the past few years where respondents called preservation of open spaces Illinois' first environmental priority. Fraker said conservation organizations must acknowledge the importance of involving agriculture in its efforts. “The challenge is to make conservation, by that I mean habitat protection and species protection, compatible with agriculture. Clearly, you can't make it work without agriculture,” he said.
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John P. "Jack" Rooney '53
Professor Emeritus
Thomas M. Cooley Law School
Professor Rooney worked as an associate for law firms in Illinois and California and subsequently entered private practice in San Francisco, specializing in real estate law. He is admitted to practice in Michigan and before the U.S. Tax Court. He taught estate and gift taxation at San Francisco Law School before joining the Thomas Cooley faculty in 1975.
Since joining the Thomas Cooley faculty, Professor Rooney has authored a casebook on property law. He has also published several articles on legal philosophy and has participated in international conventions of legal scholars. Professor Rooney is a member of the Federal Tax Problems Committee and the Title Insurance Committee in the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of the American Bar Association. He is a former member of the Michigan Land Title Standards Committee. Professor Rooney is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, belongs to Scribes, and is a Fellow of the State Bar of Michigan Foundation.
A charter member of the Cooley Legal Authors Society, he is the first winner of the Stanley E. Beattie Teaching Award. He has been listed in Who's Who in American Law and in Who's Who in America. Professor Rooney teaches Modern Real Estate Transactions and has taught Property and Jurisprudence.
In a recent correspondence with the chapter, Brother Rooney writes:
I was pleased to read George Fearheiley's reminiscences in the latest issue of the Arrow received here in East Lansing today. I moved to EL about thirty years ago to teach at Cooley Law School in Lansing. One of Bill "Spider" Stevens' relatives attended Cooley 20 or 30 yeqrs ago. Spider was a memorable member and a pretty good bridge player. Approximately a year ago I had the sad duty to attend the funeral of Kirk Kandle about whom George spoke. Kirk lived in the Lansing area for many years. Jack Hester phoned me a couple of years ago. Jack played baseball at Illinois. His parents were great hosts when Hugh Dolby and I were stationed at Fort Devens Mass, then the HQ for the Army Security Agency.
I was at the fraternity and the University from early 1951 to June, 1953. I was a math major. Earlier today I looked up the math dept's offerings. They are largely the same today as they were 55 years ago. One of the courses I was lucky enough to take exposed me to the use of the computer, viz., the Illiac. So when I was in the Army I was assigned to the National Security Agency as a computer programmer. After the Army I went to Harvard Law School. I worked summers as a computer programmer, in 1956 at Argonne Lab and in 1957 at IIT Research. One of my tasks at IIT involved calculating how fast the South Side would melt if we pulled the rods on our nuclear reactor. The man who assigned me the task was a fraternity bro who was a physicist. This pulling the rods is what happened at Chernobyl many years later.
I lived and worked in the San Francisco area for fifteen years before moving to Lansing. Brothers Joe Kenston and Bill Luthi were there and later Art Molin, a clean water expert. Joe was one of my students at San Francisco Law School.
I was glad to see a letter from Roe Mallstrom whom George mentioned. Bob Rollins too. One correction for George's memories: I never was any good at chess. I was OK but not good at bridge.
Brother Rooney's earliest claim to fame was as a "Quiz Kid". He writes:
As it happens I was more famous when I was in high school than at any time since. I was on the Quiz Kids radio show and then after my QK days were over I asked the questions on a local quiz show, I think called Quizdown, which pitted rival public school, Lutheran school, and Catholic school sixth graders against one another. Each Sunday I had my picture in the Sun-Times with a little story about the quiz show. Usually we had a Hollywood personality on the show who got a little publicity out of the appearance. |
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Lawrence "Bud" Hatch '34
Attorney – Hatch Law Firm
Brother Lawrence "Bud" Hatch, 94, of Urbana, graduated from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1937 and joined the H.I. Green law offices, where he had worked before becoming a lawyer. As an associate, he became a widely recognized authority on mineral law in the development of gas and oil fields in southern Illinois. He has long been involved in drainage law, real estate, trust and probate law.
In 2006 he was recognized as one of eight attorneys selected as the first class of the Champaign County Bar Association's "Pillars of the Bar." This elite group of lawyers, all alums of the U of I law school, were honored at a dinner for their devotion to the Bar.
