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+  Interview with Alan Page
+  Minnesota Supreme Court
+  Oral History Project
+  February 19, 2019
+  This project was made possible by Legacy funding to the Minnesota Supreme Court Historical Society from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund established by the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008, and administered by the Minnesota Historical Society.
+  © 2020 by the Minnesota State Law Library. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy and recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Minnesota State Law Library.
+  2
+  Minnesota Supreme Court
+  Oral History Project
+  Interview with Alan Page
+  Associate Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court, 1993-2015
+  Jeff Holth, Interviewer
+  February 19, 2019
+  Name of interviewee: AP
+  Names of interviewer: JH
+  Recording 1
+  00:00:00
+  JH: All right. It’s February 19, 2019, and I’m at the Continuing Legal Education Center [Minnesota CLE Conference Center, 600 Nicollet Mall #370, Minneapolis, MN] in
+  Minneapolis [Minneapolis, MN] to interview retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page [Alan Cedric Page (August 7, 1945-)] for the Minnesota Supreme Court Oral History Project. The project is sponsored by the Minnesota Supreme Court Historical Society and its Preservation Committee in cooperation with the Minnesota State Law Library [Minnesota State Law Library, 25 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, St Paul, MN]. My name is Jeff Holth. I’m a practicing attorney here in Minnesota and I clerked for Justice Page from 2012 to 2013 and I’ll be conducting the interview today.
+  Thank you for coming today, Justice Page, and for agreeing to share your experiences and insights on your years on the court.
+  AP: Well, thank you for inviting me and hopefully we can have a fun conversation.
+  JH: Agreed. So let’s jump right in. I know you graduated from law school in around 1978 and served on the Supreme Court from ’93 [1993] to 2015, but I want to start by asking you about your earlier life before we talk about your years on the court.
+  AP: Sure.
+  JH: So I wonder if you could just start us off by talking a little bit about your family and where you grew up.
+  AP: I was born in Canton, Ohio. I was the fourth of four children. My mother was a—worked as an attendant in a country club and my father, various jobs from operating juke boxes to running a bar—that sort of thing. As I say, I was the fourth of four children, two sisters and a brother. My childhood was a pretty happy one, pretty uneventful, not much exciting to talk about. We weren’t the wealthiest of families, but we weren’t the poorest either.
+  3
+  My parents, neither one had the opportunity to go to school beyond high school and they emphasized for me and my brother and my sisters, the importance of education and the importance of being good citizens. And in their own way, something that, I think, stuck with me, they talked about and emphasized the importance of seeking excellence. Now they didn’t say it that way, but I think that’s the bottom line of what they were talking about. They would always—and I can hear them now telling me, Whatever you do in life, do it as well as you can. You’re going to be a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector you can be. If you’re going to be a doctor, be the best doctor you can be. Not as good as the next doctor or garbage collector, but the best one you can be. And that’s something that they preached and, I think, has served me well over time.
+  JH: I think I recall you talking about, you know, at a pretty young age, having some experiences or influences that sort of made you think you might want to be a lawyer someday. Can you talk about that a little bit?
+  AP: I very early on, you know, when I was eight, nine, ten years old, people would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up and I would say I wanted to be a lawyer. And, you know, what eight-year-old knows really what they want to do when they grow up? But, as I noted, I grew up in Canton, Ohio. It was a town built on heavy industry, primarily steel, and I had an uncle who spent forty years working in the steel mill. And I knew intuitively that that’s not something that I wanted to do. Nothing wrong with working in steel mills, but from my eight-
+  00:05:00 year-old eyes, the work was dirty; it was hard; it was dangerous and repetitious. And
+  somehow I knew that that didn’t fit me.
+  I’d heard stories about lawyers, that, you know, from—not that I knew any lawyers, or had any lawyers in my family or my family really knew any lawyers, but the impression in the community I grew up was that lawyers didn’t work too hard; made lots of money; drove big, fancy cars; lived in big houses and went out and played golf every Wednesday afternoon. But for the eight-year-old mind balancing fancy cars and dangerous and dirty work—
+  JH: Which do I choose?
+  AP: Which do I choose? It becomes real simple. I also grew up watching Perry Mason [Perry Mason, CBS television from September 21, 1957, to May 22, 1966], and so I had a very rudimentary sense of what the law was about from that television show and finally, and something that influenced me greatly. You have to remember that I grew up—I was eight years old in 1954. At the time our country was grounded in state sponsored segregation and in 1954, the Supreme Court decided Brown versus the Board of Education[of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483] and I can remember reading newspaper stories about it; hearing people talk about it; and again, not that I understood it fully, but it gave me a sense of the power that the law has. That if the courts, through the law, could essentially sound the death knell for state sponsored segregation, it had the power to change how people treat one another. And that’s something that I grew up [with] and had an interest in.
+  As I got older, I was disabused of the idea that lawyers didn’t work hard (laughter) or that they necessarily made lots and lots of money, but I also developed the sense that the law was 4
+  about solving problems and helping people and that’s also something that resonated with me. And so that was sort of my dream for the future. And never lost it, never lost it. And, again, you know, 1954 there was Brown. Along the way there were—there was Little Rock [Little Rock, AR]; there was Birmingham [Birmingham, AL]; there were full blown civil rights movements, an effort to change or address issues of race in ways that hadn’t been successful in the past. And, I’m sure that all had some bearing on my sense of what the law was about and what could be done with the law.
+  JH: You know, thinking about Brown v. Board, specifically, do you, I mean, what was Canton like growing up sort of in terms of a racial makeup? Was it a pretty segregated, in fact, city?
+  AP: Absolutely. Absolutely. You knew where you belonged and didn’t belong and it’s interesting. I didn’t grow up in an area where the segregation was state sponsored, but in practical effect, it might as well have been.
+  00:10:00 JH: So let’s talk briefly about Central Catholic High School, your high school experience
+  in Canton. Was it the plan for you to attend Central Catholic because your family did or was it football related, or what was the trajectory there?
+  AP: Well, our family moved from Canton out into the countryside with an East Canton, Ohio, address because my parents felt that the education available in the Canton city schools wasn’t what they wanted for us. And my two older sisters, interestingly, didn’t decide to go to school in East Canton. They, and along with my parents, concluded that Canton Central Catholic had the best possible education for our circumstances. And so they ended up going to Central Catholic. And then, my brother, who was ahead of me, he went and so, I was destined to follow.
+  And I—before I got to high school, I hadn’t really—I wasn’t much of an athlete as a kid; I wasn’t one of those kids that everybody sort of sought after to come and be on their team, but my brother went out for football and so when I got there, I went out and it, as it turns out, I evidently had some aptitude for it.
+  JH: I’ve heard you use that phrase, “Have some aptitude for it,” before, yeah. So what do you, in terms of high school, do you remember having an early interest in sort of the law and politics and those sort of things or were you still sort of navigating and not quite sure—?
+  AP: I think I was always interested in politics from very early on. But only in the sense of trying to figure out how it works to help people. I never had much interest in politics for politics’ sake. And so when I got to high school, I mean, I—the courses I loved were, you know, back then it was civics and government—those kind of classes.
+  JH: So was there a point—so you played football at Central Catholic and is there a point, even in high school, where you think that football could be used as a way to pursue an education or does that realization not happen until a little bit later or—?
+  5
+  AP: You know, growing up in Canton, there was this conflict between athletics and academics. There was a very strong emphasis on athletics, particularly in the African-American community and so I’m growing up not much interested in football and seeing an inordinate number of young men who had—I guess what you would call stellar high school football careers—go off to college for two, three, four years, come back to Canton, ended up hanging out on the street corner, unemployed and unemployable. And, you know, that didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t figure out—this was before I started playing football. Then I started playing, as I said, more by accident than by design and I loved playing but I was just playing football because I loved it and not for any other purpose.
+  00:15:00 By the time I was a, you know, sophomore/junior, there was talk that I might be able to obtain
+  an athletic scholarship and so I suppose around that time I started thinking about [how] it could be used. One of the, in hindsight, one of the disappointments when I look back is that while I did okay as a student in high school; did okay as a student in elementary and junior high school; I did it the easy way. I didn’t, essentially I wasn’t there to learn how to learn. I was there to do the work and I could do the work without learning how to learn. I could, you know, answer the questions and work through the math problems and all of that but simply because you can do the work, doesn’t mean that you’re really learning a whole lot because, I think, the important part of what goes on in schools in the education process is learning how to learn and so I sort of missed that.
+  And so as, in high school, the work got more difficult, I still, you know, thrived to some degree, but had I learned how to learn early on, I think, I mean, I was focused on going to school beyond high school because that was the emphasis my parents placed, but if I had sort of made that connection to learning how to learn early on, I might have had a little more success academically and not, I don’t focus on that so much because, you know, I could have been—done better in school—but I would have been better prepared for the future.
+  As it turned out, I did okay, and ended up receiving a number of scholarship offers, athletic scholarship offers. I think had I had that—had I learned how to learn—there might have been some academic scholarships in that queue also, which gives you choices, right?
+  JH: Sure.
+  AP: But I had the opportunity to choose among some pretty good schools and ultimately selected the University of Notre Dame [University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN].
+  JH: That’s a good transition to Notre Dame and talk a little bit about your time in college. Why Notre Dame?
+  AP: Primarily because of its academic reputation and because of its reputation in terms of how it interacted with its alumni. They have an incredible, had then, and continue to have, an incredible alumni association which provides any number of benefits to people who graduate
+  00:20:00 from there in terms of employment opportunities and other kinds of support. And, you know,
+  as I say, the schools that I was choosing from, they were all good schools. I mean, it was Purdue [Purdue University, 610 Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN]; it was Michigan State 6
+  [Michigan State University, 220 Trowbridge Road, East Lansing, MI]; it was Michigan [University of Michigan, 500 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI]; Minnesota [University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN]; Ohio State [Ohio State University, Columbus, OH]. So it wasn’t like they didn’t have some of the things that Notre Dame had to offer. But it was sort of looking beyond the college years that was, I think, ultimately the deciding factor.
+  That, coupled with, I had no interest in going to Ohio State, who knows why? And Notre Dame also had this reputation, football wise, that, at least at the time, was about as good as it got, you know, to a black kid from Canton, Ohio, going to play in the house that Knute Rockne [Knute Kenneth Rockne (March 4, 1888–March 31, 1931)] built, that sort of put stars in your eyes for sure.
+  JH: So was that an exciting time I would suspect in a lot of ways? Was it a nerve wracking time transitioning from Canton and leaving home, or—?
+  AP: It was an exciting time; a very difficult time. I, you know, just going back to Central Catholic, I was one of two, I think, maybe three; maybe four; African-American kids in my graduating class. Going off to Notre Dame it was going to be, you know, there were a few more, but not many more so—and it was at a time that sort of our national economy was sort of in a downward spiral and Notre Dame is in South Bend, Indiana, and they were also a heavy industry town and one of the main employers there was Studebaker, the auto manufacturer, and they went out of business just about the time I got there. It was my first time away from home really. I’d not been a kid who’d gone off to camp and spent any time away from home so it was all new to me. And it was also, you know, the first time that I’d really been put in a position where I was responsible for myself as every kid who goes off to school is.
+  JH: Sure, that’s a big change.
+  AP: A huge change. And so it was difficult. And one of the things I didn’t realize was Notre Dame was not the most progressive place to go to school and so that was something that was a little different for me and having to adjust to that. There were some difficult transitions.
+  JH: Speaking to kind of the economy, in a downturn, thinking about that time, too, and in a lot of ways the civil rights movement is sort of at its apex and the Voting Rights Act and so was that a part of the campus conversation or do you recall anything about that?
+  00:25:00 AP: Not much, a little bit, but not much. You know, and being on the football team there,
+  you really weren’t necessarily that much a part of the campus conversation, even though we were—we lived in the dorms with everybody else and went to meals with everybody else and went to classes with everybody else, your focal point was football and so you weren’t really much connected.
+  And it was really kind of an interesting time in that respect because, I mean, the civil rights movement was going through some challenging times. About the same time, the Vietnam War protests started and so it’s sort of like you’re in this bubble looking out on all of this and not 7
+  having a direct connection to it but having the opportunity to at least see it and think about it but not engage.
+  JH: Well, it’s interesting you mention that because yeah, in thinking about it, the focus on football and you’re a young kid still and transitioning so maybe not a lot of capacity for a lot of other stuff when that’s the focus in a lot of ways.
+  AP: Even if you had the instinct, they took up your time and your energy, both physical and emotional. And so it was, in that respect, I missed out on a lot but, you know, I can’t remember the precise timing, but my freshman year, the start of my freshman year, went to football training camp a couple of weeks before school started and I think we got there either just before or just after the March on Washington [The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963]. I think school had started by the time the bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church [The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. September 15, 1963), Birmingham, AL] had occurred in Birmingham. And so you had all of these things going on. As I noted, you’re sort of watching from afar. And understanding that they affect you, but sort of not directly.
+  JH: Removed a little bit or, yeah. Well, the focus on football bore some fruit. National championship—was it your senior year?
+  AP: Yes. I should note, I think it was in the—I think it was still while I was there or he was planning to come, one of our speakers, one of the people who was coming to campus to speak was George Wallace [George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919–September 13, 1998)]. That got people engaged.
+  JH: That got some attention?
+  AP: That got some attention.
+  JH: Did he come? Do you remember?
+  AP: I’m pretty sure it was while I was still there. Needless to say, I didn’t attend.
+  JH: Yeah, probably not a regret.
+  AP: No.
+  JH: So, you’re drafted by the Vikings kind of at the close of your career at Notre Dame and kind of moving ahead a little bit, there’s obviously lots to talk about that we could talk
+  00:30:00 about with respect to your professional career in the NFL and—
+  AP: It happened.
+  JH: It happened. It happened. You’ve talked about it a little bit, right? But I want to focus on just kind of one unique aspect that I was interested about was your participation in the NFL 8
+  Players Association. It’s something that I, you know, I’ve—I know you’ve talked about it before but we don’t hear that quite as often so I was just curious. You’re playing with the Vikings. How do you get involved in the Players Association and what’s sort of your role?
+  AP: Well, there had been—this is a long, complicated story, too long and too complicated for here.
+  JH: It’s a big question.
+  AP: There had been various efforts on the part of players to organize before 1968. Nineteen sixty the league is confronted with another football league, the American Football League. In 1966, those two leagues merge with the merger taking place in ’68 and in 1968, the players from both leagues come together and form the National Football League Players Association. That was my second year in the league and somehow I either volunteered or agreed to serve as player representative. So that’s how I got involved.
+  And, growing up in Canton, I was used to organized labor and had sort of a sense of what it was about and the other piece of it was that the reason players wanted to come together to form a union was because—well, there are a whole host of them, not the least of which is players essentially had no rights in terms of where they could play; very little ability to impact how much they were paid and then there were all these what I will call silly little rules that were imposed, I suppose, as a matter of control. That’s all I can think of. Things like you can’t have a beard or a mustache. I guess you could have a mustache but you couldn’t have a beard. Things like, you know, you have to be at every meal whether you want to eat or not. You have to—you can’t have a telephone in your room and this was before, you know, mobile phones, but you couldn’t have the telephone company put a phone in your room during training camp. I mean, those are just a couple that come to mind.
+  And so there were really lots of limitations on a player’s ability to be themselves and players wanted to change that and obviously, the ability to choose where you worked would have an
+  00:35:00 impact on how much you were paid. And so, I think for me, at least in the beginning, it was
+  sort of all those little controls that just drove me crazy, that got me involved. And, you know, once you—you can’t get just a little bit wet once you’re into the pool you get all wet.
+  JH: Did you enjoy it?
+  AP: I loved it. It was frustrating at times but I think we laid the groundwork for the freedom that players have today. We laid the groundwork for players getting a fair share of the revenue. We laid the groundwork that allowed players to be treated like human beings as opposed to, in some sense, property. And along the way, I got to meet, know and work with a bunch of great lawyers. Leonard Lindquist [Leonard Lindquist (September 5, 1912-September 10, 2004)]; Gene Keating [Eugene Henry Keating (January 2, 1932-April 6, 2005)]; Ed Glennon [Edward M. Glennon (1924-April 24, 2009)]; Ed Garvey [Edward R. Garvey (April 18, 1940–February 22, 2017)]. I got to see from the inside what the law was all about and what good lawyering looks like.
+  9
+  JH: So is it fair to say that that was an influence on the decision to pursue a career?
+  AP: That just confirmed—
+  JH: That it was something you wanted to do.
+  AP: That it was something I wanted to do. I enrolled at William Mitchell [now Mitchell Hamline School of Law, 875 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, MN] in the fall of 1968. I started my second year the league and it was not pretty.
+  JH: Why not?
+  AP: Well, you know, you get that assignment over the summer and there are like five hundred pages to read and you try to read it and none of it makes sense and you show up the first day and I don’t remember what the class was, but the professor could just as well be talking Greek as English. And, you think, I don’t understand what’s happening here because it’s a different process; at least it was a different process from what my undergraduate degree was like. And I was not ready for it.
+  JH: Was it—well, you said you were second year in the league, playing and so was it—I mean, I’d suspect that obviously that has—playing is a lot of—the time commitment in and of itself so was it that you weren’t quite ready? Not enough time? Or did it—?
+  AP: It wasn’t that. It was being confronted with being in this class and listening to these lectures that had no context.
+  JH: Right.
+  AP: And therefore made no sense. And, you know, it’s early on in the process so you don’t know how it all fits together.
+  JH: New language.
+  AP: New language, all of it. And I just—it was not pretty. (laughter)
+  JH: Well, but it must not have—but it didn’t dissuade you, obviously, completely.
+  AP: I say only half in jest, I knew after three days that I wasn’t going to survive, but I was in so far over my head that it took me another three and a half, three weeks to figure out how to drop out, to get out. And I—what I came to understand was, first of all, that I wasn’t alone.
+  00:40:00 I mean, I’m sitting there thinking, I’m the only one that doesn’t get this. I’m the only one that
+  doesn’t understand this. But, you know, everybody in the room was in the same boat that I was. Had I—maybe had I not been playing football at the time, I’d have sort of stuck it out, but I mean, I was so far in over my head, I mean, I just couldn’t see—
+  10
+  JH: The path.
+  AP: The path.
+  JH: Yep, overwhelming.
+  AP: And so, I bailed. But didn’t necessarily give up the hope or the idea. Over the years I tried one or two other career options. I was a used car salesman or actually a new/used car salesman. I sold one car during my auto sales experience.
+  JH: I did not know that, that you tried that.
+  AP: And the one car I sold to myself. (laughter) So I figured there was no career in that. I had a vending machine company for about a year and half. It took me—I invested about forty thousand dollars into it and it took me about a year and a half to go through that, although that was one of the—actually not one of—the best investment I ever made and we’ll get to that later, but one of the things I was learning was business, being in business, was not something that fit me; not something that interested me; not something that I wanted to put the time and energy and effort into becoming good at, which was a good lesson to learn. And ultimately, after my eighth year with the Vikings, I decided to go back to law school; this time having a better understanding, having been involved in, as a players’ rep, and then ultimately on the executive committee of the Players Association; been involved in a number of lawsuits involving the Players Association and the National Football League.
+  Still, having the opportunity to see even more deeply how lawyers work, the way they thought, developing a sense for that and having the opportunity to talk with them and sort of learn that law school is just like that and that the secret to it is to endure. And at some point it starts to make sense. So after my eighth year I decided to go back. This time enrolled at the University of Minnesota and actually started the summer of 1975 at the University of Texas in Austin [Austin, TX]. I took contracts and procedures, thirteen weeks start to finish.
+  JH: Wow!
+  AP: And survived it.
+  JH: There you go.
+  AP: Not only survived it; loved every minute of it.
+  JH: Confidence booster?
+  AP: Big confidence booster.
+  JH: Absolutely.
+  11
+  AP: Big confidence booster. Learned, you know, a little bit of the process of, remember how I talked about having failed to learn how to learn?
+  JH: Exactly.
+  AP: Took me to law school to get it.
+  JH: Sometimes I wonder if it takes a lot of people up until that point. In some ways, I sort
+  00:45:00 of felt the same way.
+  AP: Well, but once I got it—
+  JH: Yeah.
+  AP: there’s nothing else like it.
+  JH: Right.
+  AP: And so I loved the law school experience. People, you know, are always talking about, Well, you went to law school and played professional football—how hard that must have been. Yeah, things are hard but when you’re having fun, there’s nothing better. I mean, I loved my law school experience at the university.
+  And I had another one of those defining moments and I think it was towards the end of my first year. We had a paper to write and I decided I was going to, you know, take the easy road, something you know about, labor, labor law. And actually I think I wrote something on labor relations in the NFL. But I, you know, I spent all this time doing the research and preparing and I just—nothing happened. And I can remember going in to see one of the associate or assistant deans and saying, I don’t know that I can do this. And he said, Well, you can do it. All you have to do is apply yourself. And I think, What have I been doing?
+  JH: Well, that clears it up, right?
+  AP: Right. And he said, No, you apply the seat of your pants to the chair until you get it, until it starts coming and, you know, it’s weird but, you know, I sat down, got my books and my pens and my papers and sat there and eventually started writing and got it done. And that was an important lesson—that sometimes even when you know what you want to do, but it’s not coming together, you have to just keep working at it until it happens.
+  JH: This is jumping ahead a little bit so we’ll have to swing back but that makes me think about the process of sitting down and writing an opinion a little bit, too. Is there a similarity there, too? The process of just needing to sit down and sort of delve in to get it started and once it’s started, flows a little bit?
+  AP: It flows. Absolutely.
+  12
+  JH: Interesting. So law school at U of M. I was going to ask you and I think you really answered it was, you know, by the time you do go to the U of M, you’re still playing; raising a family; not like there aren’t any other things going on. You’re busy but you manage it by—
+  AP: But then it’s just a matter of time management.
+  JH: Sure.
+  AP: And figuring out how to, you know, make it all work, putting all the pieces together. And I mean, I did have some incentive. I mean, by then I was twelve years into my professional career. You don’t play forever and quite frankly, I didn’t want to necessarily play forever. As I’ve said often, by the time I started law school, I’d been playing for—I was into my ninth year and I hadn’t done everything you could do on a football field but I’d done most of them and I noted earlier, repetition wasn’t one of my strong suits. It was time to prepare to do something different so that I could move on. As I’ve often said, you know, the skills of a defensive tackle don’t transfer to much of anything else out in the real world and so preparing
+  00:50:00 to do something beyond football was really important. And law school was that preparation.
+  JH: Right. So you graduate from law school and you graduate and —you graduate and—what’s the timing there? You still play for a little bit after you graduate?
+  AP: I played three and a half more years.
+  JH: Three and a half more years and so you’re—
+  AP: Seventy-eight; seventy-nine [1979]. Four more years.
+  JH: Okay. During that time, then, you graduate, you’re playing, but then you start at Lindquist and Vennum [Lindquist & Vennum, offices in Minnesota, Colorado, and South Dakota; formed in 1968 when Lindquist, Magnuson & Glennon combined with Vennum, Newhall, Ackman & Goetz. As of January 1, 2018, the firm merged with and took the name of Ballard Spahr]. So what’s the practice there like? Tell me about that a little bit.
+  AP: It’s trying to figure out who you are as a lawyer. And it’s, you know, getting assignments and, you know, Here’s the file. Go do this. And it’s like, How do you go do this? (laughter)
+  JH: A little more explanation.
+  AP: Would be helpful. It wasn’t always forthcoming. Sort of get thrown into the thick of things and there were some horrible, awful, very bad moments where I had no idea what I was doing but had to try to figure it out while I was doing it.
+  JH: Enjoyable though?
+  AP: Not especially. 13
+  JH: No?
