despite getting spanked, a silver lining

I traveled to Northeast Texas today for a short trial. I lost. Losing…well…losing sucks. It’s the first time I’ve ever lost anything that wasn’t sports or gambling related, save one debate competition in high school. But I won’t dwell on that, because in the process of losing, I received a gift that I will never forget.

To explain the gift, I must tell the story of my grandfather, Royce Whitten. All you really need to know is that my family is essentially a family of lawyers – both of my parents, my uncle, various distant cousins, and of course me. What some families would consider unfortunate (a family of lawyers? Imagine the chaos!), we consider a blessing beyond measure.

This blessing started with my Grandfather, Royce Whitten. My grandfather was a lawyer’s lawyer, a gentleman litigator. The son of tenant farmers in East Texas, he was given the opportunity to go to college in the middle of the depression. East Texas was dirt poor in those days, and the gentleman whose land the Whittens farmed approached a teenaged Royce out in the cotton fields one afternoon and told him, “You’re too smart to pick cotton, I’m sending you to college,” gave him a suit of clothes, and sent him off to the junior college in Paris, Texas.

WWII came and went, and my grandfather went on to “read law.” In those days in Texas, you didn’t have to have graduated from law school to sit for the bar exam. Instead, you could “read law,” essentially an apprenticeship under a licensed attorney. Royce did just that and went on to a career as a prosecutor in East Texas. After a few years as a prosecutor, he went into private practice and moved his family to my hometown of Denton.

His private practice was successful, and he became the preeminent litigator in Denton County for many years. He also was a sort of community patriarch in old Denton too – President of the School Board, leader in the church, and a founder of the local savings and loan. He died far too young, at 56, in 1969. I never met him.

Growing up, I was constantly regaled with tales of my grandfather’s greatness both as a wonderful human being and as a top-notch litigator. Only a minority of those stories came from within the biased memories of my family. One of my earliest and proudest memories is running through the halls of First Baptist Church of Denton when an elderly lady stopped me. I must have been about eight years old, and I assumed I was going to get a lecture about not running indoors. Instead, she smiled at me and with the most matter-of-fact look I’ve ever seen, even to this day, said, “You must be a Whitten.” I told her, “Yes, I’m Mike’s son.” She told me I had my grandfather’s smile, and that’s how she knew, and then she just turned and walked away. No lecture.

I will never forget that. That woman’s quick affirmation was one of the things that made me want to be a lawyer from a very early age. Today, in the process of losing my first case, I got the same affirmation from an unlikely source.

I entered the courtroom with my client and began setting up my table with my exhibits, cases, briefs, notepads, Tums, etc. Shortly thereafter opposing counsel walked in. Along with his client, an elderly gentleman accompanied him. I introduced myself and he explained that he too was a lawyer, and that the lawyer I was opposing in today’s case was his son. And then the old codger said something that shocked me.

“Are you Royce Whitten’s boy?”

“Well, not exactly sir, I’m his grandson.”

“Well, you’ve got good genes. I practiced with him. He was very well known.”

“I hope I can be that good too.”

“You know, I didn’t even have to ask your name to know you were related. I could just tell, and when you said you were from Denton, I knew it.”

I thanked him and explained to him that I had never met my grandfather, but hearing something like that made me feel great – like a real lawyer, as a matter of fact.

Being a legacy is something I’ve always been afraid of given the number of attorneys in my family and their previous successes. My aversion to being characterized as such was a motivating factor in not moving back to North Texas after law school. I want to succeed on my own merit, on my own talent. It makes me work ten times as hard as everyone else, because I have something to prove.

Today, I received the gift of knowing that, occasionally, being a legacy is something to be proud of.