Hatch's nomination said that "probably no one in the local bar has a greater recollection of the history of farmland ownership, soil types and identity of the farmers on Champaign County farms than he, usually because he represented a party in either the sale or purchase or drafted the lease. He will seldom be seen without having his plat book nearby."
His son, Bill Hatch, also of the firm now known as the Hatch Law Firm in Champaign, has practiced with his father for 39 years, where Brother Hatch still practices. Hatch also has two grandsons who are attorneys. Four lawyers from his firm have gone on to be state and federal judges.
You can read the full text of the News-Gazette article documenting Hatch's award here. |
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C. Lyman Emrich '32
Rhodes Scholar and eminent trademark and copyright attorney
Brother Emrich's record at the Omicron is well known as one of our most outstanding brothers. He served as President of the Omicron Alumni Association and on our Board of Directors for many years. Upon his passing in February 2005 the Chicago Tribune wrote:
Whether speaking at a social gathering or on the political dais, C. Lyman Emrich Jr. captivated audiences. "Lyman had a wonderful reputation," said Frank Hoover, who served with Mr. Emrich on the Evanston City Council in the 1960s. "Whenever he stood up to talk, people knew they were going to hear words of wisdom, well expressed in a gentlemanly demeanor." Mr. Emrich also regaled audiences at the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner in Chicago, where he gave an account of the annual rowing race between the historic rivals–a favorite sporting event for Mr. Emrich and other former Rhodes scholars. "For many, many years, he gave the report of the boat race, and he was very highly respected and much appreciated in that role," said John H. Morrison, president of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars. "He was amusing–very amusing–and very thorough."
He graduated with honors from Evanston Township High School in 1928 and received a legislative scholarship to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1932. He was editor of the "Illio," the school's yearbook and was named to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1934, he got his law degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and became a Rhodes scholar. In 1938, he graduated from Exeter College at Oxford University with a doctorate of philosophy in jurisprudence.
He started practicing law in Chicago and in 1941, he joined the firm of Brown, Jackson, Boettcher and Dienner. As a young lawyer, Mr. Emrich was invited to the White House wedding of the daughter of Henry Morgenthau Jr., treasury secretary under President Franklin Roosevelt. At the wedding, Mr. Emrich danced with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. "He was absolutely enchanted," said his son Jeffrey.
When World War II broke out, Mr. Emrich received a commission in the U.S. Navy Reserves. Before leaving Chicago, he married Barbara Mary Boettcher. He was assigned as a lieutenant junior grade to work in the Department of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C.
In 1945, then-Lt. Cmdr. Emrich was on the Pacific Ocean en route to Japan when the war ended. Soon afterward, he returned to his Chicago law firm.
An international trademark and copyright attorney until about 1990, he became a senior partner at his firm. After a merger, the firm became Emrich & Dithmar LLC.
For six years in the 1950s, Mr. Emrich was an alderman in Evanston's 2nd Ward. In the 1960s, he served for eight years as 1st Ward alderman. He also was a trustee of Evanston-Skokie School District 65. |
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Frederick Green '89
Professor, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Green time at the University of Illinois College of Law spanned over thirty plus years. To honor his illustrious service to the university, the College of Law holds an annual moot court competition in his name – The Frederick Green Moot Court Competition Brother Green was also the father of the Honorable Fred Green, a distinguished member of the bar and bench, decorated veteran, and champion Illini athlete.
Ann Ribstein of the Jenner Law Library discovered in "Who Was Who in America" vol. 3 the following data on his life:
He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Feb. 28, 1868 and took three degrees at Harvard, A.B. in 1889, A.M. in 1893, and LL.B., 1893. Brother Green married Lois Shepherd, Sept. 7, 1920 and they had two children-Cornelia and Frederick Shepherd. He practiced in New York City 1893-1900 and became professor of law at the University of Illinois in September 1904. The Greens made their home at 805 W. Green St., Urbana. He passed away July 27, 1956 and is buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Brother Green's time at Illinois is also documented in the book Law in the Grand Manner, 1897-1967 – A Popular History of the College of Law at the University of Illinois
"Frederick Green retired from the faculty in 1936 after thirty-two years of service to Illinois, although he was called back for another year of teaching in 1938-39. He was counselor to four deans, and his example set the standard for academics at the College soon after its founding. A man of great dignity and reserve, he did not marry until he was fifty-four. He was beloved by the students for the benevolent interest he took in them, often providing lemonade during the hot June days of exam week. An oil portrait was dedicated in his honor and now hangs in the Law Building as a silent exhortation to aspiring advocates in the Frederick Green Moot Court Competition, which was named for him when he retired."