+  AP: One of the things I figured out early on about the private practice of law, it’s about business; it’s about billing hours and that just—it never—that is not me. My interest in the law was the law and trying to sort of work through it, sort it out and figure it out and come to the best conclusions that you can. And when you’ve got this little thing sitting on your shoulder talking about billable hours, first of all, you’re distracted by that because you’re thinking, Hey, am I billing enough hours and how do I justify these hours? And so from that standpoint, it was not necessarily pleasant.
+  That said, I got to work with some really good lawyers and like every other new lawyer, Can you do a memo for me on this? And you give them the memo and it comes back and it’s like, I didn’t know there was that much red ink in the world. (laughter)
+  JH: But lessons, then, as well, I suppose, too, right, so you’re—
+  AP: Absolutely.
+  JH: it’s a big learning curve but you’re learning a lot.
+  AP: But you’re learning a lot. That’s where I got grounded and so from that standpoint, it was a very valuable experience but just not my idea of a good time. And I was fortunate enough to make my way to the attorney general’s office and I loved it there because Skip Humphrey [Hubert Horatio "Skip" Humphrey III (June 26, 1942-)] was the attorney general and he let the lawyers who were there to do the work, do the work. And let me learn to give my best legal advice to my clients. Didn’t have to worry about billing hours; didn’t have to worry about clients walking away. I could do the best that I could to figure out what is the best—what is the law and what is the best advice I can give this client? And I could do that and there’s a lot of freedom in that and I absolutely loved it.
+  00:55:00 JH: Did you have a particular focus in the attorney general’s office?
+  AP: Labor and employment.
+  JH: You were? Okay.
+  AP: Labor and employment.
+  JH: And you enjoyed that?
+  AP: And that’s what I did at Lindquist also on the employee side and just flipped to the employer side.
+  JH: So you’re working at the Minnesota Attorney General’s office four years, five years-ish, something like that? 14
+  AP: Started in ’85, the first week of January, 1985, and left the last week of December in 1992.
+  JH: Okay, so, yeah. So when do you start thinking about—maybe not even necessarily the Minnesota Supreme Court but the idea of doing something different and maybe that being judging?
+  AP: You know, I had this weird experience. In 1982, I’m at Lindquist and Vennum and—’82 or ’83—and I wake up one morning and the newspaper has an article about Governor Perpich [Rudolph George Perpich Sr. (June 27, 1928–September 21, 1995)] is going to appoint some new judges and he’s got my name on the list. Nobody had asked.
+  JH: Interesting.
+  AP: It was very strange but up until that point it hadn’t really occurred to me a) that I would have the interest in being a judge or that I could be, or that I had the skills or temperament. Long story short, made me think about it. And, you know, through that time, I’m learning who I am as a lawyer; what my skills are; what my interests are; and what my strengths and weaknesses are. And over time, I sort of start thinking, Maybe there is something in the judiciary that would fit me, but I can’t see myself necessarily as a trial court judge. And, you know, as lawyers we spend a lot of time reading opinions and struggling to figure out what they mean. And thinking, Well, if they meant this, why didn’t they just say it? Why is it so hard to say in plain clear language what you mean?
+  And of course, my ego says to myself, Self, you could do that. You could write clearly. You could write concisely and so over time I start to think my skills and my interests, my abilities, my strengths lend themselves to what appellate court judges do. And from there, well, how does one become an appellate court judge? Well, as you know in Minnesota, it’s either by appointment or by election. And the Minnesota Court of Appeals is new, relatively new, and most of the judges there or many of the judges there had been trial court judges, so that seems like a natural step even though the trial court isn’t necessarily what fits me. And so I started applying for trial court judge positions and had absolutely no success.
+  01:00:00 Eventually I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to have any success and that, if I
+  wanted the opportunity to serve, it was probably going to be through election, which narrows things down to the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court.
+  JH: Right.
+  AP: And my thought process was, Well, if you’re going to seek election, you might as well seek election to the Minnesota Supreme Court. I think I have something to contribute. I think, both from a legal background, but also from just a different perspective, and so, 1990, I decided to seek election. And when the filing period opened, I was down there first morning, first hour, filed for election and the justice who I was going to challenge; thought I was going to challenge, resigned before I got out of the secretary of state’s office. 15
+  JH: Oh wow.
+  AP: Which created a vacancy. Vacancies are filled by appointment. The governor immediately appointed someone to fill the vacancy and the election for that seat no longer existed. And I, in seeking election, it wasn’t about the individual justice who I was going to challenge; it wasn’t about their opinions or their philosophy or their anything else; it was simply—it seemed to me to be a fair question given that the justice was going to reach mandatory retirement within something less than six months of re-election and it was a fair question, at least I thought, to have the people of Minnesota decide who they would want to serve the term.
+  Me, a known quantity, a known person, or some unknown, ultimately some unknown person. The election was taken off the ballot and, you know, it wasn’t clear to me why, you know. Being a person of color, one of the things that comes to mind is, Is it because I’m a person of color? Is it politics? Is it—I don’t know—let that go; continued working at the attorney general’s office and decided to try again in 1992.
+  This time, the justice I sought to challenge, was going to reach mandatory retirement within about eighteen months of the full six-year term and I thought again it was fair question to have the people of Minnesota decide who the justice should be who serves in that seat. Before I could get to the—before the filings opened, we had this provision in our constitution which provides for the retirement of the judges and there is a statute which provided, also provides to carry out that constitutional provision, which provided that the governor could extend
+  01:05:00 the term of a justice who hadn’t reached full retirement at the time they were up for re-
+  election and with mandatory retirement approaching. And so Justice Yetka [Lawrence R. Yetka (October 1, 1924–November 12, 2017)] who was the justice who I was going to challenge, sought a term extension; the governor granted it and I was, to say the least, more than a little frustrated.
+  And so, long story short, I commenced a lawsuit against the governor and the secretary of state, a lawsuit that had its original jurisdiction in the Supreme Court and a number of people told me I was crazy, that you’re wrong on the law; you’re wrong on the politics and you’re never, you know, when you lose this lawsuit, you’re never, ever going to have the opportunity to serve.
+  I felt strongly about one, that the, as applied, the term extension violated the constitution. I wasn’t much concerned about the politics because I’d been—sort of along the way I’d figured out you have to do what you think is right, not what is expedient, and turns out I was right on the law; we were right on the law. And I was given the opportunity, along with anybody else who wanted to file for election for the seat. I filed; Justice Yetka did not and two other people did and almost immediately, not almost immediately, immediately, my opponents started down the road of, He's just a football player. And initially, implicit, but unstated, he’s just a dumb football player. Also initially, but not necessarily subsequently, but initially, he’s just a dumb, black football player. I mean, that was the tenor of what was being said. He’s not qualified. 16
+  I spent the next three months, three and a half months, whatever it is, campaigning around the state to talk about why I wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. What I could bring what I had to offer about my experience and my background and my qualifications. And at every turn, I got the accusatory question, What are your qualifications? And nobody else was being asked that. And so that was difficult. That said, it was also satisfying to be able to talk to people about who I am and what I thought I had to offer and in the end, the people of this state gave
+  01:10:00 me the opportunity to serve. They elected me. I am humbled, honored. I have a hard time
+  articulating how meaningful it is to me that they saw through the effort to stereotype me; that they saw in me somebody who hopefully, had something to contribute and they gave me the opportunity to do it.
+  JH: Was—so, you know, you mentioned that, in terms of the campaign, questions about qualification, but implicit questions about—
+  AP: Race.
+  JH: what it means to be an athlete—race. Was diversity, and the fact that, if elected, you’d be the first African-American Minnesota Supreme Court justice: Was that a part of that conversation explicitly or was that not really a part of that discussion?
+  AP: That wasn’t a part of the discussion.
+  JH: So you’re elected.
+  AP: And I show up the first day.
+  JH: What’s the first day like?
+  AP: Well, I had a month before, I’d been given briefs for the—
+  JH: Get to work.
+  AP: Yes, for the argument calendar in January of ’93, and initially I had been assigned a case that was being heard that first day.
+  JH: Okay.
+  AP: Mind you, I had—I didn’t know how the system worked, right?
+  JH: Right. The norms, the processes—
+  AP: The norms, the processes, any of it. And so I’m fast tracking, trying to figure all this out and it turns out the case that they gave me, I had a conflict. Phew! So they switched cases and gave me one for the second day. I was getting my baptism by fire. I, you know, read the briefs, prepared—didn’t know what—and for my case the second day, as you know, we do a 17
+  report to the court, I’d never done a report to the court because I hadn’t been on the court. But I had to sort of figure that out but I had no sort of context for doing that. And the—I was sworn in before the first argument the first day and we were having a public ceremony after it.
+  JH: That very first day.
+  AP: That very first day, public swearing in.
+  JH: There were some distractions beyond the work of the court.
+  AP: One or two. And sat through the one argument because I was recused on the other but sat through my first case conference and learned what a report was like. Do the public swearing in ceremony; celebrate with family, and at the end of the day, get that report written.
+  JH: And that report on your mind kind of throughout the day a little bit?
+  AP: Oh, absolutely.
+  JH: Yeah, I got to get that report; I’ve got some work to do.
+  AP: I’ve got some work to do. At least now I know what it is. And the second day I had
+  01:15:00 my—we had the two cases I sat through, gave my report and that’s the way it begins. We
+  don’t do that anymore. At least when I left the court, new justices had some time to learn the system.
+  JH: So was that a, I mean, do you think back on the first—beyond the first day or two, the first week; the first month, as I said, because it was trial by fire a little bit right away that it was an easy transition? I mean, hard by the way, but a quick one or—?
+  AP: Invigorating, and a very quick transition. You know, as with anything new, particularly in the world of work, you don’t know the rules and the norms until you violate them and so you’re trying to figure it all out and, you know, you have your missteps along the way but you figure it out and, as with many things, the question isn’t whether you made the mistake, but what did you learn from it. In this particular instance, I had to be a quick learner and I was.
+  JH: Absolutely.
+  AP: And then, you know, you get that first case behind you, the argument and the report, and then you’ve got to write—
+  JH: You’ve got some more work to do. It’s not over.
+  AP: And having never written an opinion before, you have to learn how to do that.
+  JH: Which is a whole other beast in and of itself. 18
+  AP: Absolutely, but I had a good law clerk, Ian Nemiroff, who helped me a lot. He helped me a lot. And as over the years, I had a bunch of great clerks who made me look good time and time again.
+  JH: I wanted to ask about clerks, not in a selfish way, but it’s definitely a part of your work on the court, daily work on the court. What did you look for in a clerk?
+  AP: I looked for people who were curious; people who had something in their background that was out of the norm. Justice Gardebring [Sandra Gardebring Ogren (June 14, 1947–July 20, 2010)] used to refer to what she called Standard Issue Law Students, SILS (laughter). I didn’t want Standard Issue Law clerks. I wanted people who—obviously you want somebody that can write; you want somebody that’s going to work hard. But you want somebody who’s going to have good judgment and a sense of curiosity to sort of look under the rocks that need to be looked under and not under the ones that don’t and who can figure that out pretty quickly. And who are willing to or who were willing to tell me when I was wrong. I didn’t need a law clerk or law clerks who would tell me what I want to hear. I don’t like surprises and so, when I’m working with a clerk, I want the clerk to make sure there are no surprises.
+  JH: Right.
+  AP: And I was pretty lucky along the way—a bunch of great writers, yourself included; hard workers; curiosity—you fit the bill nicely.
+  JH: Well, it’s—I always talk about, too. It’s one of those incredible experiences where you get out of law school and then the work, in many ways, it feels like some of the most
+  01:20:00 important work that you’ll do as an attorney, working on the court so pretty incredible
+  experience.
+  So talk about—I recall in the year in your office—
+  AP: I should also note, I wanted diversity in my clerks. I wanted women; I wanted clerks who were people of color; I wanted diversity in their, you know, where they came from; what their experiences were—because all of that makes; all of that enriches the process and makes what I do as a judge better having different views, different ways of looking at things and I mean, I think that’s vital.
+  JH: Your approach to tackling an opinion. I remember you taking, I think, a lot of joy in peeling apart the layers, finding the resolution, and obviously, as you’ve said many times before, none of the cases that come before the Minnesota Supreme Court are simple. They’re there because they’re complex. Talk about that a little bit.
+  AP: They’re there because they’re complex; they’re there because they’re important to the people involved in them, no matter who they are, whether it’s a—the fifth petition for review from a post-conviction inmate, or, you know, some large corporation, it’s important to the people that we serve. It’s important to the people of the state that we do it well and that we do 19
+  it as right as we can. And I—opinion writing is—on any given day I will tell you it’s more art than science or that it’s more science than art.
+  JH: Right.
+  AP: It’s really a combination of both and for me, it was very important to work with the word so that what the opinion said was clear, easily understood, easily read and helpful. And to do that for me, it was about making sure that there were no unintended words, much less unintended ideas but no unintended words that—every word was thought about; that every word was where it was in the sentence because that’s the best use of the word in communicating the idea that you’re trying to communicate. That every sentence in the paragraph was where it was because that was the best way to communicate what you were trying to communicate in the paragraph. That every paragraph in the opinion was where it was because that’s where it was most helpful.
+  01:25:00 I suspect that you clerks probably thought I was a little obsessive and maybe even a little
+  compulsive but certainly obsessive about words, how we used the language, but that was important to me; that was very important to me.
+  JH: I remember you talked right away about the purpose of every word. If it doesn’t have a role; if it’s not there for a reason,
+  AP: Gone.
+  JH: Get it out.
+  AP: If it doesn’t have a reason, it’s not helping anybody. All it does is add length and the potential for confusion.
+  JH: And the potential for interpretation differently than the intent was.
+  AP: Different than what you intended.
+  JH: Right, I remember that lesson. It sticks with me for sure. I was always struck with the collegiality and rapport on the court. You know, it was a serious place; a lot of important work, but I also remember, at least feeling like, the justices had a lot of respect for one another and were good friends as well. Can you speak to that a little bit?
+  AP: Well, you know, it’s interesting. You have seven people, and changing all the time, who have big brains; who would like to think they’re the smartest one in the room; who have views that conflict and who feel strongly about their opinions. But we’ve been lucky here in Minnesota to have people understand that the institution is more important than any one of us and institutionally, it is important to maintain that collegiality, even when your colleagues, in your view, are so far wrong that you can’t understand how they could possibly be there. And sometimes the tension is pretty high but in the end you have to understand that a.) it’s about the institution and the work; it’s not about me. And also, you have to understand that, you 20
+  know, some day you may need that colleague to get where you want to go in a particular case or where you think a case should go.
+  When I first got on the court I would hear these stories about what was going on in other states with their Supreme Courts. Justices inviting one another out into the corridor to have a fight; justices showing up at conference and placing a handgun on the conference table. How does that work? How can you have a justice system that—or that the members of which of
+  01:30:00 their courts are so antagonistic with one another that they can’t be civil even, you know, under
+  pressure? How do you reach good decisions doing that? I don’t think you can. One of the things that was also, I think, important for our court during my time there, to ensure the understanding that collegiality was important and that it’s the institution, it’s not us, was that we, in our conference, you know, there are seven of us. We know each other by first name. We refer to each other as Justice So and So, just to make it clear in our own minds and everybody else in the room, that this is an institutional decision we’re making. This is the institution that is acting; it’s not me, Alan Page, making a decision. I’m making it on behalf of this institution. And it’s a way to sort of force you to treat people with respect and I think it served us well.
+  JH: Those small things are not small things.
+  AP: Not small at all.
+  JH: Right.
+  AP: Not small at all.
+  JH: Right. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the first—the critical first of being the first African-American Minnesota Supreme Court justice? Sort of looking back and thinking about the role of that first in your work on the court?
+  AP: I have a hard time doing that because that wasn’t what it was about. Institutionally, I think it’s important that there had to be a first. Institutionally, it would have been better had it been somebody long before me. The fact that it finally happened—that we finally opened the door if you will for people of color, I think it was very significant. I think equally significant was the fact that when I joined the court, the court was a majority of women.
+  JH: That’s right.
+  AP: People would ask me, What’s it like serving on the court with a majority of women, right? And, of course, having not served on a court that wasn’t a majority of women, I thought, Well, that’s the natural order of things. But those things are important—that our judicial—that people who serve in our judicial system reflect the people of this state. I’ve said many times that the only power that courts have is founded in the trust and confidence of the people we serve and the less the members of the judiciary look like the people they serve, the less trust and confidence our judiciary will have. And so I think finally breaking that barrier was critically important. 21
+  01:35:00 JH: Right. On that note, I mean, early on in your tenure as a justice—and I want to get this
+  right—your service on the Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force on Racial Bias in the Judicial System. Report’s issued in 1993.
+  AP: Six months after I joined the court.
+  JH: Right. And you were involved.
+  AP: Well, I—
+  JH: Can you just describe that a little bit or what was your participation; what was your experience?
+  AP: I became the chair of the committee that was going to implement the task force report. That was challenging for me. Remember my interest in the law was the law and not in being an administrator? And so from that standpoint, a lot of the things that, not only that committee, but we all—we had various committee assignments. I have to say those committee assignments were not my favorite part of being on the court.
+  But this was an important one and, you know, we ended up working through the—depending on how you count them—the one hundred plus recommendations, pretty much most of them being implemented. But—and the implementation made things better but it didn’t solve the problem. It was a little—I think we made very incremental progress. But the disparities that came out of the report, particularly in the criminal justice area, where African-Americans, people of color are arrested more often; stopped more often; charged more often; given higher bail; less fair trials; higher conviction rates; longer sentences; all things being equal, that hasn’t ended and that’s just on the criminal justice side. There’s the juvenile justice and all the other aspects of the report.
+  I’ve more or less come to the conclusion that before real change is going to happen, we have to take a more fundamental look at what our law is grounded in, which is to say, it’s grounded in a constitution that counted those imported as slaves as three-fifths of a person. And while we’ve had the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments ending slavery, ensuring due process and guaranteeing the right to vote, the law itself, the foundation, is still on cases that arose out of slavery and we’ve got to figure out how to tease that out of it before we have fundamental change.
+  JH: Structural fundamental change, right?
+  01:40:00 AP: It’s a structural, systemic problem.
+  JH: What about, Justice Page, any notable opinions; dissents; anything come to mind? You wrote a lot so it’s a big body of work but—?
+  22
+  AP: I have never, in my own head, quantified or qualified whether it was a dissent or an opinion in terms of its importance. It seems to me that once you do that; once you decide that this one is more important than that one, you start doing both of them a disservice. And so I just took each one as they came and tried to put the same energy and effort into trying to get it right. And again, as I say, whether it was that fifth post-conviction petition, or, you know, some mega million dollar corporate issue, the people who come before us deserve to have our fullest attention and so I just don’t qualify them, quantify them in that way.
+  JH: Don’t think of it as that, right? So, during your tenure on the court, one thing I wanted to ask you about, too, is just sort of the interplay, if you think of there being one at all, between your continued community engagement and still working on the court. You know, we would—I think back a lot on going and reading with you and other staff in the court, reading to elementary school kids on Wednesdays or whatever day it was. That community engagement and, you know, did that play a role in your work in your works as a justice? Did you see it sort of separately or was it related and did it inform your work?
+  AP: Oh, I think everything we do -- our lives inform our work. I don’t know that I, you know, my reading with kids or my involvement to the extent that I had it, which was quite limited at the Page Education Foundation, influenced my work directly but it’s a part of who I am and being engaged in the community around us at some level helps us understand those people we are a part of but also who we represent. And I think it would be a mistake to be isolated and not a part of the world around us to the extent, obviously, to the extent possible, to the extent that it doesn’t create conflicts.
+  JH: You’ve had some time now after retiring, I suppose to think back. Any, I guess maybe the question is, in thinking about it and this kind of gets to some final reflections about your time on the court, it’s a big question, but what is it—personally and professionally—can you put into words what the service meant to you?
+  AP: Well, for me, it was the most, in terms of my professional life, the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. The challenges of working with seven other people. I mean, I looked forward to every day when I was on the court, particularly to those days where we would hear argument and have conferences because every conference you got stretched in ways that you would never get stretched and I loved that. Trying to understand what your colleagues are saying and thinking; trying to understand what you were thinking in the context of what they are saying and thinking and trying to understand what you were thinking.
+  JH: Work through thought processes, right.
+  AP: And working through all that doesn’t get any better.
+  JH: Sometimes arriving at unexpected places, too?
+  AP: Oh, all the time, all the time. Arriving at unexpected places; arriving at places that, on a personal level, you wouldn’t want to arrive at. You—if I could decide this on my own, this is not what I would do, but not my choice, you know. One of the—a little bit disconcerting 23
+  things about our society—is I don’t think people understand how important it is for judges to be impartial and to exercise their judgment and not impose their will. And just the challenge of doing that all the time and trying to get that right, it’s all very much fun; very invigorating; very satisfying. And, hopefully, in the end, I did it as well as I could do it. I leave that up to others to decide but that was certainly my goal and I enjoyed every minute of it along the way.
+  JH: What about the future of the court? You’re not on it, obviously, anymore, but thinking about challenges, hopes; any thoughts come to mind about the future?
+  AP: My hope would be that they continue to be independent; that they continue to act impartially and understand that it is about the exercise of judgment and if the court’s members can do that it’ll have a bright future. And there’s something about, at least from my experience on the court looking back and looking forward, I think there’s a pretty good chance that things will continue in that regard as they have.
+  The court’s leadership understands. I had the good fortune to serve with, let me think—I knew the number exactly at one time. Let’s see—one, two three—I can’t remember the exact number—six or seven or eight—
+  01:50:00 JH: Chief justices?
+  AP: chief justices and each one of them got it. They were all different but each one of them understood how important it is for our court to maintain its independence and its impartiality and to make decisions based on the law and the facts and their best judgment and not on the way the wind is blowing today. We’ve been lucky to have really good people, both at the chief justice, as chief justices, and as associate justices and I, to be included in that group is pretty special.
+  JH: You know, I want to definitely, before we close out, give you an opportunity to speak to your late wife Diane’s [Diane Sims Page (1944-September 30, 2018)], role in your career.
+  AP: Well, I mentioned earlier about that forty thousand dollars I lost on the vending machines?
+  JH: Yeah, that’s right.
+  AP: The company that owned the vending machines was a subsidiary of General Mills.
+  JH: I know where this is going now.
+  AP: And, long story short, I was in the lobby at General Mills one day, having left the meeting and left my car keys and everything else in the meeting and I’m sitting, waiting for somebody to bring them back to me and Diane walks into a meeting that she was going to there. I got introduced to her and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me. She is the love of my life; she kept me grounded at the same time lifting me up. She had this magic ability to lift people up, no matter who they 24
+  were; no matter what the circumstances were. She had incredible insight into people and she is in large measure the key to much of the success that I’ve had. She was there every step of the way, allowing me, encouraging me, supporting me. And, as I say, I couldn’t have been luckier to have met her, fallen in love with her and spent the years that we had together. And she was one of those people who—I have ideas. She was a doer.
+  JH: Executor.
+  AP: Absolutely, and it wasn’t, you know, When are you going to get this done? It’s, Why wasn’t this done yesterday? Well, because we just found out that we had to do it today. She was in a sense, driven and driven to do good; driven to make this world a better place, that’s for sure. And I got lucky.
+  01:55:00 JH: Well, you have retired from the court but you’re busy.
+  AP: I am busy.
+  JH: And so I’ve got to ask, what’s next? What’s next for Justice Page?
+  AP: Well, there’s still plenty of work to do with the Page Education Foundation and beyond that, I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I grow up. I haven’t sorted that out yet but I spend a lot of time in schools and classrooms still, talking to young children. As you know, I’ve had the good fortune to be able to write three children’s books with my youngest daughter and we’ve got to get on to book four.
+  JH: I was going to ask; that was my next question.
