Tribute to Professor James E. Beaver 1930-199

Bond, James E.

English

Seattle University School of Law: Digital Commons

Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons Faculty Scholarship 1-1-1996 Eulogy for Jim Beaver February 29, 1996 James E. Bond Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty  Part of the Legal Education Commons Recommended Citation James E. Bond, Eulogy for Jim Beaver February 29, 1996, 19 Seattle U. L. Rev. iv (1996). https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty/165 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact coteconor@seattleu.edu. Seattle University Law ReviewEULOGY FOR JIM BEAVER FEBRUARY 29, 1996Jim Beaver loved history. He loved the classics. And, of course,he loved texts. He particularly enjoyed expounding them-from themaxims of equity to the Federal Rules of Evidence to the DauerReport. The Dauer Report? That was Jim's title for a single sentence,authored by Dean Dauer, in a 1989 ABA inspection report. Thesentence asserted that our senior faculty were paid $10,000 to $20,000less than their counterparts elsewhere. Jim never tired of expoundingthat text to me. And, were he here today, he would doubtless tell youthat my inability to appreciate his exposition put me among the mostdim-witted of students he had ever tried to teach.Though I could not hope for a star, I thought I might raise Jim'sestimation of me just a bit if I chose, as the basis for my remarks thisafternoon, a classic text with historical significance. The text is aShakespearean sonnet, whose second line, with its concern for time, hasachieved worldwide circulation, as the epigraph for one of the greatestnovels of the twentieth century.When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past,I sigh the lack of many a thing I soughtAnd with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,And weep afresh love's long since canceled woe,And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,And heavily from woe to woe tell o'erThe sad account of fore-bemoane'd moan,Which I new pay as if not paid before,But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restored and sorrows end.I chose this text because the voice of that sonnet is Jim Beaver's voice;and unless you understand that voice, you cannot understand Jim: hissense of self, which was so complex and divided, or his generosity ofspirit, which was so simple and whole.Like most of us, Jim experienced triumph and failure; and again,like most of us, he discovered early and often that life was not alwaysfair. He dealt with all this quite straightforwardly. He took responsi-bility for the decisions he made--decisions that in retrospect he mighthave thought should have been made differently: turning down afootball scholarship to Vanderbilt; marrying the first time so early;[Vol. 19:iTribute to James E. Beaverdeclining a clerkship with Chief Justice Warren; rejecting a belatedoffer of tenure from the University of Washington; leaving IndianaUniversity in 1972 for a fledgling law school in the Pacific Northwest.These decisions-if wrong-were his; and the blame was therefore his.Oh, to be sure, he occasionally "sigh(ed) the lack of many a thing(he had) sought": partnership in Kirkland and Ellis, a seat inCongress, an appointment to the federal bench. Costly as was theexpense of those many vanished sights, Jim wept little over their loss.They were fated not to be, and he had no quarrel with fate.Jim did quarrel with those who maliciously inflicted losses onhim. He did "drown an eye, unused to flow" over those grievances.And like the voice of the Sonnet, he grieved those "foregone grievanceso'er" again. He could not understand, for example, how his colleaguesat the U could vote to deny him tenure because he held conservativepolitical views, or why some students might, for the same reason,refuse to take his classes, or why a University President would punishhim for speaking his mind at a Board of Visitors meeting. To the endof his life, Jim had a child's innate sense of fair play. He must havehated schoolyard bullies.Jim's insistent demand that we apply high standards uniformlywas rooted in that sense of fair play. People ought to be judged bywhat they did. Those who did more-those who did better-shouldsucceed. And they ought to succeed, he added, without regard togender, color or point of view.I recall, for example, his evaluation of a book written by acolleague whose political views Jim detested. He thought the book anexcellent piece of scholarship and praised it lavishly-though, I mustadd, for accuracy's sake, I thought I detected in his voice some surprisethat one otherwise so deficient in common sense could produce qualitywork. In any case, Jim cheerfully voted to promote the colleague.Indeed, Jim rarely voted against the promotion or tenure of acolleague. He was, in my view, generous to a fault in personnelmatters; and he was enormously sympathetic to the rejected. In othermatters as well, Jim was far more compassionate than many suspected.They saw only the bluff and bluster behind which he occasionally hidhis vulnerability. And vulnerable he was because, like all of us, hewanted the approval of those around him. As Dean, I invariably triedto get new faculty to go to lunch with Jim; all too often they wouldlook at me with fear-filled eyes, as if I were asking them to walk intoa lion's den unarmed. What they didn't understand was that Jimcould be subdued without arms. This lion could be tamed withnothing more than a sincere offer of tolerance, respect, and friendship.1996]Seattle University Law ReviewJim prized those qualities-tolerance, respect, friendship-becausehe knew that they alone enabled a community of teachers and scholarsto flourish. He dedicated the last half of his professional career tobuilding that kind of community at this school.Surely in his reveries Jim thought both about that particularcontribution and the general richness of a life that embraced music,politics, and art. More importantly, and more certainly, he must haverecalled the affection of his children and Anita's love. Such remem-brances should have made him realize that he had wasted little of his"dear time" and that he had paid in full any "sad account" he everowed.But... but ... I suspect that even in "those sessions of sweet,silent thought" Jim was bedeviled by doubts: doubts that he had doneenough, achieved enough, made enough of a difference. My fear isthat he never gave himself the star he so richly deserved.But, then again, perhaps he has heard what was said at the funeralSaturday and here today. Perhaps he has heard at last how much wevalued him and how much we shall miss him. Hearing all this wouldprobably surprise Jim-especially the fact that he was anywhere hecould hear it. But hearing all this, Jim must now be whispering:"Dear friend(s), all losses are restored and sorrows end."James E. BondDeanSeattle University School of LawREMEMBERING MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUEJim Beaver was my friend, my faculty colleague, at the Universityof Washington School of Law. I speak from a time in our lives over25 years ago. Though Jim and I were friends--close friends inspirit-until he died, we seldom saw each other or even spoke on thetelephone after that period. When I joined the faculty at the School ofLaw, University of Washington, in 1967, he had been there for twoyears. Then-Dean Tunks had hired him as one of a group of verybright, young faculty, to transform the school from a good, regionalone to a law school of national stature. None of them had qualifica-tions to equal Jim's, second in his graduating class at Wesleyan, firstin his law class at Chicago, and, unheard of, one who had declined aclerkship to the chief justice of the United States. None had his(Vol. 19:1

Eulogy for Jim Beaver February 29, 1996

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Eulogy for Jim Beaver February 29, 1996

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