The Law School where he finished his career was quite different from the one he started at near the turn of the century. According to Law in the Grand Mannerthe college took over the old chemistry building in 1903 and called it home for the next twenty-four years. Brother Green remarked: And there the Law School lived for some years, if not precisely in the odor of sanctity, very decidedly in the odor of chamistry. But the smells that came from the chemicals that soaked the floors were mitigated, alleviated, and at times completely overwhelmed by the smells that came from the taxidermist's shop in the basement. So while strange beasts and rare birds were manufactured in the basement, the upper stories of the building were engaged in producing and sending forth a multitude of lawyers.
Law in the Grand Manner, 1897-1967 – A Popular History of the College of Law at the University of Illinois continues at length about Professor Green's introduction to central Illinois on page fifteen:
"The circumstances of his arrival in Urbana might have frightened a lesser man away, according to his later description:
'Some piece of literature which I gut with my appointment said that every member of the faculty was expected to be at the University on September I and to stay until July 1, and not to leave town without permission. So I came at the stated time and the first thing I learned about the University was that you couldn't take it at its word. The campus was empty. So was the Law Building. I went to the Library and as that was locked up, climbed to the upper floor where the Dean of Men had his office in the East end, the President in the middle and the Registrar and Bursar in die West end where the safe is still. I asked where the clerk in the Registrar's Office where California Street was, but he said I had no right to come into the room because it was between twelve and one o'clock and out of office hours, but if I would come back at one o'clock he would tell me.' "
"Frederick Green fortunately had the wit and wisdom to perceive the situation in its proper perspective. In the following description of the provincial community he captures the true flavor of life in those early years at the University:
'Dr. Draper had not prepared me for what was a state of mind then widely prevalent which was manifested by a real, or sometimes a professed, devotion to ultra-puritan standards, that far outdid my boyhood recollections of New England, combined with a conscious effort at dignity. . . . No golf or tennis was allowed on Sunday, no library or museum was open Sunday afternoon, and though some members of the faculty had to have access lo university buildings on Sunday to feed experimental white mice or keep apparatus running, they were urged not to click typewriters so loud that they could be heard on the outside. Under the pretence of danger from fire, smoking was prohibited in faculty offices, and under pretence of danger to growing trees, the forestry was closed up after dark. . . . The campus was treated as a possession of the board of trustees which students and teachers were required to resort to periodically, but which they were given every incentive to leave as soon as they could. Even for the few minutes between classes students were forced to banish themselves to the nearest curb for a smoke…
In 1904 Champaign-Urbana was said to have 17,000 people, nine churches, twenty-eight saloons, and twenty-odd miles of brick paved streets. Green and Wright Streets were paved. Mathews Street was being paved. John Street was mud mitigated by ashes, with a streetcar track down the middle, resting on cross tics that stuck out of the mud and had to be bumped over by the two-horse hacks, in which socially prominent students look their girls to dances. I have been told that when the mud was very bad it took four horses to pull a hack through it. And I remember reading in the local paper of a boy that got stuck in the mud while walking to school a short way outside of town, and they had to hitch a mule to him to pull him out.
… To get a book, a haircut, or a soda, you must go to Urbana or Champaign. . . . The two towns literally boasted four automobiles. Morgan Brooks was the only faculty man who had one. . . . Saturday afternoon … tethered to racks around the court house square were lines of horses and mules hitched to mud-bespattered vehicles that had brought families from the farms into town for their weekly shopping and sight-seeing. Such of the men as weren't in saloons, lined up on the curb and spat into the gutter, while the women and children stood around in silence looking each other over and waiting for the men to be ready to go home.’ ”
“… Professor Green himself had two rooms costing $15 a month, and ate in the most fashionable boarding house in Urbana for four dollars a week., while being paid $2,000 salary for the school year. ‘Those were the halcyon days of law teaching,’ he reminisced. ‘Only two or three law reviews to be read, and none to edit … a student body half eager to learn, the other half immune to learning, and all alike invariably passing the bar examination with colors flying.’ ” |