+  AP: We’ve got to get on to book four.
+  JH: More work to be done.
+  AP: More work to be done.
+  JH: And Justice Page Middle School? I mean, it seems you spend time—I see pictures and things and you’re really engaged with the school.
+  AP: I am engaged with the school. The school is magic. You know, sixth, seventh, eighth graders—they energize me still. They keep me going. And I also have four grandchildren that do the same thing.
+  JH: Being a grandfather, a job in and of itself.
+  AP: Yes.
+  JH: Well, I think that’s a good place to close. Unless you have any other thoughts. We’ve had a good conversation so thanks for sharing your insights today. And thank you, I think in 25
+  thinking about this conversation through the arc from beginning to end and the focus on the Minnesota Supreme Court, I want to and then I thank and we all want to thank you for your service on the Supreme Court, too.
+  AP: Well, thank you for that, but I can’t articulate how much I loved serving on the court and being able to serve the people of this state. I can’t articulate how honored I am that the people of this state gave me the opportunity to do it and I don’t know—well, let me just back up. You know, one of the humbling things about serving is you’re there; you’re working on cases and you’re looking at cases from 1860, trying to figure out what the law is today because it’s grounded in something that took place back then. The idea that cases that I worked on when I was on the court will be used one hundred fifty, two hundred years from now, that the law will be grounded in something that I was a part of during my tenure, it’s almost overwhelming.
+  JH: It’s an awesome thought.
+  AP: I just hope that I didn’t goof it up so that hopefully what I did; what we did when I was on the court will make their jobs easier.
+  JH: Sure. A good note to end on.
+  AP: Thank you.
+  JH: Thank you, appreciate it. It was good to talk to you Justice Page.
+  AP: Good to see you, Jeff.
+  End of Recording
+  02:00:18
+id: sll:22548
+oai_set_ssi: sll||Minnesota State Law Library||The <a href="https://mn.gov/law-library/">Minnesota
+  State Law Library</a> in St. Paul, Minnesota, collects state and federal legal materials,
+  and is the oldest continuing library in Minnesota. The Library and the Territory
+  of Minnesota were created by the same act of Congress on March 3, 1849. Documents
+  included in the State Law Library contributions to Minnesota Reflections are the
+  handwritten first Rules of Court for Minnesota, the Republican and Democratic versions
+  of the Minnesota Constitutional debates and other early Minnesota legal materials.
+setspec_ssi: sll
+collection_name_ssi: Minnesota State Law Library
+collection_description_tesi: The <a href="https://mn.gov/law-library/">Minnesota State
+  Law Library</a> in St. Paul, Minnesota, collects state and federal legal materials,
+  and is the oldest continuing library in Minnesota. The Library and the Territory
+  of Minnesota were created by the same act of Congress on March 3, 1849. Documents
+  included in the State Law Library contributions to Minnesota Reflections are the
+  handwritten first Rules of Court for Minnesota, the Republican and Democratic versions
+  of the Minnesota Constitutional debates and other early Minnesota legal materials.
+title_tesi: Interview with Alan Page, Minnesota Supreme Court Historical Society Oral
+  History Project, St. Paul, Minnesota
+title_ssi: Interview with Alan Page, Minnesota Supreme Court Historical Society Oral
+  History Project, St. Paul, Minnesota
+contributor_ssim:
+- Holth, Jeff
+creator_tesi: Page, Alan Cedric, 1945-
+creator_ssim:
+- Page, Alan Cedric, 1945-
+description_ts: 'Interview with former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan C. Page
+  on his life and his legal and judicial career. He was elected to the Minnesota Supreme
+  Court in 1992 and retired in 2015. Subjects covered: his early life, his education
+  and football career, the years in private practice and in the Minnesota Attorney
+  General''s office, and his time on the Minnesota Supreme Court. Interviewed by Jeff
+  Holth, a former law clerk of Justice Page.'
+dat_ssi: '2019-02-19'
+dat_ssim:
+- '2019'
+dat_tesi: '2019-02-19'
+publishing_agency_ssi: Minnesota Supreme Court Historical Society
+dimensions_ssi: '02:00:18'
+topic_ssim:
+- Politics and Government
+type_ssi: Moving Image
+type_tesi: Moving Image
+physical_format_ssi: Oral histories
+physical_format_tesi: Oral histories
+formal_subject_ssim:
+- Judges
+- Oral History
+subject_ssim:
+- Judges
+- Minnesota Supreme Court
+keyword_tesi: Minnesota Supreme Court; Oral History; Judges; Politics and Government
+keyword_ssim:
+- Minnesota Supreme Court
+- Oral History
+- Judges
+- Politics and Government
+city_ssim:
+- St. Paul
+county_ssim:
+- Ramsey
+state_ssi: Minnesota
+country_ssi: United States
+language_ssi: English
+contributing_organization_tesi: Minnesota State Law Library
+contributing_organization_ssi: Minnesota State Law Library
+contact_information_ssi: Minnesota State Law Library, G25 Minnesota Judicial Center,
+  25 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, St. Paul, MN 55155  https://mn.gov/law-library/
+local_identifier_ssi: sll708212
+project_ssi: Minnesota Reflections 2020-2021;
+fiscal_sponsor_ssi: Funding provided to the Minnesota Digital Library through the
+  Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, a component of the Minnesota Clean Water,
+  Land and Legacy constitutional amendment, ratified by Minnesota voters in 2008.
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+  ","transc":"Interview with Alan Page\nMinnesota Supreme Court\nOral History Project\nFebruary
+  19, 2019\nThis project was made possible by Legacy funding to the Minnesota Supreme
+  Court Historical Society from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund established by
+  the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008, and administered by the Minnesota Historical
+  Society.\n© 2020 by the Minnesota State Law Library. All rights reserved. No part
+  of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical,
+  including photocopy and recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,
+  without permission in writing from Minnesota State Law Library.\n2\nMinnesota Supreme
+  Court\nOral History Project\nInterview with Alan Page\nAssociate Justice, Minnesota
+  Supreme Court, 1993-2015\nJeff Holth, Interviewer\nFebruary 19, 2019\nName of interviewee:
+  AP\nNames of interviewer: JH\nRecording 1\n00:00:00\nJH: All right. It’s February
+  19, 2019, and I’m at the Continuing Legal Education Center [Minnesota CLE Conference
+  Center, 600 Nicollet Mall #370, Minneapolis, MN] in\nMinneapolis [Minneapolis, MN]
+  to interview retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page [Alan Cedric Page
+  (August 7, 1945-)] for the Minnesota Supreme Court Oral History Project. The project
+  is sponsored by the Minnesota Supreme Court Historical Society and its Preservation
+  Committee in cooperation with the Minnesota State Law Library [Minnesota State Law
+  Library, 25 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, St Paul, MN]. My name is
+  Jeff Holth. I’m a practicing attorney here in Minnesota and I clerked for Justice
+  Page from 2012 to 2013 and I’ll be conducting the interview today.\nThank you for
+  coming today, Justice Page, and for agreeing to share your experiences and insights
+  on your years on the court.\nAP: Well, thank you for inviting me and hopefully we
+  can have a fun conversation.\nJH: Agreed. So let’s jump right in. I know you graduated
+  from law school in around 1978 and served on the Supreme Court from ’93 [1993] to
+  2015, but I want to start by asking you about your earlier life before we talk about
+  your years on the court.\nAP: Sure.\nJH: So I wonder if you could just start us
+  off by talking a little bit about your family and where you grew up.\nAP: I was
+  born in Canton, Ohio. I was the fourth of four children. My mother was a—worked
+  as an attendant in a country club and my father, various jobs from operating juke
+  boxes to running a bar—that sort of thing. As I say, I was the fourth of four children,
+  two sisters and a brother. My childhood was a pretty happy one, pretty uneventful,
+  not much exciting to talk about. We weren’t the wealthiest of families, but we weren’t
+  the poorest either.\n3\nMy parents, neither one had the opportunity to go to school
+  beyond high school and they emphasized for me and my brother and my sisters, the
+  importance of education and the importance of being good citizens. And in their
+  own way, something that, I think, stuck with me, they talked about and emphasized
+  the importance of seeking excellence. Now they didn’t say it that way, but I think
+  that’s the bottom line of what they were talking about. They would always—and I
+  can hear them now telling me, Whatever you do in life, do it as well as you can.
+  You’re going to be a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector you can be.
+  If you’re going to be a doctor, be the best doctor you can be. Not as good as the
+  next doctor or garbage collector, but the best one you can be. And that’s something
+  that they preached and, I think, has served me well over time.\nJH: I think I recall
+  you talking about, you know, at a pretty young age, having some experiences or influences
+  that sort of made you think you might want to be a lawyer someday. Can you talk
+  about that a little bit?\nAP: I very early on, you know, when I was eight, nine,
+  ten years old, people would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up and I would
+  say I wanted to be a lawyer. And, you know, what eight-year-old knows really what
+  they want to do when they grow up? But, as I noted, I grew up in Canton, Ohio. It
+  was a town built on heavy industry, primarily steel, and I had an uncle who spent
+  forty years working in the steel mill. And I knew intuitively that that’s not something
+  that I wanted to do. Nothing wrong with working in steel mills, but from my eight-\n00:05:00
+  year-old eyes, the work was dirty; it was hard; it was dangerous and repetitious.
+  And\nsomehow I knew that that didn’t fit me.\nI’d heard stories about lawyers, that,
+  you know, from—not that I knew any lawyers, or had any lawyers in my family or my
+  family really knew any lawyers, but the impression in the community I grew up was
+  that lawyers didn’t work too hard; made lots of money; drove big, fancy cars; lived
+  in big houses and went out and played golf every Wednesday afternoon. But for the
+  eight-year-old mind balancing fancy cars and dangerous and dirty work—\nJH: Which
+  do I choose?\nAP: Which do I choose? It becomes real simple. I also grew up watching
+  Perry Mason [Perry Mason, CBS television from September 21, 1957, to May 22, 1966],
+  and so I had a very rudimentary sense of what the law was about from that television
+  show and finally, and something that influenced me greatly. You have to remember
+  that I grew up—I was eight years old in 1954. At the time our country was grounded
+  in state sponsored segregation and in 1954, the Supreme Court decided Brown versus
+  the Board of Education[of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483] and I can remember reading newspaper
+  stories about it; hearing people talk about it; and again, not that I understood
+  it fully, but it gave me a sense of the power that the law has. That if the courts,
+  through the law, could essentially sound the death knell for state sponsored segregation,
+  it had the power to change how people treat one another. And that’s something that
+  I grew up [with] and had an interest in.\nAs I got older, I was disabused of the
+  idea that lawyers didn’t work hard (laughter) or that they necessarily made lots
+  and lots of money, but I also developed the sense that the law was 4\nabout solving
+  problems and helping people and that’s also something that resonated with me. And
+  so that was sort of my dream for the future. And never lost it, never lost it. And,
+  again, you know, 1954 there was Brown. Along the way there were—there was Little
+  Rock [Little Rock, AR]; there was Birmingham [Birmingham, AL]; there were full blown
+  civil rights movements, an effort to change or address issues of race in ways that
+  hadn’t been successful in the past. And, I’m sure that all had some bearing on my
+  sense of what the law was about and what could be done with the law.\nJH: You know,
+  thinking about Brown v. Board, specifically, do you, I mean, what was Canton like
+  growing up sort of in terms of a racial makeup? Was it a pretty segregated, in fact,
+  city?\nAP: Absolutely. Absolutely. You knew where you belonged and didn’t belong
+  and it’s interesting. I didn’t grow up in an area where the segregation was state
+  sponsored, but in practical effect, it might as well have been.\n00:10:00 JH: So
+  let’s talk briefly about Central Catholic High School, your high school experience\nin
+  Canton. Was it the plan for you to attend Central Catholic because your family did
+  or was it football related, or what was the trajectory there?\nAP: Well, our family
+  moved from Canton out into the countryside with an East Canton, Ohio, address because
+  my parents felt that the education available in the Canton city schools wasn’t what
+  they wanted for us. And my two older sisters, interestingly, didn’t decide to go
+  to school in East Canton. They, and along with my parents, concluded that Canton
+  Central Catholic had the best possible education for our circumstances. And so they
+  ended up going to Central Catholic. And then, my brother, who was ahead of me, he
+  went and so, I was destined to follow.\nAnd I—before I got to high school, I hadn’t
+  really—I wasn’t much of an athlete as a kid; I wasn’t one of those kids that everybody
+  sort of sought after to come and be on their team, but my brother went out for football
+  and so when I got there, I went out and it, as it turns out, I evidently had some
+  aptitude for it.\nJH: I’ve heard you use that phrase, “Have some aptitude for it,”
+  before, yeah. So what do you, in terms of high school, do you remember having an
+  early interest in sort of the law and politics and those sort of things or were
+  you still sort of navigating and not quite sure—?\nAP: I think I was always interested
+  in politics from very early on. But only in the sense of trying to figure out how
+  it works to help people. I never had much interest in politics for politics’ sake.
+  And so when I got to high school, I mean, I—the courses I loved were, you know,
+  back then it was civics and government—those kind of classes.\nJH: So was there
+  a point—so you played football at Central Catholic and is there a point, even in
+  high school, where you think that football could be used as a way to pursue an education
+  or does that realization not happen until a little bit later or—?\n5\nAP: You know,
+  growing up in Canton, there was this conflict between athletics and academics. There
+  was a very strong emphasis on athletics, particularly in the African-American community
+  and so I’m growing up not much interested in football and seeing an inordinate number
+  of young men who had—I guess what you would call stellar high school football careers—go
+  off to college for two, three, four years, come back to Canton, ended up hanging
+  out on the street corner, unemployed and unemployable. And, you know, that didn’t
+  make sense to me. I couldn’t figure out—this was before I started playing football.
+  Then I started playing, as I said, more by accident than by design and I loved playing
+  but I was just playing football because I loved it and not for any other purpose.\n00:15:00
+  By the time I was a, you know, sophomore/junior, there was talk that I might be
+  able to obtain\nan athletic scholarship and so I suppose around that time I started
+  thinking about [how] it could be used. One of the, in hindsight, one of the disappointments
+  when I look back is that while I did okay as a student in high school; did okay
+  as a student in elementary and junior high school; I did it the easy way. I didn’t,
+  essentially I wasn’t there to learn how to learn. I was there to do the work and
+  I could do the work without learning how to learn. I could, you know, answer the
+  questions and work through the math problems and all of that but simply because
+  you can do the work, doesn’t mean that you’re really learning a whole lot because,
+  I think, the important part of what goes on in schools in the education process
+  is learning how to learn and so I sort of missed that.\nAnd so as, in high school,
+  the work got more difficult, I still, you know, thrived to some degree, but had
+  I learned how to learn early on, I think, I mean, I was focused on going to school
+  beyond high school because that was the emphasis my parents placed, but if I had
+  sort of made that connection to learning how to learn early on, I might have had
+  a little more success academically and not, I don’t focus on that so much because,
+  you know, I could have been—done better in school—but I would have been better prepared
+  for the future.\nAs it turned out, I did okay, and ended up receiving a number of
+  scholarship offers, athletic scholarship offers. I think had I had that—had I learned
+  how to learn—there might have been some academic scholarships in that queue also,
+  which gives you choices, right?\nJH: Sure.\nAP: But I had the opportunity to choose
+  among some pretty good schools and ultimately selected the University of Notre Dame
+  [University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN].\nJH: That’s a good transition to Notre
+  Dame and talk a little bit about your time in college. Why Notre Dame?\nAP: Primarily
+  because of its academic reputation and because of its reputation in terms of how
+  it interacted with its alumni. They have an incredible, had then, and continue to
+  have, an incredible alumni association which provides any number of benefits to
+  people who graduate\n00:20:00 from there in terms of employment opportunities and
+  other kinds of support. And, you know,\nas I say, the schools that I was choosing
+  from, they were all good schools. I mean, it was Purdue [Purdue University, 610
+  Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN]; it was Michigan State 6\n[Michigan State University,
+  220 Trowbridge Road, East Lansing, MI]; it was Michigan [University of Michigan,
+  500 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI]; Minnesota [University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
+  MN]; Ohio State [Ohio State University, Columbus, OH]. So it wasn’t like they didn’t
+  have some of the things that Notre Dame had to offer. But it was sort of looking
+  beyond the college years that was, I think, ultimately the deciding factor.\nThat,
+  coupled with, I had no interest in going to Ohio State, who knows why? And Notre
+  Dame also had this reputation, football wise, that, at least at the time, was about
+  as good as it got, you know, to a black kid from Canton, Ohio, going to play in
+  the house that Knute Rockne [Knute Kenneth Rockne (March 4, 1888–March 31, 1931)]
+  built, that sort of put stars in your eyes for sure.\nJH: So was that an exciting
+  time I would suspect in a lot of ways? Was it a nerve wracking time transitioning
+  from Canton and leaving home, or—?\nAP: It was an exciting time; a very difficult
+  time. I, you know, just going back to Central Catholic, I was one of two, I think,
+  maybe three; maybe four; African-American kids in my graduating class. Going off
+  to Notre Dame it was going to be, you know, there were a few more, but not many
+  more so—and it was at a time that sort of our national economy was sort of in a
+  downward spiral and Notre Dame is in South Bend, Indiana, and they were also a heavy
+  industry town and one of the main employers there was Studebaker, the auto manufacturer,
+  and they went out of business just about the time I got there. It was my first time
+  away from home really. I’d not been a kid who’d gone off to camp and spent any time
+  away from home so it was all new to me. And it was also, you know, the first time
+  that I’d really been put in a position where I was responsible for myself as every
+  kid who goes off to school is.\nJH: Sure, that’s a big change.\nAP: A huge change.
+  And so it was difficult. And one of the things I didn’t realize was Notre Dame was
+  not the most progressive place to go to school and so that was something that was
+  a little different for me and having to adjust to that. There were some difficult
+  transitions.\nJH: Speaking to kind of the economy, in a downturn, thinking about
+  that time, too, and in a lot of ways the civil rights movement is sort of at its
+  apex and the Voting Rights Act and so was that a part of the campus conversation
+  or do you recall anything about that?\n00:25:00 AP: Not much, a little bit, but
+  not much. You know, and being on the football team there,\nyou really weren’t necessarily
+  that much a part of the campus conversation, even though we were—we lived in the
+  dorms with everybody else and went to meals with everybody else and went to classes
+  with everybody else, your focal point was football and so you weren’t really much
+  connected.\nAnd it was really kind of an interesting time in that respect because,
+  I mean, the civil rights movement was going through some challenging times. About
+  the same time, the Vietnam War protests started and so it’s sort of like you’re
+  in this bubble looking out on all of this and not 7\nhaving a direct connection
+  to it but having the opportunity to at least see it and think about it but not engage.\nJH:
+  Well, it’s interesting you mention that because yeah, in thinking about it, the
+  focus on football and you’re a young kid still and transitioning so maybe not a
+  lot of capacity for a lot of other stuff when that’s the focus in a lot of ways.\nAP:
+  Even if you had the instinct, they took up your time and your energy, both physical
+  and emotional. And so it was, in that respect, I missed out on a lot but, you know,
+  I can’t remember the precise timing, but my freshman year, the start of my freshman
+  year, went to football training camp a couple of weeks before school started and
+  I think we got there either just before or just after the March on Washington [The
+  March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963]. I think school had started
+  by the time the bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church [The 16th Street
+  Baptist Church bombing. September 15, 1963), Birmingham, AL] had occurred in Birmingham.
+  And so you had all of these things going on. As I noted, you’re sort of watching
+  from afar. And understanding that they affect you, but sort of not directly.\nJH:
+  Removed a little bit or, yeah. Well, the focus on football bore some fruit. National
+  championship—was it your senior year?\nAP: Yes. I should note, I think it was in
+  the—I think it was still while I was there or he was planning to come, one of our
+  speakers, one of the people who was coming to campus to speak was George Wallace
+  [George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919–September 13, 1998)]. That got people
+  engaged.\nJH: That got some attention?\nAP: That got some attention.\nJH: Did he
+  come? Do you remember?\nAP: I’m pretty sure it was while I was still there. Needless
+  to say, I didn’t attend.\nJH: Yeah, probably not a regret.\nAP: No.\nJH: So, you’re
+  drafted by the Vikings kind of at the close of your career at Notre Dame and kind
+  of moving ahead a little bit, there’s obviously lots to talk about that we could
+  talk\n00:30:00 about with respect to your professional career in the NFL and—\nAP:
+  It happened.\nJH: It happened. It happened. You’ve talked about it a little bit,
+  right? But I want to focus on just kind of one unique aspect that I was interested
+  about was your participation in the NFL 8\nPlayers Association. It’s something that
+  I, you know, I’ve—I know you’ve talked about it before but we don’t hear that quite
+  as often so I was just curious. You’re playing with the Vikings. How do you get
+  involved in the Players Association and what’s sort of your role?\nAP: Well, there
+  had been—this is a long, complicated story, too long and too complicated for here.\nJH:
+  It’s a big question.\nAP: There had been various efforts on the part of players
+  to organize before 1968. Nineteen sixty the league is confronted with another football
+  league, the American Football League. In 1966, those two leagues merge with the
+  merger taking place in ’68 and in 1968, the players from both leagues come together
+  and form the National Football League Players Association. That was my second year
+  in the league and somehow I either volunteered or agreed to serve as player representative.
+  So that’s how I got involved.\nAnd, growing up in Canton, I was used to organized
+  labor and had sort of a sense of what it was about and the other piece of it was
+  that the reason players wanted to come together to form a union was because—well,
+  there are a whole host of them, not the least of which is players essentially had
+  no rights in terms of where they could play; very little ability to impact how much
+  they were paid and then there were all these what I will call silly little rules
+  that were imposed, I suppose, as a matter of control. That’s all I can think of.
+  Things like you can’t have a beard or a mustache. I guess you could have a mustache
+  but you couldn’t have a beard. Things like, you know, you have to be at every meal
+  whether you want to eat or not. You have to—you can’t have a telephone in your room
+  and this was before, you know, mobile phones, but you couldn’t have the telephone
+  company put a phone in your room during training camp. I mean, those are just a
+  couple that come to mind.\nAnd so there were really lots of limitations on a player’s
+  ability to be themselves and players wanted to change that and obviously, the ability
+  to choose where you worked would have an\n00:35:00 impact on how much you were paid.
+  And so, I think for me, at least in the beginning, it was\nsort of all those little
+  controls that just drove me crazy, that got me involved. And, you know, once you—you
+  can’t get just a little bit wet once you’re into the pool you get all wet.\nJH:
+  Did you enjoy it?\nAP: I loved it. It was frustrating at times but I think we laid
+  the groundwork for the freedom that players have today. We laid the groundwork for
+  players getting a fair share of the revenue. We laid the groundwork that allowed
+  players to be treated like human beings as opposed to, in some sense, property.
+  And along the way, I got to meet, know and work with a bunch of great lawyers. Leonard
+  Lindquist [Leonard Lindquist (September 5, 1912-September 10, 2004)]; Gene Keating
+  [Eugene Henry Keating (January 2, 1932-April 6, 2005)]; Ed Glennon [Edward M. Glennon
+  (1924-April 24, 2009)]; Ed Garvey [Edward R. Garvey (April 18, 1940–February 22,
+  2017)]. I got to see from the inside what the law was all about and what good lawyering
+  looks like.\n9\nJH: So is it fair to say that that was an influence on the decision
+  to pursue a career?\nAP: That just confirmed—\nJH: That it was something you wanted
+  to do.\nAP: That it was something I wanted to do. I enrolled at William Mitchell
+  [now Mitchell Hamline School of Law, 875 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, MN] in the fall
+  of 1968. I started my second year the league and it was not pretty.\nJH: Why not?\nAP:
+  Well, you know, you get that assignment over the summer and there are like five
+  hundred pages to read and you try to read it and none of it makes sense and you
+  show up the first day and I don’t remember what the class was, but the professor
+  could just as well be talking Greek as English. And, you think, I don’t understand
+  what’s happening here because it’s a different process; at least it was a different
+  process from what my undergraduate degree was like. And I was not ready for it.\nJH:
+  Was it—well, you said you were second year in the league, playing and so was it—I
+  mean, I’d suspect that obviously that has—playing is a lot of—the time commitment
+  in and of itself so was it that you weren’t quite ready? Not enough time? Or did
+  it—?\nAP: It wasn’t that. It was being confronted with being in this class and listening
+  to these lectures that had no context.\nJH: Right.\nAP: And therefore made no sense.
