An Enigmatic Brilliant Classmate

In the summer 2023 issue I received online today, the alumni bulletin of the law school from which I graduated, Harvard, reported the death last autumn (2022) of a classmate, Covert E. Parnell III, whom I cannot say I knew well but whose company I had now and then enjoyed while there.  Pete was an unusual guy, even if his resume was classic top-of-the-line HLS.

He was born and grew up in Alabama, attended Birmingham Southern College, and graduated magna from Harvard Law. Then he clerked for a respected judge on the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, Francis Van Dusen, followed by service as one of the last clerks for Justice Hugo Black. When Black died while Pete was his clerk, the incoming justice, another Southerner, Lewis Powell, kept him on.

Pete always said that Black had hired him because he was a decent tennis player, always rumored to be a requirement to be a law clerk for the justice, who played frequently into his old age. Pete's being an Alabaman can't have hurt him either, as Black was partial to brilliant law grads from his home state. This was despite the prevalence of dislike, to put it mildly, for Black in Alabama because of his individual but generally progressive views (even though he'd been a Klan member in his youth): "Hugo Black used to run around in white robes scaring black people; now he wears black robes and scares white people" was the derogatory line about Black in the South.

He had been a Senator from Alabama during the New Deal and was FDR's first nominee to the Court, in 1937; Roosevelt had not had the opportunity to appoint a justice to the Court which had been striking down his legislation for his whole first term. Black was named after the collapse of Roosevelt's attempt to expand the Court so as to outvote the conservatives dominating the Court. It was felt that the safest political path was to nominate a sitting Senator.

It shouldn't be surprising that law came easily to Pete. Powell undoubtedly kept him on because everyone who knew Pete was impressed by both his brilliance and his charm. When I ran into him sometime later, I asked him about a clerk who served at the time he did and was well-known. In Pete's view, he was a "cottonhead". Pete became a partner in a major Los Angeles firm only five years out. This was quite uncommon, then and now, and I suspect he was the first member of our class to become a partner in a major law firm.

I lost track of him and so, apparently, did most of my classmates. I checked out the firm listing once when I was going to be in LA and he was gone. Several years later, I was at some legal gathering and found myself introduced to a young woman who was at Pete's old firm. Without getting very specific, something lawyers are very good at, she indicated to me that he had gone through some kind of crack-up and that as far as she knew, he was living in some nondescript part, of which there are many, of the LA metro area. She had no idea what he was doing. "He was the brightest, nicest lawyer I've ever known," she observed.

His obits all said he had been the lawyer for Home Savings and then on the executive team at H.F.Ahmanson & Co., which owned Home Savings. He then was a name partner in what was apparently a small firm and also served as executive director or chair of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. He retired and lived in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for the last 21 years of his life.

There's more of a story there. I say that because the obit referred to both his partner of many years, who is male, and also to a son. He appears to have been active in the Church of St. Paul in the Desert, which is in Palm Springs.  He became an inactive member of the California bar in 1997, only four years before he retired completely.

It's possible to suggest all sorts of suppositions about his life based on the scant evidence I've had access to. Yet, his story reminds me of the title character in Calvin Trillin's memoir, Remembering Denny. Trillin set out to learn what had become of a Yale classmate whom he admired for his easy disarming way and charm that appeared to guarantee a successful life. While Denny had achieved outward success as an academic and in government, following his time as a Rhodes Scholar, it turned out that he had demons of his own. He had a series of false starts in his career, and despite his accomplishments as a professor, had  committed suicide at 55.

In a review of Trillin's book, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt concluded: "At the end of Remembering Denny, the author recalls how one of Denny's more recent acquaintances 'seemed offended when I referred to Denny as an old friend.' He said, 'Roger would have said that you didn't know him at all.' Mr. Trillin replied, 'I couldn't agree with you more.'"

'Prima Facie" and "Days of Wine and Roses'

Two shows in New York that I saw over Fourth of July weekend: (1) Prima Facie was a one-woman show about a barrister who knows how to defend sexual assault cases and then is assaulted herself and learns how the system treats victims. Jodie Comer starred. She won the Tony this year for Best Actress in a play and became well-known here for playing the assassin in the streaming series Killing Eve, and (2) Days of Wine and Roses is a musical based on the Playhouse 90 TV production of the 50s or 60s and the movie with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Broadway musical star Kelli O'Hara leads the cast, with Brian D'Arcy James playing the male lead.