+  And, you know, it’s early on in the process so you don’t know how it all fits together.\nJH:
+  New language.\nAP: New language, all of it. And I just—it was not pretty. (laughter)\nJH:
+  Well, but it must not have—but it didn’t dissuade you, obviously, completely.\nAP:
+  I say only half in jest, I knew after three days that I wasn’t going to survive,
+  but I was in so far over my head that it took me another three and a half, three
+  weeks to figure out how to drop out, to get out. And I—what I came to understand
+  was, first of all, that I wasn’t alone.\n00:40:00 I mean, I’m sitting there thinking,
+  I’m the only one that doesn’t get this. I’m the only one that\ndoesn’t understand
+  this. But, you know, everybody in the room was in the same boat that I was. Had
+  I—maybe had I not been playing football at the time, I’d have sort of stuck it out,
+  but I mean, I was so far in over my head, I mean, I just couldn’t see—\n10\nJH:
+  The path.\nAP: The path.\nJH: Yep, overwhelming.\nAP: And so, I bailed. But didn’t
+  necessarily give up the hope or the idea. Over the years I tried one or two other
+  career options. I was a used car salesman or actually a new/used car salesman. I
+  sold one car during my auto sales experience.\nJH: I did not know that, that you
+  tried that.\nAP: And the one car I sold to myself. (laughter) So I figured there
+  was no career in that. I had a vending machine company for about a year and half.
+  It took me—I invested about forty thousand dollars into it and it took me about
+  a year and a half to go through that, although that was one of the—actually not
+  one of—the best investment I ever made and we’ll get to that later, but one of the
+  things I was learning was business, being in business, was not something that fit
+  me; not something that interested me; not something that I wanted to put the time
+  and energy and effort into becoming good at, which was a good lesson to learn. And
+  ultimately, after my eighth year with the Vikings, I decided to go back to law school;
+  this time having a better understanding, having been involved in, as a players’
+  rep, and then ultimately on the executive committee of the Players Association;
+  been involved in a number of lawsuits involving the Players Association and the
+  National Football League.\nStill, having the opportunity to see even more deeply
+  how lawyers work, the way they thought, developing a sense for that and having the
+  opportunity to talk with them and sort of learn that law school is just like that
+  and that the secret to it is to endure. And at some point it starts to make sense.
+  So after my eighth year I decided to go back. This time enrolled at the University
+  of Minnesota and actually started the summer of 1975 at the University of Texas
+  in Austin [Austin, TX]. I took contracts and procedures, thirteen weeks start to
+  finish.\nJH: Wow!\nAP: And survived it.\nJH: There you go.\nAP: Not only survived
+  it; loved every minute of it.\nJH: Confidence booster?\nAP: Big confidence booster.\nJH:
+  Absolutely.\n11\nAP: Big confidence booster. Learned, you know, a little bit of
+  the process of, remember how I talked about having failed to learn how to learn?\nJH:
+  Exactly.\nAP: Took me to law school to get it.\nJH: Sometimes I wonder if it takes
+  a lot of people up until that point. In some ways, I sort\n00:45:00 of felt the
+  same way.\nAP: Well, but once I got it—\nJH: Yeah.\nAP: there’s nothing else like
+  it.\nJH: Right.\nAP: And so I loved the law school experience. People, you know,
+  are always talking about, Well, you went to law school and played professional football—how
+  hard that must have been. Yeah, things are hard but when you’re having fun, there’s
+  nothing better. I mean, I loved my law school experience at the university.\nAnd
+  I had another one of those defining moments and I think it was towards the end of
+  my first year. We had a paper to write and I decided I was going to, you know, take
+  the easy road, something you know about, labor, labor law. And actually I think
+  I wrote something on labor relations in the NFL. But I, you know, I spent all this
+  time doing the research and preparing and I just—nothing happened. And I can remember
+  going in to see one of the associate or assistant deans and saying, I don’t know
+  that I can do this. And he said, Well, you can do it. All you have to do is apply
+  yourself. And I think, What have I been doing?\nJH: Well, that clears it up, right?\nAP:
+  Right. And he said, No, you apply the seat of your pants to the chair until you
+  get it, until it starts coming and, you know, it’s weird but, you know, I sat down,
+  got my books and my pens and my papers and sat there and eventually started writing
+  and got it done. And that was an important lesson—that sometimes even when you know
+  what you want to do, but it’s not coming together, you have to just keep working
+  at it until it happens.\nJH: This is jumping ahead a little bit so we’ll have to
+  swing back but that makes me think about the process of sitting down and writing
+  an opinion a little bit, too. Is there a similarity there, too? The process of just
+  needing to sit down and sort of delve in to get it started and once it’s started,
+  flows a little bit?\nAP: It flows. Absolutely.\n12\nJH: Interesting. So law school
+  at U of M. I was going to ask you and I think you really answered it was, you know,
+  by the time you do go to the U of M, you’re still playing; raising a family; not
+  like there aren’t any other things going on. You’re busy but you manage it by—\nAP:
+  But then it’s just a matter of time management.\nJH: Sure.\nAP: And figuring out
+  how to, you know, make it all work, putting all the pieces together. And I mean,
+  I did have some incentive. I mean, by then I was twelve years into my professional
+  career. You don’t play forever and quite frankly, I didn’t want to necessarily play
+  forever. As I’ve said often, by the time I started law school, I’d been playing
+  for—I was into my ninth year and I hadn’t done everything you could do on a football
+  field but I’d done most of them and I noted earlier, repetition wasn’t one of my
+  strong suits. It was time to prepare to do something different so that I could move
+  on. As I’ve often said, you know, the skills of a defensive tackle don’t transfer
+  to much of anything else out in the real world and so preparing\n00:50:00 to do
+  something beyond football was really important. And law school was that preparation.\nJH:
+  Right. So you graduate from law school and you graduate and —you graduate and—what’s
+  the timing there? You still play for a little bit after you graduate?\nAP: I played
+  three and a half more years.\nJH: Three and a half more years and so you’re—\nAP:
+  Seventy-eight; seventy-nine [1979]. Four more years.\nJH: Okay. During that time,
+  then, you graduate, you’re playing, but then you start at Lindquist and Vennum [Lindquist
+  \u0026 Vennum, offices in Minnesota, Colorado, and South Dakota; formed in 1968
+  when Lindquist, Magnuson \u0026 Glennon combined with Vennum, Newhall, Ackman \u0026
+  Goetz. As of January 1, 2018, the firm merged with and took the name of Ballard
+  Spahr]. So what’s the practice there like? Tell me about that a little bit.\nAP:
+  It’s trying to figure out who you are as a lawyer. And it’s, you know, getting assignments
+  and, you know, Here’s the file. Go do this. And it’s like, How do you go do this?
+  (laughter)\nJH: A little more explanation.\nAP: Would be helpful. It wasn’t always
+  forthcoming. Sort of get thrown into the thick of things and there were some horrible,
+  awful, very bad moments where I had no idea what I was doing but had to try to figure
+  it out while I was doing it.\nJH: Enjoyable though?\nAP: Not especially. 13\nJH:
+  No?\nAP: One of the things I figured out early on about the private practice of
+  law, it’s about business; it’s about billing hours and that just—it never—that is
+  not me. My interest in the law was the law and trying to sort of work through it,
+  sort it out and figure it out and come to the best conclusions that you can. And
+  when you’ve got this little thing sitting on your shoulder talking about billable
+  hours, first of all, you’re distracted by that because you’re thinking, Hey, am
+  I billing enough hours and how do I justify these hours? And so from that standpoint,
+  it was not necessarily pleasant.\nThat said, I got to work with some really good
+  lawyers and like every other new lawyer, Can you do a memo for me on this? And you
+  give them the memo and it comes back and it’s like, I didn’t know there was that
+  much red ink in the world. (laughter)\nJH: But lessons, then, as well, I suppose,
+  too, right, so you’re—\nAP: Absolutely.\nJH: it’s a big learning curve but you’re
+  learning a lot.\nAP: But you’re learning a lot. That’s where I got grounded and
+  so from that standpoint, it was a very valuable experience but just not my idea
+  of a good time. And I was fortunate enough to make my way to the attorney general’s
+  office and I loved it there because Skip Humphrey [Hubert Horatio \"Skip\" Humphrey
+  III (June 26, 1942-)] was the attorney general and he let the lawyers who were there
+  to do the work, do the work. And let me learn to give my best legal advice to my
+  clients. Didn’t have to worry about billing hours; didn’t have to worry about clients
+  walking away. I could do the best that I could to figure out what is the best—what
+  is the law and what is the best advice I can give this client? And I could do that
+  and there’s a lot of freedom in that and I absolutely loved it.\n00:55:00 JH: Did
+  you have a particular focus in the attorney general’s office?\nAP: Labor and employment.\nJH:
+  You were? Okay.\nAP: Labor and employment.\nJH: And you enjoyed that?\nAP: And that’s
+  what I did at Lindquist also on the employee side and just flipped to the employer
+  side.\nJH: So you’re working at the Minnesota Attorney General’s office four years,
+  five years-ish, something like that? 14\nAP: Started in ’85, the first week of January,
+  1985, and left the last week of December in 1992.\nJH: Okay, so, yeah. So when do
+  you start thinking about—maybe not even necessarily the Minnesota Supreme Court
+  but the idea of doing something different and maybe that being judging?\nAP: You
+  know, I had this weird experience. In 1982, I’m at Lindquist and Vennum and—’82
+  or ’83—and I wake up one morning and the newspaper has an article about Governor
+  Perpich [Rudolph George Perpich Sr. (June 27, 1928–September 21, 1995)] is going
+  to appoint some new judges and he’s got my name on the list. Nobody had asked.\nJH:
+  Interesting.\nAP: It was very strange but up until that point it hadn’t really occurred
+  to me a) that I would have the interest in being a judge or that I could be, or
+  that I had the skills or temperament. Long story short, made me think about it.
+  And, you know, through that time, I’m learning who I am as a lawyer; what my skills
+  are; what my interests are; and what my strengths and weaknesses are. And over time,
+  I sort of start thinking, Maybe there is something in the judiciary that would fit
+  me, but I can’t see myself necessarily as a trial court judge. And, you know, as
+  lawyers we spend a lot of time reading opinions and struggling to figure out what
+  they mean. And thinking, Well, if they meant this, why didn’t they just say it?
+  Why is it so hard to say in plain clear language what you mean?\nAnd of course,
+  my ego says to myself, Self, you could do that. You could write clearly. You could
+  write concisely and so over time I start to think my skills and my interests, my
+  abilities, my strengths lend themselves to what appellate court judges do. And from
+  there, well, how does one become an appellate court judge? Well, as you know in
+  Minnesota, it’s either by appointment or by election. And the Minnesota Court of
+  Appeals is new, relatively new, and most of the judges there or many of the judges
+  there had been trial court judges, so that seems like a natural step even though
+  the trial court isn’t necessarily what fits me. And so I started applying for trial
+  court judge positions and had absolutely no success.\n01:00:00 Eventually I came
+  to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to have any success and that, if I\nwanted
+  the opportunity to serve, it was probably going to be through election, which narrows
+  things down to the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court.\nJH: Right.\nAP: And my
+  thought process was, Well, if you’re going to seek election, you might as well seek
+  election to the Minnesota Supreme Court. I think I have something to contribute.
+  I think, both from a legal background, but also from just a different perspective,
+  and so, 1990, I decided to seek election. And when the filing period opened, I was
+  down there first morning, first hour, filed for election and the justice who I was
+  going to challenge; thought I was going to challenge, resigned before I got out
+  of the secretary of state’s office. 15\nJH: Oh wow.\nAP: Which created a vacancy.
+  Vacancies are filled by appointment. The governor immediately appointed someone
+  to fill the vacancy and the election for that seat no longer existed. And I, in
+  seeking election, it wasn’t about the individual justice who I was going to challenge;
+  it wasn’t about their opinions or their philosophy or their anything else; it was
+  simply—it seemed to me to be a fair question given that the justice was going to
+  reach mandatory retirement within something less than six months of re-election
+  and it was a fair question, at least I thought, to have the people of Minnesota
+  decide who they would want to serve the term.\nMe, a known quantity, a known person,
+  or some unknown, ultimately some unknown person. The election was taken off the
+  ballot and, you know, it wasn’t clear to me why, you know. Being a person of color,
+  one of the things that comes to mind is, Is it because I’m a person of color? Is
+  it politics? Is it—I don’t know—let that go; continued working at the attorney general’s
+  office and decided to try again in 1992.\nThis time, the justice I sought to challenge,
+  was going to reach mandatory retirement within about eighteen months of the full
+  six-year term and I thought again it was fair question to have the people of Minnesota
+  decide who the justice should be who serves in that seat. Before I could get to
+  the—before the filings opened, we had this provision in our constitution which provides
+  for the retirement of the judges and there is a statute which provided, also provides
+  to carry out that constitutional provision, which provided that the governor could
+  extend\n01:05:00 the term of a justice who hadn’t reached full retirement at the
+  time they were up for re-\nelection and with mandatory retirement approaching. And
+  so Justice Yetka [Lawrence R. Yetka (October 1, 1924–November 12, 2017)] who was
+  the justice who I was going to challenge, sought a term extension; the governor
+  granted it and I was, to say the least, more than a little frustrated.\nAnd so,
+  long story short, I commenced a lawsuit against the governor and the secretary of
+  state, a lawsuit that had its original jurisdiction in the Supreme Court and a number
+  of people told me I was crazy, that you’re wrong on the law; you’re wrong on the
+  politics and you’re never, you know, when you lose this lawsuit, you’re never, ever
+  going to have the opportunity to serve.\nI felt strongly about one, that the, as
+  applied, the term extension violated the constitution. I wasn’t much concerned about
+  the politics because I’d been—sort of along the way I’d figured out you have to
+  do what you think is right, not what is expedient, and turns out I was right on
+  the law; we were right on the law. And I was given the opportunity, along with anybody
+  else who wanted to file for election for the seat. I filed; Justice Yetka did not
+  and two other people did and almost immediately, not almost immediately, immediately,
+  my opponents started down the road of, He''s just a football player. And initially,
+  implicit, but unstated, he’s just a dumb football player. Also initially, but not
+  necessarily subsequently, but initially, he’s just a dumb, black football player.
+  I mean, that was the tenor of what was being said. He’s not qualified. 16\nI spent
+  the next three months, three and a half months, whatever it is, campaigning around
+  the state to talk about why I wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. What I could
+  bring what I had to offer about my experience and my background and my qualifications.
+  And at every turn, I got the accusatory question, What are your qualifications?
+  And nobody else was being asked that. And so that was difficult. That said, it was
+  also satisfying to be able to talk to people about who I am and what I thought I
+  had to offer and in the end, the people of this state gave\n01:10:00 me the opportunity
+  to serve. They elected me. I am humbled, honored. I have a hard time\narticulating
+  how meaningful it is to me that they saw through the effort to stereotype me; that
+  they saw in me somebody who hopefully, had something to contribute and they gave
+  me the opportunity to do it.\nJH: Was—so, you know, you mentioned that, in terms
+  of the campaign, questions about qualification, but implicit questions about—\nAP:
+  Race.\nJH: what it means to be an athlete—race. Was diversity, and the fact that,
+  if elected, you’d be the first African-American Minnesota Supreme Court justice:
+  Was that a part of that conversation explicitly or was that not really a part of
+  that discussion?\nAP: That wasn’t a part of the discussion.\nJH: So you’re elected.\nAP:
+  And I show up the first day.\nJH: What’s the first day like?\nAP: Well, I had a
+  month before, I’d been given briefs for the—\nJH: Get to work.\nAP: Yes, for the
+  argument calendar in January of ’93, and initially I had been assigned a case that
+  was being heard that first day.\nJH: Okay.\nAP: Mind you, I had—I didn’t know how
+  the system worked, right?\nJH: Right. The norms, the processes—\nAP: The norms,
+  the processes, any of it. And so I’m fast tracking, trying to figure all this out
+  and it turns out the case that they gave me, I had a conflict. Phew! So they switched
+  cases and gave me one for the second day. I was getting my baptism by fire. I, you
+  know, read the briefs, prepared—didn’t know what—and for my case the second day,
+  as you know, we do a 17\nreport to the court, I’d never done a report to the court
+  because I hadn’t been on the court. But I had to sort of figure that out but I had
+  no sort of context for doing that. And the—I was sworn in before the first argument
+  the first day and we were having a public ceremony after it.\nJH: That very first
+  day.\nAP: That very first day, public swearing in.\nJH: There were some distractions
+  beyond the work of the court.\nAP: One or two. And sat through the one argument
+  because I was recused on the other but sat through my first case conference and
+  learned what a report was like. Do the public swearing in ceremony; celebrate with
+  family, and at the end of the day, get that report written.\nJH: And that report
+  on your mind kind of throughout the day a little bit?\nAP: Oh, absolutely.\nJH:
+  Yeah, I got to get that report; I’ve got some work to do.\nAP: I’ve got some work
+  to do. At least now I know what it is. And the second day I had\n01:15:00 my—we
+  had the two cases I sat through, gave my report and that’s the way it begins. We\ndon’t
+  do that anymore. At least when I left the court, new justices had some time to learn
+  the system.\nJH: So was that a, I mean, do you think back on the first—beyond the
+  first day or two, the first week; the first month, as I said, because it was trial
+  by fire a little bit right away that it was an easy transition? I mean, hard by
+  the way, but a quick one or—?\nAP: Invigorating, and a very quick transition. You
+  know, as with anything new, particularly in the world of work, you don’t know the
+  rules and the norms until you violate them and so you’re trying to figure it all
+  out and, you know, you have your missteps along the way but you figure it out and,
+  as with many things, the question isn’t whether you made the mistake, but what did
+  you learn from it. In this particular instance, I had to be a quick learner and
+  I was.\nJH: Absolutely.\nAP: And then, you know, you get that first case behind
+  you, the argument and the report, and then you’ve got to write—\nJH: You’ve got
+  some more work to do. It’s not over.\nAP: And having never written an opinion before,
+  you have to learn how to do that.\nJH: Which is a whole other beast in and of itself.
+  18\nAP: Absolutely, but I had a good law clerk, Ian Nemiroff, who helped me a lot.
+  He helped me a lot. And as over the years, I had a bunch of great clerks who made
+  me look good time and time again.\nJH: I wanted to ask about clerks, not in a selfish
+  way, but it’s definitely a part of your work on the court, daily work on the court.
+  What did you look for in a clerk?\nAP: I looked for people who were curious; people
+  who had something in their background that was out of the norm. Justice Gardebring
+  [Sandra Gardebring Ogren (June 14, 1947–July 20, 2010)] used to refer to what she
+  called Standard Issue Law Students, SILS (laughter). I didn’t want Standard Issue
+  Law clerks. I wanted people who—obviously you want somebody that can write; you
+  want somebody that’s going to work hard. But you want somebody who’s going to have
+  good judgment and a sense of curiosity to sort of look under the rocks that need
+  to be looked under and not under the ones that don’t and who can figure that out
+  pretty quickly. And who are willing to or who were willing to tell me when I was
+  wrong. I didn’t need a law clerk or law clerks who would tell me what I want to
+  hear. I don’t like surprises and so, when I’m working with a clerk, I want the clerk
+  to make sure there are no surprises.\nJH: Right.\nAP: And I was pretty lucky along
+  the way—a bunch of great writers, yourself included; hard workers; curiosity—you
+  fit the bill nicely.\nJH: Well, it’s—I always talk about, too. It’s one of those
+  incredible experiences where you get out of law school and then the work, in many
+  ways, it feels like some of the most\n01:20:00 important work that you’ll do as
+  an attorney, working on the court so pretty incredible\nexperience.\nSo talk about—I
+  recall in the year in your office—\nAP: I should also note, I wanted diversity in
+  my clerks. I wanted women; I wanted clerks who were people of color; I wanted diversity
+  in their, you know, where they came from; what their experiences were—because all
+  of that makes; all of that enriches the process and makes what I do as a judge better
+  having different views, different ways of looking at things and I mean, I think
+  that’s vital.\nJH: Your approach to tackling an opinion. I remember you taking,
+  I think, a lot of joy in peeling apart the layers, finding the resolution, and obviously,
+  as you’ve said many times before, none of the cases that come before the Minnesota
+  Supreme Court are simple. They’re there because they’re complex. Talk about that
+  a little bit.\nAP: They’re there because they’re complex; they’re there because
+  they’re important to the people involved in them, no matter who they are, whether
+  it’s a—the fifth petition for review from a post-conviction inmate, or, you know,
+  some large corporation, it’s important to the people that we serve. It’s important
+  to the people of the state that we do it well and that we do 19\nit as right as
+  we can. And I—opinion writing is—on any given day I will tell you it’s more art
+  than science or that it’s more science than art.\nJH: Right.\nAP: It’s really a
+  combination of both and for me, it was very important to work with the word so that
+  what the opinion said was clear, easily understood, easily read and helpful. And
+  to do that for me, it was about making sure that there were no unintended words,
+  much less unintended ideas but no unintended words that—every word was thought about;
+  that every word was where it was in the sentence because that’s the best use of
+  the word in communicating the idea that you’re trying to communicate. That every
+  sentence in the paragraph was where it was because that was the best way to communicate
+  what you were trying to communicate in the paragraph. That every paragraph in the
+  opinion was where it was because that’s where it was most helpful.\n01:25:00 I suspect
+  that you clerks probably thought I was a little obsessive and maybe even a little\ncompulsive
+  but certainly obsessive about words, how we used the language, but that was important
+  to me; that was very important to me.\nJH: I remember you talked right away about
+  the purpose of every word. If it doesn’t have a role; if it’s not there for a reason,\nAP:
+  Gone.\nJH: Get it out.\nAP: If it doesn’t have a reason, it’s not helping anybody.
+  All it does is add length and the potential for confusion.\nJH: And the potential
+  for interpretation differently than the intent was.\nAP: Different than what you
+  intended.\nJH: Right, I remember that lesson. It sticks with me for sure. I was
+  always struck with the collegiality and rapport on the court. You know, it was a
+  serious place; a lot of important work, but I also remember, at least feeling like,
+  the justices had a lot of respect for one another and were good friends as well.
+  Can you speak to that a little bit?\nAP: Well, you know, it’s interesting. You have
+  seven people, and changing all the time, who have big brains; who would like to
+  think they’re the smartest one in the room; who have views that conflict and who
+  feel strongly about their opinions. But we’ve been lucky here in Minnesota to have
+  people understand that the institution is more important than any one of us and
+  institutionally, it is important to maintain that collegiality, even when your colleagues,
+  in your view, are so far wrong that you can’t understand how they could possibly
+  be there. And sometimes the tension is pretty high but in the end you have to understand
+  that a.) it’s about the institution and the work; it’s not about me. And also, you
+  have to understand that, you 20\nknow, some day you may need that colleague to get
+  where you want to go in a particular case or where you think a case should go.\nWhen
+  I first got on the court I would hear these stories about what was going on in other
+  states with their Supreme Courts. Justices inviting one another out into the corridor
+  to have a fight; justices showing up at conference and placing a handgun on the
+  conference table. How does that work? How can you have a justice system that—or
+  that the members of which of\n01:30:00 their courts are so antagonistic with one
+  another that they can’t be civil even, you know, under\npressure? How do you reach
+  good decisions doing that? I don’t think you can. One of the things that was also,
+  I think, important for our court during my time there, to ensure the understanding
+  that collegiality was important and that it’s the institution, it’s not us, was
+  that we, in our conference, you know, there are seven of us. We know each other
+  by first name. We refer to each other as Justice So and So, just to make it clear
+  in our own minds and everybody else in the room, that this is an institutional decision
+  we’re making. This is the institution that is acting; it’s not me, Alan Page, making
+  a decision. I’m making it on behalf of this institution. And it’s a way to sort
+  of force you to treat people with respect and I think it served us well.\nJH: Those
+  small things are not small things.\nAP: Not small at all.\nJH: Right.\nAP: Not small
+  at all.\nJH: Right. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the first—the critical
+  first of being the first African-American Minnesota Supreme Court justice? Sort
+  of looking back and thinking about the role of that first in your work on the court?\nAP:
+  I have a hard time doing that because that wasn’t what it was about. Institutionally,
+  I think it’s important that there had to be a first. Institutionally, it would have
+  been better had it been somebody long before me. The fact that it finally happened—that
+  we finally opened the door if you will for people of color, I think it was very
+  significant. I think equally significant was the fact that when I joined the court,
+  the court was a majority of women.\nJH: That’s right.\nAP: People would ask me,
+  What’s it like serving on the court with a majority of women, right? And, of course,
+  having not served on a court that wasn’t a majority of women, I thought, Well, that’s
+  the natural order of things. But those things are important—that our judicial—that
+  people who serve in our judicial system reflect the people of this state. I’ve said
+  many times that the only power that courts have is founded in the trust and confidence
+  of the people we serve and the less the members of the judiciary look like the people
+  they serve, the less trust and confidence our judiciary will have. And so I think
+  finally breaking that barrier was critically important. 21\n01:35:00 JH: Right.
+  On that note, I mean, early on in your tenure as a justice—and I want to get this\nright—your
+  service on the Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force on Racial Bias in the Judicial
+  System. Report’s issued in 1993.\nAP: Six months after I joined the court.\nJH:
+  Right. And you were involved.\nAP: Well, I—\nJH: Can you just describe that a little
+  bit or what was your participation; what was your experience?\nAP: I became the
+  chair of the committee that was going to implement the task force report. That was
+  challenging for me. Remember my interest in the law was the law and not in being
+  an administrator? And so from that standpoint, a lot of the things that, not only
+  that committee, but we all—we had various committee assignments. I have to say those
+  committee assignments were not my favorite part of being on the court.\nBut this
+  was an important one and, you know, we ended up working through the—depending on
+  how you count them—the one hundred plus recommendations, pretty much most of them
+  being implemented. But—and the implementation made things better but it didn’t solve
+  the problem. It was a little—I think we made very incremental progress. But the
+  disparities that came out of the report, particularly in the criminal justice area,
+  where African-Americans, people of color are arrested more often; stopped more often;
+  charged more often; given higher bail; less fair trials; higher conviction rates;
+  longer sentences; all things being equal, that hasn’t ended and that’s just on the
+  criminal justice side. There’s the juvenile justice and all the other aspects of
+  the report.\nI’ve more or less come to the conclusion that before real change is
+  going to happen, we have to take a more fundamental look at what our law is grounded
+  in, which is to say, it’s grounded in a constitution that counted those imported
+  as slaves as three-fifths of a person. And while we’ve had the thirteenth, fourteenth
+  and fifteenth amendments ending slavery, ensuring due process and guaranteeing the
+  right to vote, the law itself, the foundation, is still on cases that arose out
+  of slavery and we’ve got to figure out how to tease that out of it before we have
+  fundamental change.\nJH: Structural fundamental change, right?\n01:40:00 AP: It’s
+  a structural, systemic problem.\nJH: What about, Justice Page, any notable opinions;
+  dissents; anything come to mind? You wrote a lot so it’s a big body of work but—?\n22\nAP:
+  I have never, in my own head, quantified or qualified whether it was a dissent or
+  an opinion in terms of its importance. It seems to me that once you do that; once
+  you decide that this one is more important than that one, you start doing both of
+  them a disservice. And so I just took each one as they came and tried to put the
+  same energy and effort into trying to get it right. And again, as I say, whether
+  it was that fifth post-conviction petition, or, you know, some mega million dollar
+  corporate issue, the people who come before us deserve to have our fullest attention
+  and so I just don’t qualify them, quantify them in that way.\nJH: Don’t think of
+  it as that, right? So, during your tenure on the court, one thing I wanted to ask
+  you about, too, is just sort of the interplay, if you think of there being one at
+  all, between your continued community engagement and still working on the court.
+  You know, we would—I think back a lot on going and reading with you and other staff
+  in the court, reading to elementary school kids on Wednesdays or whatever day it
+  was. That community engagement and, you know, did that play a role in your work
+  in your works as a justice? Did you see it sort of separately or was it related
+  and did it inform your work?\nAP: Oh, I think everything we do -- our lives inform
+  our work. I don’t know that I, you know, my reading with kids or my involvement
+  to the extent that I had it, which was quite limited at the Page Education Foundation,
+  influenced my work directly but it’s a part of who I am and being engaged in the
+  community around us at some level helps us understand those people we are a part
+  of but also who we represent. And I think it would be a mistake to be isolated and
+  not a part of the world around us to the extent, obviously, to the extent possible,
+  to the extent that it doesn’t create conflicts.\nJH: You’ve had some time now after
+  retiring, I suppose to think back. Any, I guess maybe the question is, in thinking
+  about it and this kind of gets to some final reflections about your time on the
+  court, it’s a big question, but what is it—personally and professionally—can you
+  put into words what the service meant to you?\nAP: Well, for me, it was the most,
+  in terms of my professional life, the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. The
+  challenges of working with seven other people. I mean, I looked forward to every
+  day when I was on the court, particularly to those days where we would hear argument
+  and have conferences because every conference you got stretched in ways that you
+  would never get stretched and I loved that. Trying to understand what your colleagues
+  are saying and thinking; trying to understand what you were thinking in the context
+  of what they are saying and thinking and trying to understand what you were thinking.\nJH:
+  Work through thought processes, right.\nAP: And working through all that doesn’t
+  get any better.\nJH: Sometimes arriving at unexpected places, too?\nAP: Oh, all
+  the time, all the time. Arriving at unexpected places; arriving at places that,
+  on a personal level, you wouldn’t want to arrive at. You—if I could decide this
+  on my own, this is not what I would do, but not my choice, you know. One of the—a
+  little bit disconcerting 23\nthings about our society—is I don’t think people understand
+  how important it is for judges to be impartial and to exercise their judgment and
+  not impose their will. And just the challenge of doing that all the time and trying
+  to get that right, it’s all very much fun; very invigorating; very satisfying. And,
+  hopefully, in the end, I did it as well as I could do it. I leave that up to others
+  to decide but that was certainly my goal and I enjoyed every minute of it along
+  the way.\nJH: What about the future of the court? You’re not on it, obviously, anymore,
+  but thinking about challenges, hopes; any thoughts come to mind about the future?\nAP:
+  My hope would be that they continue to be independent; that they continue to act
+  impartially and understand that it is about the exercise of judgment and if the
+  court’s members can do that it’ll have a bright future. And there’s something about,
+  at least from my experience on the court looking back and looking forward, I think
+  there’s a pretty good chance that things will continue in that regard as they have.\nThe
+  court’s leadership understands. I had the good fortune to serve with, let me think—I
+  knew the number exactly at one time. Let’s see—one, two three—I can’t remember the
+  exact number—six or seven or eight—\n01:50:00 JH: Chief justices?\nAP: chief justices
+  and each one of them got it. They were all different but each one of them understood
+  how important it is for our court to maintain its independence and its impartiality
+  and to make decisions based on the law and the facts and their best judgment and
+  not on the way the wind is blowing today. We’ve been lucky to have really good people,
+  both at the chief justice, as chief justices, and as associate justices and I, to
+  be included in that group is pretty special.\nJH: You know, I want to definitely,
+  before we close out, give you an opportunity to speak to your late wife Diane’s
+  [Diane Sims Page (1944-September 30, 2018)], role in your career.\nAP: Well, I mentioned
+  earlier about that forty thousand dollars I lost on the vending machines?\nJH: Yeah,
+  that’s right.\nAP: The company that owned the vending machines was a subsidiary
+  of General Mills.\nJH: I know where this is going now.\nAP: And, long story short,
+  I was in the lobby at General Mills one day, having left the meeting and left my
+  car keys and everything else in the meeting and I’m sitting, waiting for somebody
+  to bring them back to me and Diane walks into a meeting that she was going to there.
+  I got introduced to her and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Absolutely
+  the best thing that ever happened to me. She is the love of my life; she kept me
+  grounded at the same time lifting me up. She had this magic ability to lift people
+  up, no matter who they 24\nwere; no matter what the circumstances were. She had
+  incredible insight into people and she is in large measure the key to much of the
+  success that I’ve had. She was there every step of the way, allowing me, encouraging
+  me, supporting me. And, as I say, I couldn’t have been luckier to have met her,
+  fallen in love with her and spent the years that we had together. And she was one
+  of those people who—I have ideas. She was a doer.\nJH: Executor.\nAP: Absolutely,
+  and it wasn’t, you know, When are you going to get this done? It’s, Why wasn’t this
+  done yesterday? Well, because we just found out that we had to do it today. She
+  was in a sense, driven and driven to do good; driven to make this world a better
+  place, that’s for sure. And I got lucky.\n01:55:00 JH: Well, you have retired from
+  the court but you’re busy.\nAP: I am busy.\nJH: And so I’ve got to ask, what’s next?
+  What’s next for Justice Page?\nAP: Well, there’s still plenty of work to do with
+  the Page Education Foundation and beyond that, I’m trying to figure out what I’m
+  going to do when I grow up. I haven’t sorted that out yet but I spend a lot of time
+  in schools and classrooms still, talking to young children. As you know, I’ve had
+  the good fortune to be able to write three children’s books with my youngest daughter
+  and we’ve got to get on to book four.\nJH: I was going to ask; that was my next
+  question.\nAP: We’ve got to get on to book four.\nJH: More work to be done.\nAP:
+  More work to be done.\nJH: And Justice Page Middle School? I mean, it seems you
+  spend time—I see pictures and things and you’re really engaged with the school.\nAP:
+  I am engaged with the school. The school is magic. You know, sixth, seventh, eighth
+  graders—they energize me still. They keep me going. And I also have four grandchildren
+  that do the same thing.\nJH: Being a grandfather, a job in and of itself.\nAP: Yes.\nJH:
+  Well, I think that’s a good place to close. Unless you have any other thoughts.
+  We’ve had a good conversation so thanks for sharing your insights today. And thank
+  you, I think in 25\nthinking about this conversation through the arc from beginning
+  to end and the focus on the Minnesota Supreme Court, I want to and then I thank
+  and we all want to thank you for your service on the Supreme Court, too.\nAP: Well,
+  thank you for that, but I can’t articulate how much I loved serving on the court
+  and being able to serve the people of this state. I can’t articulate how honored
+  I am that the people of this state gave me the opportunity to do it and I don’t
+  know—well, let me just back up. You know, one of the humbling things about serving
+  is you’re there; you’re working on cases and you’re looking at cases from 1860,
+  trying to figure out what the law is today because it’s grounded in something that
+  took place back then. The idea that cases that I worked on when I was on the court
+  will be used one hundred fifty, two hundred years from now, that the law will be
+  grounded in something that I was a part of during my tenure, it’s almost overwhelming.\nJH:
+  It’s an awesome thought.\nAP: I just hope that I didn’t goof it up so that hopefully
+  what I did; what we did when I was on the court will make their jobs easier.\nJH:
+  Sure. A good note to end on.\nAP: Thank you.\nJH: Thank you, appreciate it. It was
+  good to talk to you Justice Page.\nAP: Good to see you, Jeff.\nEnd of Recording\n02:00:18
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+rights_uri_ssi: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
+rights_status_ssi: In Copyright
+rights_statement_ssi: This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You
+  are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyrightand related
+  rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission
+  from the rights-holder(s).
+iiif_manifest_url_ssi: "/iiif/sll:22548/manifest.json"
+timestamp: '2024-08-19T00:34:26.882Z'
+captions_ts: '{"1_fisppzr2":"1\n00:00:00.720 --> 00:00:05.680\nAll right. It''s\nFebruary
+  19, 2019,\n\n2\n00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:07.600\nand I''m at the Continuing Legal\n\n3\n00:00:07.600
+  --> 00:00:10.320\nEducation Center\nin Minneapolis to\n\n4\n00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:12.040\nInterview
+  Retired\nMinnesota Supreme\n\n5\n00:00:12.040 --> 00:00:13.660\nCourt Justice Allen
+  Page\n\n6\n00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:17.140\nfor the Minnesota Supreme\nCourt Oral
+  History Project.\n\n7\n00:00:17.140 --> 00:00:19.380\nProject is sponsored\nby the
+  Minnesota\n\n8\n00:00:19.380 --> 00:00:21.019\nSupreme Court\nHistorical Society
+  and\n\n9\n00:00:21.019 --> 00:00:22.399\nits Preservation Committee in\n\n10\n00:00:22.399
+  --> 00:00:25.159\ncooperation with the\nMinnesota State Law Library.\n\n11\n00:00:25.159
+  --> 00:00:27.019\nMy name is Jeff Hol.\n\n12\n00:00:27.019 --> 00:00:29.160\nI''m
+  a practicing attorney\nhere in Minnesota,\n\n13\n00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:33.340\nand
+  I clerked for\nJustice Page 2012-2013,\n\n14\n00:00:33.340 --> 00:00:36.065\nand
+  I''ll be conducting\nthe interview today.\n\n15\n00:00:36.065 --> 00:00:37.790\nThank
+  you for coming today,\n\n16\n00:00:37.790 --> 00:00:39.450\nJustice Page and for\nagreeing
+  to share\n\n17\n00:00:39.450 --> 00:00:42.810\nyour experiences and insights\non
+  your years in the Court.\n\n18\n00:00:42.810 --> 00:00:45.449\nWell, thank you for
+  inviting\n\n19\n00:00:45.449 --> 00:00:48.110\nme and hopefully we can\nhave a fun
+  conversation.\n\n20\n00:00:48.110 --> 00:00:51.769\nAgreed. So let''s jump right
+  in.\n\n21\n00:00:51.769 --> 00:00:55.310\nI know you graduated from\nlaw school
+  in and around\n\n22\n00:00:55.310 --> 00:00:59.710\n1978 and served on the\nSupreme
+  Court 993-2015.\n\n23\n00:00:59.710 --> 00:01:01.869\nBut I want to start\nby asking
+  you about\n\n24\n00:01:01.869 --> 00:01:03.170\nyour earlier life before\n\n25\n00:01:03.170
+  --> 00:01:04.710\nwe talk about your\nyears on the Court.\n\n26\n00:01:04.710 -->
+  00:01:07.570\nSure. So I wonder if you\ncould just start us off by\n\n27\n00:01:07.570
+  --> 00:01:08.690\ntalking a little bit\n\n28\n00:01:08.690 --> 00:01:12.140\nabout
+  your family and\nwhere you grew up.\n\n29\n00:01:12.140 --> 00:01:14.629\nWas born
+  in C Kenton, Ohio.\n\n30\n00:01:14.629 --> 00:01:17.309\nI was the fourth\nof four
+  children.\n\n31\n00:01:17.309 --> 00:01:25.949\nMy mother was a worked as an\nattendant
+  in a country club.\n\n32\n00:01:25.949 --> 00:01:30.189\nAnd my father various jobs\n\n33\n00:01:30.189
+  --> 00:01:37.530\nfrom operating jukeboxes to\n\n34\n00:01:37.530 --> 00:01:41.630\nrunning
+  a bar, that\nsort of thing.\n\n35\n00:01:43.190 --> 00:01:47.849\nI''d say I was
+  the fourth\nof four children.\n\n36\n00:01:47.849 --> 00:01:50.950\nTwo sisters
+  and a brother.\n\n37\n00:01:50.950 --> 00:01:51.670\nOkay.\n\n38\n00:01:51.670 -->
+  00:02:02.589\nU My childhood was pretty\nhappy one, pretty uneventful.\n\n39\n00:02:02.589
+  --> 00:02:09.799\nNot Not much exciting\nto talk about.\n\n40\n00:02:09.920 -->
+  00:02:14.280\nWe weren''t the\nwealthiest of families,\n\n41\n00:02:14.280 --> 00:02:16.619\nbut
+  we weren''t the post either.\n\n42\n00:02:16.619 --> 00:02:21.419\nMy parents neither
+  one\n\n43\n00:02:21.419 --> 00:02:26.260\nhad the opportunity to go to\nschool beyond
+  high school,\n\n44\n00:02:26.260 --> 00:02:30.999\nand they emphasized for me\nand
+  my brother and my sisters\n\n45\n00:02:30.999 --> 00:02:35.560\nthe importance of
+  education\n\n46\n00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:40.399\nand the importance of\nbeing good
+  citizens.\n\n47\n00:02:40.399 --> 00:02:43.259\nAnd in their own way,\n\n48\n00:02:43.259
+  --> 00:02:47.499\nsomething that I\nthink stuck with me.\n\n49\n00:02:47.499 -->
+  00:02:49.799\nThey talked about and\n\n50\n00:02:49.799 --> 00:02:53.859\nemphasized
+  the importance\nof seeking excellence.\n\n51\n00:02:53.859 --> 00:02:56.459\nNow
+  they didn''t say it that way.\n\n52\n00:02:56.459 --> 00:02:59.679\nRight. But I
+  think\n\n53\n00:02:59.679 --> 00:03:03.619\nthat''s the bottom line of\nwhat they
+  were talking about.\n\n54\n00:03:03.619 --> 00:03:08.399\nThey would always and
+  I can\nhear them now telling me,\n\n55\n00:03:09.320 --> 00:03:11.499\nwhatever
+  you do in life,\n\n56\n00:03:11.499 --> 00:03:12.819\ndo it as well as you can.\n\n57\n00:03:12.819
+  --> 00:03:16.500\nMm. If you''re going to\nbe a garbage collector,\n\n58\n00:03:16.500
+  --> 00:03:19.899\nbe the best garbage\ncollector. You can be.\n\n59\n00:03:19.899
+  --> 00:03:23.380\nIf you''re going to be a doctor,\n\n60\n00:03:23.380 --> 00:03:25.599\nbe
+  the best doctor you can be.\n\n61\n00:03:25.599 --> 00:03:29.400\nNot as good as
+  the next\ndoctor or garbage collector,\n\n62\n00:03:29.400 --> 00:03:30.979\nbut
+  the best one you can be.\n\n63\n00:03:30.979 --> 00:03:38.399\nRight. And that''s
+  something\n\n64\n00:03:38.399 --> 00:03:43.239\nthat they preached and I think,\n\n65\n00:03:43.239
+  --> 00:03:44.840\nhas served me well over time.\n\n66\n00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:50.289\nYeah.
+  I think I recall\nyou talking about,\n\n67\n00:03:50.289 --> 00:03:52.349\nyou know,
+  at a pretty young age,\n\n68\n00:03:52.349 --> 00:03:56.869\nhaving some experiences\nor
+  influences that sort\n\n69\n00:03:56.869 --> 00:03:58.929\nof made you think that\nyou
+  might want to be\n\n70\n00:03:58.929 --> 00:04:01.530\na lawyer someday. Talk\nabout
+  that a little bit.\n\n71\n00:04:01.530 --> 00:04:05.069\nI very early on,\n\n72\n00:04:05.069
+  --> 00:04:08.769\num when, you know,\n\n73\n00:04:08.769 --> 00:04:10.309\nwhen
+  I was eight, nine,\n\n74\n00:04:10.309 --> 00:04:11.830\n10-years-old, people would
+  ask\n\n75\n00:04:11.830 --> 00:04:13.749\nme what I wanted to\ndo when I grew up.\n\n76\n00:04:13.749
+  --> 00:04:16.350\nAnd I would say I\nwanted to be a lawyer.\n\n77\n00:04:16.350
+  --> 00:04:19.709\nAnd, you know, what\n8-year-old knows?\n\n78\n00:04:19.709 -->
+  00:04:23.070\nRight. Really what they want\nto do when they grow up.\n\n79\n00:04:23.070
+  --> 00:04:26.589\nBut as I noted,\n\n80\n00:04:26.589 --> 00:04:28.689\nI grew up
+  in Kenton, Ohio.\n\n81\n00:04:28.689 --> 00:04:34.769\nIt was a town built on heavy\nindustry,
+  primarily steel.\n\n82\n00:04:34.769 --> 00:04:37.030\nAnd I had an uncle who\n\n83\n00:04:37.030
+  --> 00:04:40.079\nspent 40 years working\nin the steel Mill.\n\n84\n00:04:40.079
+  --> 00:04:43.589\nAnd I knew intuitively\n\n85\n00:04:43.589 --> 00:04:47.470\nthat
+  that''s not something\nthat I wanted to do. Yeah.\n\n86\n00:04:47.470 --> 00:04:51.730\nI
+  mean, nothing wrong with\nworking in steel mills,\n\n87\n00:04:51.730 --> 00:04:55.629\nbut
+  from my 8-year-old eyes,\n\n88\n00:04:55.629 --> 00:04:58.150\nthe work was dirty.\n\n89\n00:04:58.150
+  --> 00:05:05.370\nIt was hard. It was\ndangerous and repetitious.\n\n90\n00:05:05.370
+  --> 00:05:11.130\nAnd somehow I knew that that\ndidn''t fit me. I''d heard\n\n91\n00:05:11.190
+  --> 00:05:18.890\nStories about lawyers,\nthat you know,\n\n92\n00:05:18.890 -->
+  00:05:21.289\nfrom not that I\nknew any lawyers,\n\n93\n00:05:21.289 --> 00:05:23.189\nthat
+  had any lawyers\nin my family\n\n94\n00:05:23.189 --> 00:05:27.289\nor my family
+  really\nknew any lawyers.\n\n95\n00:05:27.289 --> 00:05:30.690\nYeah. But the impression
+  in\n\n96\n00:05:30.690 --> 00:05:32.030\nthe community I grew up\n\n97\n00:05:32.030
+  --> 00:05:34.689\nwas that lawyers\ndidn''t work too hard,\n\n98\n00:05:34.689 -->
+  00:05:36.490\nmade lots of money,\n\n99\n00:05:36.490 --> 00:05:38.229\ndrove big
+  fancy cars,\n\n100\n00:05:38.229 --> 00:05:39.410\nlived in big houses,\n\n101\n00:05:39.410
+  --> 00:05:42.904\nand went out and played golf\nevery Wednesday afternoon.\n\n102\n00:05:42.904
+  --> 00:05:44.899\nWell, for the 8-year-old mind,\n\n103\n00:05:44.899 --> 00:05:50.640\nbalancing
+  fancy cars and\ndangerous and dirty work.\n\n104\n00:05:50.640 --> 00:05:52.699\nWhich
+  do I choose?\nWhich do I choose?\n\n105\n00:05:52.699 --> 00:05:54.719\nIt becomes
+  real simple.\n\n106\n00:05:54.719 --> 00:05:58.759\nI also grew up watching\nPerry
+  Mason. Mm hmm.\n\n107\n00:05:58.759 --> 00:06:04.439\nAnd so I had a very\nrudimentary
+  sense\n\n108\n00:06:04.439 --> 00:06:08.379\nof what the law is about\nfrom that
+  television show.\n\n109\n00:06:08.379 --> 00:06:16.999\nAnd finally, something that,\ninfluenced
+  me greatly.\n\n110\n00:06:16.999 --> 00:06:18.600\nYou have to remember that I grew\n\n111\n00:06:18.600
+  --> 00:06:23.239\nup I was 8-year-old,\n8-years-old in 1954?\n\n112\n00:06:23.239
+  --> 00:06:28.060\nRight. At the time,\n\n113\n00:06:28.060 --> 00:06:35.539\nour
+  country was grounded in\nstate sponsored segregation.\n\n114\n00:06:35.580 --> 00:06:40.669\nAnd
+  In 1954,\n\n115\n00:06:40.669 --> 00:06:42.029\nthe Supreme Court decided\n\n116\n00:06:42.029
+  --> 00:06:44.249\nBrown versus the\nBoard of Education.\n\n117\n00:06:44.249 -->
+  00:06:46.890\nI can remember reading\n\n118\n00:06:46.890 --> 00:06:50.810\nnewspaper
+  stories about\nhearing people talk about it.\n\n119\n00:06:50.810 --> 00:06:57.249\nAnd
+  again, not that I\nunderstood it fully,\n\n120\n00:06:57.249 --> 00:07:01.350\nbut
+  it gave me a sense\nof the power that\n\n121\n00:07:01.350 --> 00:07:07.030\nthe
+  law has that if\n\n122\n00:07:07.030 --> 00:07:10.790\nthe courts through the law\n\n123\n00:07:10.790
+  --> 00:07:15.429\ncould essentially\nsound the death knell\n\n124\n00:07:15.429
+  --> 00:07:19.790\nfor state sponsored segregation.\n\n125\n00:07:20.230 --> 00:07:29.329\nIt
+  had the power to change\nhow people treat one another.\n\n126\n00:07:29.329 -->
+  00:07:31.990\nYeah. And that''s something\n\n127\n00:07:31.990 --> 00:07:36.930\nthat
+  I grew up and\nhad an interest in.\n\n128\n00:07:36.930 --> 00:07:39.550\nAs I got
+  older,\n\n129\n00:07:40.070 --> 00:07:42.830\nI was disabused of\n\n130\n00:07:42.830
+  --> 00:07:45.990\nthe idea that lawyers\ndidn''t work hard.\n\n131\n00:07:47.080
+  --> 00:07:51.020\nOr that they necessarily\nmade lots and lots of money.\n\n132\n00:07:51.020
+  --> 00:07:55.299\nRight. But I also developed\n\n133\n00:07:55.299 --> 00:07:57.360\nthe
+  sense that the law\n\n134\n00:07:57.400 --> 00:08:00.700\nwas about solving problems\nand
+  helping people.\n\n135\n00:08:00.700 --> 00:08:07.900\nYeah. And that''s also something\nthat
+  resonated with me.\n\n136\n00:08:07.900 --> 00:08:08.839\nYeah.\n\n137\n00:08:08.839
+  --> 00:08:15.260\nAnd so That was\n\n138\n00:08:15.260 --> 00:08:17.780\nsort of
+  my dream for the future\n\n139\n00:08:17.780 --> 00:08:22.560\nand never lost it,\nnever
+  lost it.\n\n140\n00:08:22.560 --> 00:08:25.899\nAnd again, you know,\n\n141\n00:08:25.899
+  --> 00:08:28.660\n1954, there was Brown.\n\n142\n00:08:28.660 --> 00:08:31.979\nRight.