Prima Facie runs 100 minutes without intermission. It gets draggy in the last half, possibly because of the absence of a break. Comer is absolutely marvelous, doing everything on stage including moving the set pieces. She brings the barrister to life and you laugh and then feel sorry with her. Although the drama is especially appealing to lawyers, it went over well with the general audience. By showing how the system works from two sides, the play achieves more than a one-sided MeToo presentation. It's too bad that it closed over the same weekend; either Comer had been signed for a truly limited run or even winning the Tony didn't pick up box office.

Days of Wine and Roses has always been a downer because it shows a couple sinking into alcoholism. The two leads are superb--the music is all right but unmemorable. O'Hara does everything she can to put the songs across but if she can't leave you humming them, it's not her fault. James is a perfect match for her. They play very well together as they confront their demons separately for the most part and go off in different directions. The show was put on at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater on West 20th St. in Chelsea. 

To me, the show still has great power in its depiction of how mid-20th Century culture encouraged alcohol addiction. All the social cues that pushed people toward booze both at work and at home come through. This show, also without an intermission, runs about 105 minutes. It also would benefit from a break. It wasn't clear whether it is bound for Broadway--the cast and production are first-class. It may well need some more work to tighten up spots and maybe even charge up the music.

Horatio Alger--My Outfit

I've already received one e-mail today pointing out that "your waining Society is back in the news some 100+ years later." The reference is to the Horatio Alger Society, of which I was president a few years ago and which I agreed to serve this year as vice president. HAS (our acronym) is a group of book collectors, people interested in American juvenile literature of the second half of the 19th century, and the continued interest which pops up now and then in media of our eponymous author who did have a problem coming up with more than one plot. In case it's not immediately apparent, HAS is a low-budget operation.

The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans is an organization that honors people whose lives it feels exemplify the Horatio Alger ideal of poor boy makes good. (There were a couple of his novels that featured girls, quite a step forward in those days!) The Association tends to recognize captains of industry and such; this has made it a very high-budget operation. It apparently chose to include Clarence Thomas some years ago as one of its annual inductees.

Today, the New York Times chose to feature his membership in a lengthy front-page story, which only seems significant enough for the front page--right lede no less--because of the scandal arising from his acceptance of gifts, trips, lodging, meals, etc., from rich people. Some of them have had some relationship with cases pending before the Court. Some of those people may have met him through the Association.

These people meet in places that you need not worry about the price because if you do, you can't afford it. Our Society's annual convention, which now attracts a bit more than a handful of members and their partners or friends, have been held in hostelries outside the beltways of small cities and only grudgingly do we agree to assemble at any place that charges much more than $100 a night. We've met at a Holiday Inn in Fredericksburg for three years because during the pandemic, it has been an easy place to hold our meetings.

In the past we've met all over the country, and I've been to our conventions in Catskill, N.Y.; Willow Grove, Pa.; Sacramento, Calif.; Shelbyville, Ind.; Bowie, Md.; and North Conway, N.H. No five-star resorts there.

We did succeed in getting a Horatio Alger Stamp issued some years ago. That was one of the very few occasions where we were involved in working with the Association on a common cause. It worked. Some f our members, who know everything there is to know about Alger, wrote the Alger bio the Association uses in its literature--for a fee.

Someone gave me an Alger novel when I was in junior high. Then I found a rack of them when I was still in my teens at Leary's Book Store in Philadelphia, one of the legendary old book stores that are hardly to be found anymore. My allowance enabled me to buy a couple. I got a kick out of reading Alger. The poor boy at the end of each book acquired fame, girl, and cash, not necessarily in that order. Triumph occurred by coincidence or happenstance.

I've collected a lot of them over the years. It was fun looking for them in the bookstores I ran across in traveling. I have a few first editions. Few of them or any of the books are worth much, definitely not what I paid for them. I'm not waiting for an invite from the Association.

I have gone to receptions at the Supreme Court. One was when I became a Fellow of the Institute for Court Management. Going to oral arguments, at least in past years, was more interesting. In retrospect, I think I've had more enjoyment from HAS than I would've found on a trip to the Alaskan back country with some rich people.