+  Along the way,\n\n143\n00:08:31.979 --> 00:08:39.020\nthere were there\nwas Little
+  Rock.\n\n144\n00:08:39.020 --> 00:08:42.419\nThere was Birmingham, there\n\n145\n00:08:42.419
+  --> 00:08:47.480\nwere full blown Civil\nRights movement,\n\n146\n00:08:47.480 -->
+  00:08:51.919\nan effort to change\n\n147\n00:08:53.980 --> 00:08:57.340\nor address
+  issues\nof race in ways\n\n148\n00:08:57.340 --> 00:09:00.040\nthat hadn''t been\nsuccessful
+  in the past?\n\n149\n00:09:00.040 --> 00:09:07.339\nYeah. And I''m sure that\n\n150\n00:09:07.339
+  --> 00:09:11.139\nall had some bearing\non my sense of\n\n151\n00:09:11.139 -->
+  00:09:12.579\nwhat the law is about and\n\n152\n00:09:12.579 --> 00:09:15.360\nwhat
+  could be done with the law.\n\n153\n00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:18.889\nYeah. You know,\n\n154\n00:09:18.889
+  --> 00:09:21.249\nthinking about Brown\nB board specifically,\n\n155\n00:09:21.249
+  --> 00:09:23.690\nI mean, what was Canton\n\n156\n00:09:23.690 --> 00:09:26.570\nlike
+  growing up sort of in\nterms of a racial makeup,\n\n157\n00:09:26.570 --> 00:09:30.429\nwas
+  it a pretty segregated\nin fact city? Absolutely.\n\n158\n00:09:30.429 --> 00:09:33.730\nYeah.
+  Absolutely. You knew\nwhere you belonged and didn''t\n\n159\n00:09:33.730 --> 00:09:40.610\nbelong
+  and it''s interesting.\n\n160\n00:09:40.610 --> 00:09:43.829\nI didn''t grow up\nin
+  an area where\n\n161\n00:09:43.829 --> 00:09:47.330\nthe segregation was race\nspun
+  or was state sponsored.\n\n162\n00:09:47.330 --> 00:09:50.910\nRight. But in practical
+  effect,\n\n163\n00:09:50.910 --> 00:09:53.890\nit might as well have been.\n\n164\n00:09:54.550
+  --> 00:09:59.589\nSo let''s talk briefly about\nCentral Catholic High school,\n\n165\n00:09:59.589
+  --> 00:10:03.190\nkind of your high school\nexperience in Canton,\n\n166\n00:10:03.190
+  --> 00:10:05.529\nwas it the plan\nfor you to kind of\n\n167\n00:10:05.529 --> 00:10:07.349\nattend
+  Central Catholic because\n\n168\n00:10:07.349 --> 00:10:09.189\nyour family did
+  or was\nit football related\n\n169\n00:10:09.189 --> 00:10:11.590\nor what was the
+  kind of\nthe trajectory there?\n\n170\n00:10:11.590 --> 00:10:15.870\nWell, I our
+  family\n\n171\n00:10:15.870 --> 00:10:19.650\nmoved from Canton out\ninto the countryside.\n\n172\n00:10:19.650
+  --> 00:10:21.089\nOkay.\n\n173\n00:10:21.089 --> 00:10:25.669\nWith an East Canton\nOhio
+  address,\n\n174\n00:10:25.670 --> 00:10:30.549\nbecause my parents felt that\n\n175\n00:10:31.600
+  --> 00:10:36.399\nThe education available in\n\n176\n00:10:36.399 --> 00:10:40.479\nthe
+  Canton City Schools wasn''t\nwhat they wanted for us.\n\n177\n00:10:40.580 --> 00:10:44.399\nAnd
+  my two older sisters,\n\n178\n00:10:44.399 --> 00:10:47.739\ninterestingly, didn''t
+  decide to\n\n179\n00:10:47.739 --> 00:10:49.559\ngo to school in East C Kenton.\n\n180\n00:10:49.559
+  --> 00:10:54.359\nThey and along with my\nparents concluded that\n\n181\n00:10:54.359
+  --> 00:10:55.759\nKenton Central Catholic had\n\n182\n00:10:55.759 --> 00:11:00.299\nthe
+  best possible education\nMm for our circumstances.\n\n183\n00:11:00.299 --> 00:11:05.020\nAnd
+  so they ended up going\nto Central Catholic.\n\n184\n00:11:05.020 --> 00:11:06.259\nOkay.\n\n185\n00:11:06.300
+  --> 00:11:13.159\nAnd then my brother who\nwas ahead of me, he went.\n\n186\n00:11:13.159
+  --> 00:11:17.520\nAnd so I was destined to follow.\n\n187\n00:11:17.520 --> 00:11:27.019\nAnd
+  I before I got\nto high school.\n\n188\n00:11:27.019 --> 00:11:31.780\nI hadn''t
+  really I wasn''t much\nof an athlete and as a kid.\n\n189\n00:11:31.780 --> 00:11:35.199\nI
+  wasn''t one of those kids\nthat everybody sort of\n\n190\n00:11:35.199 --> 00:11:38.880\nsought
+  after to come\nand be on their team.\n\n191\n00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:43.100\nBut
+  my brother went\nout for football,\n\n192\n00:11:43.100 --> 00:11:46.979\nand so
+  when I got\nthere, I went out.\n\n193\n00:11:46.979 --> 00:11:50.119\nAnd as it
+  turns out,\n\n194\n00:11:50.119 --> 00:11:52.989\nI evidently had some\naptitude
+  for it.\n\n195\n00:11:52.989 --> 00:11:54.799\nI''ve heard you use that phrase,\n\n196\n00:11:54.799
+  --> 00:11:56.459\nhave some aptitude\nfor it before, right?\n\n197\n00:11:56.459
+  --> 00:12:00.239\nYeah. So in terms\nof high school,\n\n198\n00:12:00.239 --> 00:12:02.559\ndo
+  you remember having an\nearly interest in sort of\n\n199\n00:12:02.559 --> 00:12:04.680\nthe
+  lawn politics and\nthose sort of things\n\n200\n00:12:04.680 --> 00:12:07.359\nor
+  were you still sort of\nnavigating and not quite sure?\n\n201\n00:12:07.359 -->
+  00:12:10.219\nI think I was always\ninterested in Yeah.\n\n202\n00:12:10.219 -->
+  00:12:14.779\nIn politics. From very early on.\n\n203\n00:12:16.660 --> 00:12:19.020\nBut
+  only in the sense\n\n204\n00:12:19.020 --> 00:12:24.359\nof trying to figure out
+  how\nit works to help people?\n\n205\n00:12:24.359 --> 00:12:28.000\nYeah. I never
+  had much\n\n206\n00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:32.980\ninterested in politics\nfor politics
+  sake.\n\n207\n00:12:35.020 --> 00:12:39.499\nAnd so when I got\nto high school,\n\n208\n00:12:39.499
+  --> 00:12:42.799\nI mean, the courses\nI loved were,\n\n209\n00:12:42.799 --> 00:12:46.259\nyou
+  know, back then,\nit was civics.\n\n210\n00:12:46.259 --> 00:12:48.879\nMm and government.\n\n211\n00:12:48.879
+  --> 00:12:51.780\nYeah. Those kind of classes.\n\n212\n00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:56.119\nSo
+  is there a point you\n\n213\n00:12:56.119 --> 00:12:58.259\nplay football at Central\nCatholic
+  and Yes.\n\n214\n00:12:58.259 --> 00:13:02.099\nIs there a point\neven in high school,\n\n215\n00:13:02.099
+  --> 00:13:07.439\nwhere you think that\nfootball could be used as\n\n216\n00:13:07.439
+  --> 00:13:12.959\na as a way to pursue\nan education,\n\n217\n00:13:12.959 --> 00:13:17.079\nor
+  does that realization not\nhappen until a bit later?\n\n218\n00:13:17.079 --> 00:13:24.320\nYou
+  know, Growing up in Canton,\n\n219\n00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:33.240\nthere was this
+  conflict between\nathletics and academics.\n\n220\n00:13:33.240 --> 00:13:43.039\nYeah.
+  There was a very strong\nemphasis on athletics,\n\n221\n00:13:43.039 --> 00:13:47.060\nparticularly
+  in the African\nAmerican community.\n\n222\n00:13:47.060 --> 00:13:51.659\nAnd so
+  I''m growing up,\n\n223\n00:13:51.659 --> 00:13:55.299\nnot much interested\nin
+  football and\n\n224\n00:13:55.299 --> 00:14:01.119\nseeing an inordinate\nnumber
+  of young men\n\n225\n00:14:01.119 --> 00:14:08.640\nwho had guess what\n\n226\n00:14:08.640
+  --> 00:14:11.299\nyou would call Stellar High\nSchool football careers?\n\n227\n00:14:11.299
+  --> 00:14:14.959\nYeah. Go off to college for\ntwo, three, four years,\n\n228\n00:14:14.959
+  --> 00:14:17.939\ncome back to Canton,\nhang out and ended\n\n229\n00:14:17.939
+  --> 00:14:19.380\nup hanging out on\nthe street corner\n\n230\n00:14:19.380 -->
+  00:14:21.219\nunemployed and unemployable.\n\n231\n00:14:21.219 --> 00:14:24.699\nAnd,
+  you know, I that\ndidn''t make sense to me.\n\n232\n00:14:24.699 --> 00:14:28.239\nYeah.
+  I couldn''t figure out.\n\n233\n00:14:28.239 --> 00:14:31.499\nAnd this was before
+  I\nstarted playing football.\n\n234\n00:14:31.499 --> 00:14:32.319\nYeah.\n\n235\n00:14:32.319
+  --> 00:14:41.519\nUm then I started\nplaying as I say,\n\n236\n00:14:41.519 -->
+  00:14:44.839\nmore by accident than by design.\n\n237\n00:14:44.839 --> 00:14:51.239\nAnd
+  I loved playing,\n\n238\n00:14:51.239 --> 00:14:54.839\nbut I was just playing\nfootball
+  because I loved it,\n\n239\n00:14:54.839 --> 00:14:57.479\nnot for any other purpose.\n\n240\n00:14:57.479
+  --> 00:15:06.299\nYeah. By the time\nI was a you know,\n\n241\n00:15:06.940 -->
+  00:15:12.639\nSophomore junior, there was\n\n242\n00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:14.559\ntalk
+  that I might be able to\n\n243\n00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:18.899\nobtain an athletic
+  scholarship.\n\n244\n00:15:22.590 --> 00:15:26.929\nAnd so I suppose that\naround
+  that time,\n\n245\n00:15:26.929 --> 00:15:29.609\nI started thinking about\nit,
+  it could be used.\n\n246\n00:15:29.609 --> 00:15:38.370\nRight. One of the in hindsight,\n\n247\n00:15:38.370
+  --> 00:15:44.949\none of the disappointments\nwhen I look back is\n\n248\n00:15:44.949
+  --> 00:15:54.629\nthat while I did okay as\na student in high school,\n\n249\n00:15:56.470
+  --> 00:16:01.429\nDid okay as a student\n\n250\n00:16:01.429 --> 00:16:04.589\nin
+  elementary and\njunior high school.\n\n251\n00:16:06.310 --> 00:16:08.970\nI did
+  it the easy way.\n\n252\n00:16:08.970 --> 00:16:14.949\nI I didn''t essentially,\n\n253\n00:16:14.949
+  --> 00:16:18.210\nI didn''t wasn''t there\nto learn how to learn.\n\n254\n00:16:18.210
+  --> 00:16:20.089\nI I wasn''t there to do the work.\n\n255\n00:16:20.089 --> 00:16:25.289\nAnd
+  I could do the work\nwithout learning how to learn?\n\n256\n00:16:25.289 --> 00:16:26.829\nYeah.
+  I could, you know,\n\n257\n00:16:26.829 --> 00:16:28.609\nanswer the questions and\n\n258\n00:16:28.609
+  --> 00:16:31.729\nwork through the math\nproblems and all of that.\n\n259\n00:16:31.729
+  --> 00:16:35.739\nBut you simply because you\n\n260\n00:16:35.739 --> 00:16:37.940\ncan
+  do the work doesn''t\n\n261\n00:16:37.940 --> 00:16:39.680\nmean that you''re really\nlearning
+  a whole lot.\n\n262\n00:16:39.680 --> 00:16:43.840\nMm. And I think the\nimportant
+  part of what goes\n\n263\n00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:45.859\non in schools in\n\n264\n00:16:45.859
+  --> 00:16:48.619\nthe education process is\nlearning how to learn.\n\n265\n00:16:48.619
+  --> 00:16:49.679\nYeah.\n\n266\n00:16:49.679 --> 00:16:54.779\nAnd so I sort of
+  missed that.\n\n267\n00:16:56.100 --> 00:17:01.099\nAnd so as in high school,\n\n268\n00:17:01.099
+  --> 00:17:04.100\nthe work got more difficult.\n\n269\n00:17:04.100 --> 00:17:07.099\nI
+  still, you know,\n\n270\n00:17:10.120 --> 00:17:13.239\nthrive to some degree.\n\n271\n00:17:13.239
+  --> 00:17:19.079\nBut had I learned how\nto learn early on,\n\n272\n00:17:19.600
+  --> 00:17:23.979\nI think I mean, I was\nfocused on going to school\n\n273\n00:17:23.979
+  --> 00:17:25.899\nbeyond high school\nbecause that was\n\n274\n00:17:25.899 -->
+  00:17:29.079\nthe emphasis my parents placed.\n\n275\n00:17:29.079 --> 00:17:36.639\nBut
+  if I had\n\n276\n00:17:38.720 --> 00:17:43.040\nsort of made that connection\n\n277\n00:17:43.040
+  --> 00:17:46.119\nto learning how to\nlearn early on.\n\n278\n00:17:46.119 --> 00:17:52.800\nI
+  might have had a little\nmore success academically.\n\n279\n00:17:53.400 --> 00:18:01.459\nNo
+  I don''t focus on that\nso much because, you know,\n\n280\n00:18:01.459 --> 00:18:05.899\nI
+  could have been done\nbetter in school,\n\n281\n00:18:05.899 --> 00:18:09.279\nbut
+  I would have been better\nprepared for the future.\n\n282\n00:18:09.279 --> 00:18:15.759\nRight.
+  As it turned out,\n\n283\n00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:18.399\nand I did okay. Yeah.\n\n284\n00:18:18.399
+  --> 00:18:22.879\nAnd ended up receiving a number\n\n285\n00:18:22.879 --> 00:18:27.399\nof
+  scholarship offers,\nathletic scholarship offers.\n\n286\n00:18:27.399 --> 00:18:34.900\nI
+  think had I had that Had\nI learned how to learn,\n\n287\n00:18:34.900 --> 00:18:37.539\nthere
+  might have been some\nacademic scholarships.\n\n288\n00:18:37.539 --> 00:18:39.600\nYeah.
+  In that Q also.\n\n289\n00:18:39.600 --> 00:18:44.939\nRight. Which gives\nyou choices,
+  right?\n\n290\n00:18:44.939 --> 00:18:48.899\nSure. But I had\n\n291\n00:18:48.899
+  --> 00:18:53.200\nthe opportunity to choose among\nsome pretty good schools,\n\n292\n00:18:53.200
+  --> 00:18:58.279\nand ultimately selected the\nUniversity of Notre Dame.\n\n293\n00:18:58.279
+  --> 00:19:01.400\nSo it''s a good\ntransition to Notre Dame\n\n294\n00:19:01.400
+  --> 00:19:04.579\nand talk a little bit about\nyour time in college.\n\n295\n00:19:04.579
+  --> 00:19:07.200\nWhy Notre Dame?\n\n296\n00:19:09.970 --> 00:19:12.229\nPrimarily
+  because of\n\n297\n00:19:12.229 --> 00:19:18.829\nits academic reputation\nand because
+  of\n\n298\n00:19:18.829 --> 00:19:25.709\nits reputation in terms\n\n299\n00:19:25.709
+  --> 00:19:32.410\nof how it interacted\nwith its alumni.\n\n300\n00:19:34.210 -->
+  00:19:39.590\nThey have an incredible\n\n301\n00:19:39.590 --> 00:19:41.169\nhad
+  then and continue to\n\n302\n00:19:41.169 --> 00:19:44.429\nhave an incredible\nalumni
+  association.\n\n303\n00:19:44.429 --> 00:19:53.569\nYeah, which provides any\nnumber
+  of benefits to\n\n304\n00:19:53.569 --> 00:19:58.349\npeople who graduate\nfrom
+  there in terms\n\n305\n00:19:58.349 --> 00:20:04.210\nof employment opportunities\nand
+  other kinds of support.\n\n306\n00:20:04.210 --> 00:20:09.159\nAnd um You know,\n\n307\n00:20:09.159
+  --> 00:20:12.479\nas they say that the schools\nthat I was choosing from,\n\n308\n00:20:12.479
+  --> 00:20:13.920\nthey were all good schools.\n\n309\n00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:15.120\nI
+  mean, it was Purdue,\n\n310\n00:20:15.120 --> 00:20:16.360\nit was Michigan state,\n\n311\n00:20:16.360
+  --> 00:20:23.680\nit was Michigan\nMinnesota Ohio state.\n\n312\n00:20:23.680 -->
+  00:20:28.100\nSo it wasn''t like they didn''t\n\n313\n00:20:28.100 --> 00:20:33.800\nhave
+  some of the things that\nNotre Dame had to offer.\n\n314\n00:20:33.800 --> 00:20:39.359\nBut
+  it It was it\nwas sort of looking\n\n315\n00:20:39.359 --> 00:20:45.400\nbeyond
+  the college years.\n\n316\n00:20:45.400 --> 00:20:52.419\nThat was, I think, ultimately\nthe
+  deciding factor.\n\n317\n00:20:53.540 --> 00:20:58.139\nThat coupled with, I\nhad
+  no interest in\n\n318\n00:20:58.139 --> 00:21:02.900\ngoing to Ohio State.\nWho
+  knows why?\n\n319\n00:21:03.900 --> 00:21:05.939\nAnd\n\n320\n00:21:10.410 --> 00:21:17.089\nNotre
+  Dame also had this\nreputation football wise.\n\n321\n00:21:17.089 --> 00:21:24.569\nSure.
+  That at least at the time,\n\n322\n00:21:24.570 --> 00:21:30.869\nwas about as good
+  as it.\n\n323\n00:21:30.869 --> 00:21:39.579\nYeah. I to to be a\nBlack kid from
+  Canton,\n\n324\n00:21:39.579 --> 00:21:46.399\nOhio going to play a in the\nhouse
+  that Newt Rockne built.\n\n325\n00:21:46.399 --> 00:21:53.200\nYeah. That''s sort
+  of put\nstars in your eyes. For sure.\n\n326\n00:21:53.200 --> 00:21:55.739\nSo
+  was that an exciting I mean,\n\n327\n00:21:55.739 --> 00:21:57.780\nexciting time,
+  I would\nsuspect, in a lot of ways,\n\n328\n00:21:57.780 --> 00:21:59.639\nwas it
+  a nerve racking\ntime transitioning\n\n329\n00:21:59.639 --> 00:22:01.360\nfrom
+  Canton and leaving home\n\n330\n00:22:01.360 --> 00:22:05.759\nor It was it was
+  an exciting\ntime, a very difficult time.\n\n331\n00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:12.059\nI
+  you know, just going\nback to Central Catholic.\n\n332\n00:22:12.059 --> 00:22:19.479\nSure.
+  I was one of two,\n\n333\n00:22:19.479 --> 00:22:21.719\nI think, maybe three,\n\n334\n00:22:21.719
+  --> 00:22:27.699\nmaybe four African American\nkids in my graduating class.\n\n335\n00:22:29.260
+  --> 00:22:31.719\nGoing off to Notre Dame,\n\n336\n00:22:31.719 --> 00:22:34.359\nit
+  was going to be, you know,\n\n337\n00:22:34.359 --> 00:22:37.339\nthere were a few
+  more,\nbut not many more.\n\n338\n00:22:37.339 --> 00:22:48.179\nRight. So and it
+  was at a time,\n\n339\n00:22:50.600 --> 00:22:56.580\nthat sort of our\nnational
+  economy\n\n340\n00:22:56.580 --> 00:22:58.500\nwas in sort of a\ndownward spiral.\n\n341\n00:22:58.500
+  --> 00:23:02.159\nMm. And Notre Dame is,\n\n342\n00:23:02.159 --> 00:23:04.980\nyou
+  know, is in\nSouth Bend, Indiana.\n\n343\n00:23:04.980 --> 00:23:10.479\nAnd they
+  were also a heavy\nindustry town and one of\n\n344\n00:23:10.479 --> 00:23:17.209\nthe
+  One of the main employers\nthere was Stuter Baker,\n\n345\n00:23:17.209 --> 00:23:19.449\nthe
+  auto manufacturer. Yeah.\n\n346\n00:23:19.449 --> 00:23:21.589\nAnd they went out
+  of\n\n347\n00:23:21.589 --> 00:23:24.670\nbusiness just about\nthe time I got there.\n\n348\n00:23:25.310
+  --> 00:23:29.509\nIt was my first time\naway from home, really.\n\n349\n00:23:29.509
+  --> 00:23:32.670\nI then a kid who''d\ngone off to camp\n\n350\n00:23:32.670 -->
+  00:23:36.450\nand spent any time\naway from home.\n\n351\n00:23:36.450 --> 00:23:39.610\nSo
+  it was all new to me. Mm hmm.\n\n352\n00:23:39.610 --> 00:23:46.510\nU And it was
+  also,\n\n353\n00:23:49.390 --> 00:23:52.569\nyou know, the first\ntime that I''d
+  really\n\n354\n00:23:52.569 --> 00:23:55.829\nbeen put in a position where\nI''m
+  responsible for myself.\n\n355\n00:23:55.829 --> 00:23:58.729\nAs every kid who
+  goes\noff the school is.\n\n356\n00:23:58.729 --> 00:24:00.310\nThat''s a big change.\n\n357\n00:24:00.310
+  --> 00:24:05.830\nA huge change. And\nso it was difficult.\n\n358\n00:24:05.830
+  --> 00:24:12.549\nAnd one of the things\nI didn''t realize was,\n\n359\n00:24:17.240
+  --> 00:24:21.059\nNotre Dame was not\n\n360\n00:24:21.059 --> 00:24:26.479\nthe
+  most progressive\nplace to go to school.\n\n361\n00:24:26.479 --> 00:24:30.439\nAnd
+  so that was\n\n362\n00:24:30.439 --> 00:24:33.439\nsomething that was a\nlittle
+  different for me,\n\n363\n00:24:33.439 --> 00:24:35.539\nand having to adjust to
+  that.\n\n364\n00:24:35.539 --> 00:24:38.019\nYeah. I think it was there\n\n365\n00:24:38.019
+  --> 00:24:40.479\nwere some difficult transitions.\n\n366\n00:24:41.120 --> 00:24:44.620\nI
+  was speaking to\nkind of the economy\n\n367\n00:24:44.620 --> 00:24:47.839\nin a
+  downturn, thinking\nabout that time,\n\n368\n00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:49.600\ntoo,
+  and in a lot of ways,\n\n369\n00:24:49.600 --> 00:24:52.079\nthe Civil Rights Movement\nis
+  sort of at its apex,\n\n370\n00:24:52.079 --> 00:24:53.779\nand the Civil Right,\n\n371\n00:24:53.779
+  --> 00:24:55.180\nyou know, the Voting Rights Act.\n\n372\n00:24:55.180 --> 00:24:56.719\nAnd
+  so was that a part of\n\n373\n00:24:56.719 --> 00:24:59.019\nthe kind of the\ncampus
+  conversation,\n\n374\n00:24:59.019 --> 00:25:02.519\nor do you recall\nanything
+  about that?\n\n375\n00:25:02.920 --> 00:25:07.560\nNot a little bit, but not much.\n\n376\n00:25:07.560
+  --> 00:25:15.870\nYou know, and Being on\nthe football team there,\n\n377\n00:25:15.870
+  --> 00:25:18.630\nyou really weren''t necessarily\n\n378\n00:25:18.630 --> 00:25:21.569\nthat
+  much a part of the\ncampus conversation.\n\n379\n00:25:21.569 --> 00:25:24.430\nEven
+  though you were you lived\n\n380\n00:25:24.430 --> 00:25:27.709\nin the dorms with
+  everybody\nelse and went to Yeah,\n\n381\n00:25:27.709 --> 00:25:29.230\nmeals with
+  everybody else\n\n382\n00:25:29.230 --> 00:25:35.070\nand went to classes\nwith
+  everybody else.\n\n383\n00:25:35.470 --> 00:25:41.030\nYour focal point was football.\n\n384\n00:25:41.030
+  --> 00:25:47.350\nAnd so you weren''t\nreally much connected.\n\n385\n00:25:50.460
+  --> 00:25:53.679\nIt was really kind of\nan interesting time in\n\n386\n00:25:53.679
+  --> 00:25:56.799\nthat respect because, I mean,\n\n387\n00:25:56.799 --> 00:26:00.599\nthe
+  civil rights movement\n\n388\n00:26:00.599 --> 00:26:06.999\nwas going through some\nchallenging
+  times.\n\n389\n00:26:06.999 --> 00:26:10.719\nYeah. About the same time\n\n390\n00:26:10.719
+  --> 00:26:17.159\nthe Vietnam War protest started.\n\n391\n00:26:17.159 --> 00:26:19.819\nMm
+  hm. And so it''s sort of like\n\n392\n00:26:19.819 --> 00:26:24.279\nyou''re in
+  this bubble\nlooking out on all of this.\n\n393\n00:26:24.279 --> 00:26:26.379\nUm\n\n394\n00:26:30.040
+  --> 00:26:33.499\nAnd not having a direct\nconnection to it,\n\n395\n00:26:33.499
+  --> 00:26:35.659\nbut having the opportunity\nto at least see it.\n\n396\n00:26:35.659
+  --> 00:26:40.259\nYeah. And think about\nit, but not engage.\n\n397\n00:26:40.259
+  --> 00:26:42.179\nWell, it''s interesting\nyou mentioned that,\n\n398\n00:26:42.179
+  --> 00:26:43.700\nbecause if you yeah,\n\n399\n00:26:43.700 --> 00:26:46.040\nthinking
+  about it, the\nfocus on football,\n\n400\n00:26:46.040 --> 00:26:49.460\nand you''re
+  a young kid\nstill in transitioning,\n\n401\n00:26:49.460 --> 00:26:53.509\nso maybe
+  not a lot of capacity\n\n402\n00:26:53.509 --> 00:26:55.429\nfor a lot of other
+  stuff\n\n403\n00:26:55.429 --> 00:26:58.630\nthat''s the focus\nin a lot of ways.\n\n404\n00:26:58.710
+  --> 00:27:02.669\nEven if you had the instinct,\n\n405\n00:27:02.669 --> 00:27:05.549\nhm,
+  they took up your time.\n\n406\n00:27:05.549 --> 00:27:07.689\nYeah. And your energy,\n\n407\n00:27:07.689
+  --> 00:27:10.810\nboth physical and emotional.\n\n408\n00:27:10.810 --> 00:27:12.069\nYeah.\n\n409\n00:27:19.270
+  --> 00:27:23.970\nAnd so it was in that respect,\n\n410\n00:27:23.970 --> 00:27:26.830\nI
+  missed out on a lot.\n\n411\n00:27:27.510 --> 00:27:36.849\nBut, you know, I I can''t\nremember
+  the precise timing.\n\n412\n00:27:36.849 --> 00:27:41.729\nBut my freshman year,\n\n413\n00:27:41.729
+  --> 00:27:44.069\nthe start of my freshman year,\n\n414\n00:27:44.069 --> 00:27:47.970\nwent
+  to football training camp\n\n415\n00:27:47.970 --> 00:27:51.209\na couple of weeks\nbefore
+  school started.\n\n416\n00:27:51.209 --> 00:27:54.869\nAnd I think we got there\neither
+  just before or just\n\n417\n00:27:54.869 --> 00:28:00.110\nafter the March in Washington.\n\n418\n00:28:01.590
+  --> 00:28:07.009\nI think school had started\nby the time the bombing at\n\n419\n00:28:07.009
+  --> 00:28:12.689\nthe 16th Street Baptist Church\noccurred in Birmingham.\n\n420\n00:28:12.689
+  --> 00:28:16.909\nAnd so you had all of\nthese things going on.\n\n421\n00:28:19.590
+  --> 00:28:23.089\nAs I noted that you''re sort\nof watching from afar.\n\n422\n00:28:23.089
+  --> 00:28:30.369\nYeah. And understanding\nthat they affect you,\n\n423\n00:28:30.369
+  --> 00:28:34.090\nbut sort of not directly?\n\n424\n00:28:34.090 --> 00:28:36.249\nFeeling
+  removed a little bit.\n\n425\n00:28:36.249 --> 00:28:46.510\nYeah. While the focus
+  on\nfootball bore some fruit.\n\n426\n00:28:46.510 --> 00:28:50.109\nNational Championship\nwas
+  it your senior year?\n\n427\n00:28:50.109 --> 00:28:54.230\nYes. I I should note.\n\n428\n00:28:56.030
+  --> 00:28:59.069\nI think it was in the\n\n429\n00:29:03.280 --> 00:29:05.879\nI
+  think it was still while I was\n\n430\n00:29:05.879 --> 00:29:10.000\nthere or or
+  he was\nplanning to come.\n\n431\n00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:12.379\nOne of our speakers,\n\n432\n00:29:12.379
+  --> 00:29:14.579\none of the people who\nwas coming to campus to\n\n433\n00:29:14.579
+  --> 00:29:16.739\nspeak with George Wallace.\n\n434\n00:29:16.739 --> 00:29:21.100\nAh.
+  That got people engaged.\n\n435\n00:29:21.100 --> 00:29:24.320\nI got some attention.\nThat
+  got some attention.\n\n436\n00:29:24.400 --> 00:29:26.320\nDid did he come?\n\n437\n00:29:26.320
+  --> 00:29:30.079\nDo you remember I''m\n\n438\n00:29:30.079 --> 00:29:32.059\npretty
+  sure it was while\nI was still there.\n\n439\n00:29:32.059 --> 00:29:36.999\nInteresting.
+  Needless to\nsay I didn''t attend. Yeah.\n\n440\n00:29:37.520 --> 00:29:47.010\nProbably
+  not a\nregret. No. So you''re\n\n441\n00:29:47.010 --> 00:29:49.810\ndrafted by
+  the Vikings\n\n442\n00:29:49.810 --> 00:29:53.830\nkind of at the close of\nyour
+  career at Notre Dame.\n\n443\n00:29:54.190 --> 00:29:57.549\nAnd kind of, you know,\nmoving
+  ahead a little bit,\n\n444\n00:29:57.549 --> 00:29:59.090\nthere''s obviously lots
+  to talk\n\n445\n00:29:59.090 --> 00:30:01.149\nabout that we could\ntalk about with
+  respect\n\n446\n00:30:01.149 --> 00:30:06.569\nto your professional career\nin the
+  NFL and It happened.\n\n447\n00:30:06.569 --> 00:30:07.829\nIt happened. It happened.\n\n448\n00:30:07.829
+  --> 00:30:09.749\nYou''ve talked about\na little bit, right?\n\n449\n00:30:09.749
+  --> 00:30:14.409\nBut I want to focus\non just what kind of\n\n450\n00:30:14.409
+  --> 00:30:16.709\none unique aspect that\nI was interested about\n\n451\n00:30:16.709
+  --> 00:30:20.549\nwas your participation in\nthe NFL Players Association.\n\n452\n00:30:21.750
+  --> 00:30:24.929\nSo it''s something\nthat I, you know,\n\n453\n00:30:24.929 -->
+  00:30:26.750\nI know you''ve talked\nabout before,\n\n454\n00:30:26.750 --> 00:30:28.330\nbut
+  I don''t you don''t\nhear it quite as often,\n\n455\n00:30:28.330 --> 00:30:30.589\ntoo.
+  So I was just curious.\n\n456\n00:30:30.990 --> 00:30:33.550\nYou''re playing with
+  the Vikings.\n\n457\n00:30:33.550 --> 00:30:35.929\nHow do you get involved in\nthe
+  players association\n\n458\n00:30:35.929 --> 00:30:38.010\nand what sort of your
+  role?\n\n459\n00:30:38.010 --> 00:30:45.149\nWell, the there had\n\n460\n00:30:45.149
+  --> 00:30:53.109\nbeen This is a long,\ncomplicated story. Okay.\n\n461\n00:30:53.109
+  --> 00:30:56.729\nLong too complicated for\nhere. It''s a big question.\n\n462\n00:30:57.610
+  --> 00:31:01.530\nThere had been various efforts\n\n463\n00:31:01.970 --> 00:31:08.010\non
+  the part of players\nto organize before 1968.\n\n464\n00:31:11.350 --> 00:31:16.229\n1960
+  of the league\n\n465\n00:31:18.230 --> 00:31:21.509\nis confronted with\nanother
+  football league,\n\n466\n00:31:21.509 --> 00:31:22.769\nthe American Football League.\n\n467\n00:31:22.769
+  --> 00:31:27.930\nRight. In 1966,\n\n468\n00:31:27.930 --> 00:31:31.749\nthose two
+  leagues merge\n\n469\n00:31:31.749 --> 00:31:35.210\nwith the merger\ntaking place
+  in 268.\n\n470\n00:31:35.210 --> 00:31:40.449\nIn 198, the players from\n\n471\n00:31:40.449
+  --> 00:31:42.209\nboth leagues come together\n\n472\n00:31:42.209 --> 00:31:43.210\nand
+  form\n\n473\n00:31:43.210 --> 00:31:46.409\nthe National Football\nLeague Players
+  Association.\n\n474\n00:31:46.409 --> 00:31:50.829\nThat was my second year\nin
+  the league? Right.\n\n475\n00:31:53.190 --> 00:31:59.930\nAnd somehow I either\n\n476\n00:31:59.930
+  --> 00:32:05.230\nvolunteered or agreed to serve\nas player representative.\n\n477\n00:32:06.710
+  --> 00:32:12.130\nAnd so I that''s how\nI got involved.\n\n478\n00:32:12.130 -->
+  00:32:16.229\nYeah. And Growing up in Canton,\n\n479\n00:32:16.229 --> 00:32:18.149\nI
+  was used to\n\n480\n00:32:18.149 --> 00:32:20.649\norganized labor and had\n\n481\n00:32:20.649
+  --> 00:32:23.309\na sort of a sense of\nwhat it was about.\n\n482\n00:32:23.309
+  --> 00:32:33.879\nAnd The other piece of\nit was that the reason\n\n483\n00:32:33.879
+  --> 00:32:36.219\nplayers wanted to come together\n\n484\n00:32:36.219 --> 00:32:46.160\nto
+  form a union\nwas because well,\n\n485\n00:32:46.160 --> 00:32:48.119\nthere are
+  a whole host of\nthem, not the least of\n\n486\n00:32:48.119 --> 00:32:50.259\nwhich
+  is players essentially had\n\n487\n00:32:50.259 --> 00:32:58.430\nno rights in terms
+  of\nwhere they could play?\n\n488\n00:32:58.430 --> 00:33:03.190\nYeah. Very little
+  ability\n\n489\n00:33:03.190 --> 00:33:06.789\nto impact how much\nthey were paid.\n\n490\n00:33:06.789
+  --> 00:33:11.610\nAnd then there were all these\n\n491\n00:33:12.570 --> 00:33:16.289\nwhat
+  I will call\nsilly little rules\n\n492\n00:33:16.289 --> 00:33:25.109\nthat were
+  imposed I\n\n493\n00:33:25.109 --> 00:33:28.409\nsuppose for as a\nmatter of control.\n\n494\n00:33:28.409
+  --> 00:33:32.089\nThat''s all I can\nthink of. Things like\n\n495\n00:33:34.170
+  --> 00:33:39.050\nyou can''t have a\nbeard or a mustache.\n\n496\n00:33:39.050 -->
+  00:33:40.389\nI guess you could\nhave a mustache,\n\n497\n00:33:40.389 --> 00:33:42.410\nbut
+  you couldn''t have a beard.\n\n498\n00:33:43.090 --> 00:33:53.189\nThings you know,\n\n499\n00:33:53.189
+  --> 00:33:57.110\nyou have to be at every meal,\n\n500\n00:33:57.110 --> 00:34:00.269\nwhether
+  you eat or not\nwant to eat or not.\n\n501\n00:34:00.269 --> 00:34:05.650\nYou have
+  to you can''t have\na telephone in your room.\n\n502\n00:34:05.650 --> 00:34:08.049\nAnd
+  this was before,\n\n503\n00:34:08.049 --> 00:34:11.869\nyou know, mobile phone.\n\n504\n00:34:11.869
+  --> 00:34:14.329\nRight. But you\ncouldn''t, you know,\n\n505\n00:34:14.329 -->
+  00:34:16.349\nhave the telephone\ncompany and put\n\n506\n00:34:16.349 --> 00:34:18.849\na
+  phone into your room\nduring training camp.\n\n507\n00:34:18.849 --> 00:34:22.209\nI
+  mean, though they''re just\na couple that come to mind.\n\n508\n00:34:22.209 -->
+  00:34:28.769\nSure. And so there were\n\n509\n00:34:28.769 --> 00:34:34.930\nreally
+  Lots of lots\n\n510\n00:34:34.930 --> 00:34:39.150\nof limitations on a player''s\nability
+  to be themselves.\n\n511\n00:34:39.150 --> 00:34:40.189\nYeah.\n\n512\n00:34:40.189
+  --> 00:34:44.569\nAnd players wanted\nto change that?\n\n513\n00:34:44.569 --> 00:34:52.910\nAnd
+  obviously, the ability\nto choose where you worked,\n\n514\n00:34:53.480 --> 00:34:57.899\nwould
+  have an impact on\nhow much you were paid?\n\n515\n00:34:57.899 --> 00:35:06.679\nUh
+  huh. And so I think for me,\n\n516\n00:35:06.679 --> 00:35:08.460\nat least in the
+  beginning,\n\n517\n00:35:08.460 --> 00:35:10.379\nit was sort of all of\n\n518\n00:35:10.379
+  --> 00:35:13.360\nthose little controls\nthat just drove me crazy.\n\n519\n00:35:13.360
+  --> 00:35:19.769\nYeah. Um, that got me involved.\n\n520\n00:35:19.769 --> 00:35:24.449\nAnd,
+  you know, once you can''t\nget just a little bit wet.\n\n521\n00:35:24.449 --> 00:35:26.489\nOnce
+  you''re in the\npool, you get.\n\n522\n00:35:26.489 --> 00:35:28.569\nRight. All
+  wet.\n\n523\n00:35:28.569 --> 00:35:30.989\nDid you enjoy it?\nOh, I loved it.\n\n524\n00:35:30.989
+  --> 00:35:34.030\nYeah. I loved it. It was\nfrustrating at times,\n\n525\n00:35:34.030
+  --> 00:35:41.419\nbut I think we laid\n\n526\n00:35:41.419 --> 00:35:51.220\nthe
+  groundwork for the freedom\nthat players have today.\n\n527\n00:35:51.220 --> 00:35:54.119\nWe
+  laid the groundwork for\n\n528\n00:35:54.119 --> 00:36:00.740\nplayers getting a
+  fair\nshare of the revenue.\n\n529\n00:36:00.740 --> 00:36:06.819\nWe laid the groundwork
+  that\n\n530\n00:36:06.819 --> 00:36:13.340\nallowed players to be\ntreated like
+  human beings.\n\n531\n00:36:13.340 --> 00:36:19.560\nYeah as opposed to\nsome sense
+  property.\n\n532\n00:36:20.760 --> 00:36:23.239\nAnd along the way,\n\n533\n00:36:23.239
+  --> 00:36:29.640\nI got to meet and work with\na bunch of great lawyers.\n\n534\n00:36:29.640
+  --> 00:36:38.720\nLaris, Gene Keating,\nEd Gen Ed Garvey.\n\n535\n00:36:38.960 -->
+  00:36:45.560\nI got to see the inside,\n\n536\n00:36:45.560 --> 00:36:48.099\nwhat
+  the law is all about,\n\n537\n00:36:48.099 --> 00:36:52.639\nand what good\nlawyering
+  looks like.\n\n538\n00:36:52.639 --> 00:36:56.600\nSo is it fair to say that\nthat
+  was an influence\n\n539\n00:36:56.600 --> 00:37:00.440\non a decision to\npursue
+  a career?\n\n540\n00:37:00.440 --> 00:37:04.219\nI was that just\n\n541\n00:37:04.219
+  --> 00:37:07.019\nconfirmed. That is\nsomething you wanted to do.\n\n542\n00:37:07.019
+  --> 00:37:09.659\nThat that was something\nthat I wanted to do.\n\n543\n00:37:11.420
+  --> 00:37:19.560\nI enrolled at Wayam Mitchell\nin the fall of 1968,\n\n544\n00:37:19.560
+  --> 00:37:22.780\nthe start of my second\nyear in the league.\n\n545\n00:37:26.440
+  --> 00:37:29.320\nIt was not pretty.\n\n546\n00:37:29.520 --> 00:37:31.839\nWhy
+  not?\n\n547\n00:37:32.320 --> 00:37:38.140\nWell, you know, you get that\nassignment
+  over the summer,\n\n548\n00:37:38.140 --> 00:37:39.639\nand there are like,\n\n549\n00:37:39.639
+  --> 00:37:42.239\n500 pages to read.\n\n550\n00:37:42.800 --> 00:37:46.000\nYou
+  try to read it, and\nnone of it makes sense,\n\n551\n00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:47.999\nand
+  you show up\n\n552\n00:37:47.999 --> 00:37:50.859\nthe first day and I don''t\nremember
+  what the class was,\n\n553\n00:37:50.859 --> 00:37:58.719\nbut The professor could
+  just\nas well be talking Greek.\n\n554\n00:37:58.719 --> 00:38:01.260\nYeah. As
+  English.\n\n555\n00:38:02.700 --> 00:38:08.579\nAnd you think I don''t understand\nwhat''s
+  happening here.\n\n556\n00:38:08.579 --> 00:38:12.700\nBecause it''s a it''s\na
+  different process.\n\n557\n00:38:12.700 --> 00:38:15.439\nSure. At least it was
+  a\ndifferent process from For sure.\n\n558\n00:38:15.439 --> 00:38:18.759\nWhat
+  my undergraduate\ndegree was Yeah, like.\n\n559\n00:38:18.759 --> 00:38:21.779\nAnd
+  I was not ready for it.\n\n560\n00:38:22.570 --> 00:38:26.169\nWas it well, you
+  said you\n\n561\n00:38:26.169 --> 00:38:29.770\nsecond year in the\nleague, playing.\n\n562\n00:38:29.770
+  --> 00:38:31.549\nAnd so it I mean,\n\n563\n00:38:31.549 --> 00:38:33.449\nI suspect
+  that\nobviously that has\n\n564\n00:38:33.449 --> 00:38:36.730\nplaying is a lot
+  of a time\ncommitment in of itself.\n\n565\n00:38:36.730 --> 00:38:37.809\nSo it
+  was just that you weren''t\n\n566\n00:38:37.809 --> 00:38:39.049\nquite ready, not
+  enough time,\n\n567\n00:38:39.049 --> 00:38:45.989\nor did it it wasn''t that\nit
+  was being confronted\n\n568\n00:38:45.989 --> 00:38:52.510\nwith being in this class\n\n569\n00:38:52.510
+  --> 00:39:01.330\nand listening to these\nlectures that have no context.\n\n570\n00:39:01.330
+  --> 00:39:05.830\nRight. And therefore,\nmake no sense.\n\n571\n00:39:05.830 -->
+  00:39:09.410\nAnd, you know, it''s\nearly on in the process,\n\n572\n00:39:09.410
+  --> 00:39:11.390\nso you don''t know how\nit all fits together.\n\n573\n00:39:11.390
+  --> 00:39:15.189\nNew language. New\nlanguage, all of it.\n\n574\n00:39:16.470 -->
+  00:39:24.470\nAnd I just It was not pretty.\n\n575\n00:39:25.230 --> 00:39:28.330\nWell,
+  but it bust out.\nSo it didn''t dissuade\n\n576\n00:39:28.330 --> 00:39:31.910\nyou
+  obviously. Well, completely.\n\n577\n00:39:34.350 --> 00:39:39.750\nI I say only
+  half in jest.\n\n578\n00:39:40.430 --> 00:39:45.390\nI knew after three days that\nI
+  wasn''t going to survive.\n\n579\n00:39:45.390 --> 00:39:50.889\nBut I was in so
+  far over\nmy head that it took me\n\n580\n00:39:50.889 --> 00:39:53.309\nanother
+  three and a\nthree weeks to figure\n\n581\n00:39:53.309 --> 00:39:56.189\nout how
+  to drop out to get out.\n\n582\n00:39:56.189 --> 00:39:57.589\nAnd\n\n583\n00:40:05.440
+  --> 00:40:08.399\nI what I\n\n584\n00:40:08.399 --> 00:40:13.339\ncame to understand
+  was first\nof all, that I wasn''t alone.\n\n585\n00:40:13.339 --> 00:40:16.239\nYeah.
+  I mean, I''m\nsitting there thinking,\n\n586\n00:40:16.239 --> 00:40:18.259\nI''m
+  the only one that\ndoesn''t get this.\n\n587\n00:40:18.259 --> 00:40:22.239\nMm
+  hm. I''m the only one that\ndoesn''t understand this.\n\n588\n00:40:22.720 --> 00:40:25.539\nBut,
+  you know,\neverybody in the room\n\n589\n00:40:25.539 --> 00:40:28.339\nwas in the
+  same boat that I was.\n\n590\n00:40:28.339 --> 00:40:32.399\nRight. And had I\n\n591\n00:40:33.630
+  --> 00:40:35.849\nMaybe had I not been\n\n592\n00:40:35.849 --> 00:40:38.070\nplaying
+  football at\nthe time, Mm hmm.\n\n593\n00:40:38.070 --> 00:40:41.329\nI''d have
+  sort of stuck it out.\n\n594\n00:40:41.329 --> 00:40:45.649\nBut I mean, I was so\nfar
+  in over my head.\n\n595\n00:40:45.649 --> 00:40:49.329\nI mean, I just I just\ncouldn''t
+  see The path.\n\n596\n00:40:49.329 --> 00:40:52.469\nThe path. Yeah.\nYep. Overwhelming.\n\n597\n00:40:52.469
+  --> 00:40:55.230\nAnd so I bailed.\n\n598\n00:40:55.230 --> 00:40:56.069\nYeah.\n\n599\n00:40:56.069
+  --> 00:41:04.229\nI bailed. But didn''t\nnecessarily give up right?\n\n600\n00:41:04.229
+  --> 00:41:08.049\nThe hope or the idea.\n\n601\n00:41:08.250 --> 00:41:13.110\nOver
+  the years, I tried one\nor two other career options.\n\n602\n00:41:13.110 --> 00:41:15.110\nI
+  was a used car salesman,\n\n603\n00:41:15.110 --> 00:41:18.810\nor actually a new
+  c\nnew used car salesman.\n\n604\n00:41:19.650 --> 00:41:26.850\nI sold one car
+  during my\nauto sales experience.\n\n605\n00:41:26.850 --> 00:41:29.089\nI did not
+  know that. And\nthat you tried that.\n\n606\n00:41:29.089 --> 00:41:32.330\nAnd
+  the one car I\nsold to myself.\n\n607\n00:41:32.570 --> 00:41:35.809\nI figured
+  there was\nno career in that.\n\n608\n00:41:35.809 --> 00:41:41.410\nI had a vending
+  machine company\n\n609\n00:41:41.410 --> 00:41:44.449\nfor about a year and a half.\n\n610\n00:41:44.449
+  --> 00:41:48.489\nIt took me I invested\nabout $40.000 into it,\n\n611\n00:41:48.489
+  --> 00:41:50.529\nand it took me about\na year and a half\n\n612\n00:41:50.529 -->
+  00:41:52.549\nto go through that.\n\n613\n00:41:52.549 --> 00:41:58.269\nAlthough
+  that was one\n\n614\n00:41:58.269 --> 00:42:00.409\nof the actually not one\n\n615\n00:42:00.409
+  --> 00:42:03.509\nof the best investment\nI ever made.\n\n616\n00:42:03.509 -->
+  00:42:05.149\nAnd we''ll get to that later.\n\n617\n00:42:05.149 --> 00:42:10.629\nSure.
+  But, One of\n\n618\n00:42:10.629 --> 00:42:18.490\nthe things I was\nlearning was
+  business,\n\n619\n00:42:18.490 --> 00:42:23.549\nbeing in business was not\nsomething
+  that fit me.\n\n620\n00:42:23.549 --> 00:42:25.489\nNot something that\ninterested
+  me.\n\n621\n00:42:25.489 --> 00:42:30.229\nNo something that\nI wanted to put\n\n622\n00:42:30.229
+  --> 00:42:35.589\nthe time and energy and\neffort into becoming good at?\n\n623\n00:42:35.589
+  --> 00:42:36.789\nYeah.\n\n624\n00:42:41.720 --> 00:42:46.159\nWhich was a good\nlesson
+  to learn.\n\n625\n00:42:46.159 --> 00:42:55.620\nAnd ultimately, after my\neighth
+  year with the Vikings,\n\n626\n00:42:55.620 --> 00:42:58.120\nI decided to go\nback
+  to law school.\n\n627\n00:42:58.120 --> 00:43:01.139\nThis time, having a\nbetter
+  understanding,\n\n628\n00:43:01.139 --> 00:43:06.719\nhaving been involved\nin as
+  a players rep,\n\n629\n00:43:06.719 --> 00:43:08.299\nand then ultimately on\n\n630\n00:43:08.299
+  --> 00:43:11.679\nthe Executive Committee of\nthe Players Association,\n\n631\n00:43:11.679
+  --> 00:43:15.979\nthe involved in a\nnumber of lawsuits\n\n632\n00:43:15.979 -->
+  00:43:18.819\ninvolving the\nplayers Association\n\n633\n00:43:18.819 --> 00:43:21.960\nand
+  the National Football age.\n\n634\n00:43:25.040 --> 00:43:29.879\nStill, I mean,
+  having\nthe opportunity to see\n\n635\n00:43:29.879 --> 00:43:34.380\neven more
+  deeply how lawyers\n\n636\n00:43:34.380 --> 00:43:36.659\nworked the way they\n\n637\n00:43:36.659
+  --> 00:43:40.699\nthought developing a\nsense for that and\n\n638\n00:43:40.699
+  --> 00:43:43.359\nhaving the opportunity\nto talk with\n\n639\n00:43:43.359 -->
+  00:43:48.039\nthem and sort of learned that,\n\n640\n00:43:48.039 --> 00:43:50.499\nyou
+  know, law school\nwas just like that.\n\n641\n00:43:50.499 --> 00:43:56.680\nYeah.
+  And that the secret\nto it is to endure.\n\n642\n00:43:56.680 --> 00:43:59.789\nAnd
+  At some point,\n\n643\n00:43:59.789 --> 00:44:01.069\nit starts to make sins.\n\n644\n00:44:01.069
+  --> 00:44:05.449\nYeah. So after my eighth year,\n\n645\n00:44:05.449 --> 00:44:07.769\nI
+  decided to go back this time,\n\n646\n00:44:07.769 --> 00:44:10.370\nroll at the
+  University\nof Minnesota.\n\n647\n00:44:10.370 --> 00:44:17.269\nActually started
+  summer of 1975\n\n648\n00:44:17.269 --> 00:44:21.530\nat the University\nof Texas
+  at Austin.\n\n649\n00:44:21.530 --> 00:44:27.950\nOh. I took contracts\nand procedure.\n\n650\n00:44:27.950
+  --> 00:44:29.930\n13 weeks start to finish.\n\n651\n00:44:29.930 --> 00:44:31.550\nWow.\n\n652\n00:44:31.550
+  --> 00:44:34.369\nAnd survived it. There you go.\n\n653\n00:44:34.369 --> 00:44:36.009\nAnd
+  not only survived it,\n\n654\n00:44:36.009 --> 00:44:37.529\nloved every minute
+  of it.\n\n655\n00:44:37.529 --> 00:44:38.970\nConfidence booster?\n\n656\n00:44:38.970
+  --> 00:44:40.490\nBig confidence booster.\n\n657\n00:44:40.490 --> 00:44:41.249\nAbsolutely.\n\n658\n00:44:41.249
+  --> 00:44:46.569\nBig confidence booster.\nLearned, you know,\n\n659\n00:44:46.569
+  --> 00:44:49.589\na little bit of\nthe process of you\n\n660\n00:44:49.589 --> 00:44:51.289\nremember
+  I talked about having\n\n661\n00:44:51.289 --> 00:44:52.729\nfailed to learn how
+  to learn?\n\n662\n00:44:52.729 --> 00:44:55.329\nExactly. Took me to\nlaw school
+  to get it.\n\n663\n00:44:55.329 --> 00:44:57.029\nSometimes I wonder if it takes\n\n664\n00:44:57.029
+  --> 00:44:58.989\na lot of people up\nuntil that point.\n\n665\n00:44:58.989 -->
+  00:45:00.389\nIn some ways, you know,\n\n666\n00:45:00.389 --> 00:45:01.729\nI sort
+  of felt the same way.\n\n667\n00:45:01.729 --> 00:45:04.569\nWell, but once I got
+  it.\n\n668\n00:45:04.569 --> 00:45:08.419\nYeah. There''s nothing\nelse like it.\n\n669\n00:45:08.419
+  --> 00:45:13.939\nRight. And so I I love the\nlaw school experience.\n\n670\n00:45:13.939
+  --> 00:45:16.199\nPeople, you know, are\nalways talking about,\n\n671\n00:45:16.199
+  --> 00:45:18.600\nyou went to law school and\nplayed professional football.\n\n672\n00:45:18.600
+  --> 00:45:20.999\nHow hard that must have been.\n\n673\n00:45:20.999 --> 00:45:22.799\nWell,
+  you know, it was yeah,\n\n674\n00:45:22.799 --> 00:45:24.839\nI mean, things are
+  hard.\n\n675\n00:45:24.839 --> 00:45:26.999\nBut when you''re having fun,\n\n676\n00:45:26.999
+  --> 00:45:33.679\nm there''s there''s\nnothing better. Yeah.\n\n677\n00:45:33.679
+  --> 00:45:38.279\nI love my law school\nexperience at the university.\n\n678\n00:45:39.800
+  --> 00:45:49.260\nAnd I I had another one of\nthose defining moments.\n\n679\n00:45:49.260
+  --> 00:45:58.919\nI think it was the towards\nthe end of my first year.\n\n680\n00:45:59.760
+  --> 00:46:03.639\nWe had a paper to write.\n\n681\n00:46:03.639 --> 00:46:09.859\nAnd
+  I decided I was going to,\n\n682\n00:46:09.859 --> 00:46:12.659\nyou know, take
+  the easy road.\n\n683\n00:46:12.659 --> 00:46:15.960\nSomething you know about labor.\n\n684\n00:46:15.960
+  --> 00:46:19.780\nLabor law and actually,\n\n685\n00:46:19.780 --> 00:46:24.079\nI
+  think I wrote\n\n686\n00:46:24.079 --> 00:46:29.179\nsomething on labor\nrelations
+  in N in the NFL.\n\n687\n00:46:29.179 --> 00:46:32.559\nYeah. But I, you know,\n\n688\n00:46:33.600
+  --> 00:46:38.280\nI spent all this time doing\nthe research and preparing,\n\n689\n00:46:38.280
+  --> 00:46:42.080\nand I just nothing happened.\n\n690\n00:46:42.080 --> 00:46:44.619\nAnd
+  I can remember\ngoing in to see one of\n\n691\n00:46:44.619 --> 00:46:48.159\nthe
+  associate or assistant\ndeans and saying,\n\n692\n00:46:48.159 --> 00:46:50.819\nyou
+  know, I don''t know\nthat I can do this.\n\n693\n00:46:50.819 --> 00:46:53.639\nAnd
+  he said, Well,\nyou can do it.\n\n694\n00:46:53.639 --> 00:46:55.840\nAll you have
+  to do\nis apply yourself.\n\n695\n00:46:55.840 --> 00:46:58.399\nWhat have I been
+  doing?\n\n696\n00:46:58.399 --> 00:47:00.999\nYou know, All that\nclears it up,
+  right.\n\n697\n00:47:00.999 --> 00:47:03.259\nRight. He said, No.\n\n698\n00:47:03.259
+  --> 00:47:05.619\nYou apply the seat\nof your pants to\n\n699\n00:47:05.619 -->
+  00:47:11.339\nthe chair until you get it\nuntil it starts coming.\n\n700\n00:47:11.339
+  --> 00:47:14.769\nYeah. And, you know,\n\n701\n00:47:14.769 --> 00:47:18.369\nit''s
+  weird, but, you\nknow, I sat down,\n\n702\n00:47:18.369 --> 00:47:22.749\ngot my
+  books and my pins\nin my papers and sat\n\n703\n00:47:22.749 --> 00:47:27.249\nthere
+  and eventually started\nwriting and got it done.\n\n704\n00:47:27.249 --> 00:47:28.369\nYeah.\n\n705\n00:47:28.690
+  --> 00:47:32.870\nAnd that was an important lesson\n\n706\n00:47:32.870 --> 00:47:41.129\nthat
+  sometimes even when you\nknow what you want to do,\n\n707\n00:47:41.930 --> 00:47:44.910\nBut
+  it''s not coming together.\n\n708\n00:47:44.910 --> 00:47:52.890\nYou have to just
+  keep working\nat it. Until it happens.\n\n709\n00:47:52.890 --> 00:47:56.009\nThis
+  is jumping a a, so\nwe''ll have to swing back,\n\n710\n00:47:56.009 --> 00:47:57.969\nbut
+  that makes me think about\n\n711\n00:47:57.969 --> 00:48:00.169\nthe process of
+  sitting down and\n\n712\n00:48:00.169 --> 00:48:03.249\nwriting an opinion\na little
+  bit, too.\n\n713\n00:48:05.290 --> 00:48:07.629\nI there a similarity there too?\n\n714\n00:48:07.629
+  --> 00:48:09.229\nThe process of just\nneeding to sit down\n\n715\n00:48:09.229
+  --> 00:48:11.109\nand sort of delve in\nto get it started,\n\n716\n00:48:11.109
+  --> 00:48:12.910\nand once it started it flows.\n\n717\n00:48:12.910 --> 00:48:16.469\nAbsolutely.
+  Absolutely. Yeah.\n\n718\n00:48:16.469 --> 00:48:18.610\nInteresting.\n\n719\n00:48:20.130
+  --> 00:48:23.090\nSo law school at UFM.\n\n720\n00:48:23.090 --> 00:48:25.189\nAnd
+  I was going to ask you,\n\n721\n00:48:25.189 --> 00:48:28.129\nand I think you really\nanswered
+  it was, you know,\n\n722\n00:48:28.129 --> 00:48:30.710\nby the time you\ndo go
+  to the UFM,\n\n723\n00:48:30.710 --> 00:48:34.550\nyou''re still playing\nraising
+  a family.\n\n724\n00:48:34.550 --> 00:48:37.329\nNot like there aren''t any\nother
+  things going on.\n\n725\n00:48:37.329 --> 00:48:39.529\nYou''re busy, but\nyou can
+  manage it\n\n726\n00:48:39.529 --> 00:48:42.270\nby then it''s just a matter\nof
+  time management.\n\n727\n00:48:42.270 --> 00:48:45.109\nSure. And figuring out how
+  to,\n\n728\n00:48:45.109 --> 00:48:47.049\nyou know, make it all work.\n\n729\n00:48:47.049
+  --> 00:48:49.610\nPutting all the pieces together.\n\n730\n00:48:50.010 --> 00:48:54.190\nAnd
+  I mean, I did\nhave some incentive.\n\n731\n00:48:54.190 --> 00:48:56.289\nI mean,
+  by then, I was\n\n732\n00:48:56.810 --> 00:49:00.670\n12 years into my\nprofessional
+  career.\n\n733\n00:49:00.670 --> 00:49:03.270\nYou don''t play forever.\n\n734\n00:49:03.270
+  --> 00:49:05.369\nAnd quite frankly, I didn''t\n\n735\n00:49:05.369 --> 00:49:08.850\nwant
+  to necessarily\nplay forever.\n\n736\n00:49:08.850 --> 00:49:15.209\nU As I said,\n\n737\n00:49:15.209
+  --> 00:49:19.310\noften, by the time I\nstarted law school,\n\n738\n00:49:19.310
+  --> 00:49:22.809\nI''d been playing for I\nwas into my ninth year.\n\n739\n00:49:22.809
+  --> 00:49:24.730\nAnd I hadn''t done everything\n\n740\n00:49:24.730 --> 00:49:26.390\nyou
+  could do on a\nfootball field,\n\n741\n00:49:26.390 --> 00:49:27.769\nbut I''d done
+  most of them.\n\n742\n00:49:27.769 --> 00:49:31.310\nRight. And I noted earlier,\n\n743\n00:49:31.310
+  --> 00:49:35.570\nrepetition wasn''t one\nof my st strong suits.\n\n744\n00:49:35.570
+  --> 00:49:38.530\nIt was time to prepare\nto do something\n\n745\n00:49:38.530 -->
+  00:49:42.469\ndifferent and so that\nI could move on.\n\n746\n00:49:42.469 --> 00:49:45.049\nAs
+  I''ve often said, you know,\n\n747\n00:49:45.049 --> 00:49:48.850\nthe skills of
+  a defensive tackle\n\n748\n00:49:48.850 --> 00:49:50.669\ndon''t transfer to much\n\n749\n00:49:50.669
+  --> 00:49:53.450\nof anything else out\nin the real world.\n\n750\n00:49:53.450
+  --> 00:50:01.479\nAnd so preparing to\n\n751\n00:50:01.479 --> 00:50:05.640\ndo
+  something beyond football\nwas really important.\n\n752\n00:50:05.640 --> 00:50:10.579\nAnd
+  law school was that\npreparation. Right?\n\n753\n00:50:10.940 --> 00:50:16.660\nRight?
+  So you graduate\nfrom law school.\n\n754\n00:50:16.660 --> 00:50:20.959\nAnd you
+  graduate and\nwhat''s the timing there?\n\n755\n00:50:20.959 --> 00:50:23.100\nYou
+  still play for a little\nbit after you graduate?\n\n756\n00:50:23.100 --> 00:50:25.279\n3.5
+  more years. 3.5 more years.\n\n757\n00:50:25.279 --> 00:50:28.419\nAnd year 378,
+  79,\nfour more years.\n\n758\n00:50:28.419 --> 00:50:31.919\nOkay. And during that
+  time then,\n\n759\n00:50:31.919 --> 00:50:33.539\nyou''ve graduated,\nyou''re playing,\n\n760\n00:50:33.539
+  --> 00:50:36.820\nbut then you start\nat Linus in Benham.\n\n761\n00:50:36.820 -->
+  00:50:39.320\nSo what''s the practice\n\n762\n00:50:39.320 --> 00:50:41.739\nthere
+  like? Tell me\nabout that a little bit.\n\n763\n00:50:42.260 --> 00:50:45.499\nIt''s
+  trying to figure out\nwho you are as a lawyer.\n\n764\n00:50:45.499 --> 00:50:52.729\nYeah.
+  And it''s, you know,\ngetting assignments.\n\n765\n00:50:52.729 --> 00:50:56.879\nAnd,
+  you know, here''s the file.\n\n766\n00:50:56.879 --> 00:51:04.399\nGo do this. And
+  it''s like,\nhow do you go do this?\n\n767\n00:51:05.080 --> 00:51:07.620\nLittle
+  more explanation.\n\n768\n00:51:07.620 --> 00:51:10.339\nWould be helpful?\nRight.
+  It wasn''t\n\n769\n00:51:10.339 --> 00:51:12.920\nalways forthcoming. Mm hm.\n\n770\n00:51:12.920
+  --> 00:51:18.919\nYou sort of get thrown\ninto the thick of things,\n\n771\n00:51:18.919
+  --> 00:51:20.820\nand there were some horrible,\n\n772\n00:51:20.820 --> 00:51:23.520\nawful,
+  very bad moments.\n\n773\n00:51:25.600 --> 00:51:30.219\nWhere I had no idea\nwhat
+  I was doing,\n\n774\n00:51:30.219 --> 00:51:34.979\nbut had to try to figure it\nout
+  while I was doing it.\n\n775\n00:51:34.979 --> 00:51:39.719\nYeah. Enjoyable, though?\n\n776\n00:51:41.400
+  --> 00:51:49.049\nNot especially. No.\nOne of the things I\n\n777\n00:51:49.049
+  --> 00:51:51.329\nfigured out early on about\n\n778\n00:51:52.330 --> 00:51:56.170\nthe
+  private practice of\nlaw, it''s about business.\n\n779\n00:51:56.170 --> 00:51:58.050\nIt''s
+  about billing hours.\n\n780\n00:51:58.050 --> 00:52:04.809\nAnd that just is\nnever
+  that is not me.\n\n781\n00:52:06.450 --> 00:52:12.170\nM interest in the law\nwas
+  the law and trying\n\n782\n00:52:12.170 --> 00:52:17.149\nto work through it and\nsort
+  it out and figure it\n\n783\n00:52:17.149 --> 00:52:23.489\nout and come to the
+  best\nconclusions that you can.\n\n784\n00:52:24.570 --> 00:52:30.349\nAnd when
+  You''ve got\n\n785\n00:52:30.349 --> 00:52:32.369\nthis little thing sitting on\n\n786\n00:52:32.369
+  --> 00:52:36.590\nyour shoulder talking\nabout billable hours.\n\n787\n00:52:36.590
+  --> 00:52:39.669\nFirst of all, you''re distracted\nby that because you''re\n\n788\n00:52:39.669
+  --> 00:52:42.669\nthinking that my Hey,\n\n789\n00:52:42.669 --> 00:52:43.989\nam
+  I billing enough hours?\n\n790\n00:52:43.989 --> 00:52:49.550\nAnd how do I justify\nthese
+  hours? Right.\n\n791\n00:52:49.550 --> 00:52:52.010\nSo from that standpoint,\n\n792\n00:52:52.010
+  --> 00:52:55.630\nit was not necessarily pleasant.\n\n793\n00:52:55.630 --> 00:53:01.030\nThat
+  said, I got to work with\nsome really good lawyers.\n\n794\n00:53:01.030 --> 00:53:03.589\nYeah.
+  And like every\nother, you know,\n\n795\n00:53:03.589 --> 00:53:09.909\nnew lawyer,
+  can you do a\nmemo on me for me on this?\n\n796\n00:53:09.909 --> 00:53:12.549\nAnd
+  you give them\n\n797\n00:53:12.549 --> 00:53:15.869\nthe memo and it comes\nback
+  and it''s like,\n\n798\n00:53:16.600 --> 00:53:20.079\nI didn''t know there was
+  that\nmuch red ink in the world.\n\n799\n00:53:20.079 --> 00:53:21.359\nYeah.\n\n800\n00:53:22.440
+  --> 00:53:25.659\nBut lessons then, as well,\nI suppose, too, right?\n\n801\n00:53:25.659
+  --> 00:53:27.919\nSo you''re Absolutely. It''s\na big learning curve,\n\n802\n00:53:27.919
+  --> 00:53:29.999\nbut you''re learning a lot.\nBut you''re learning a lot.\n\n803\n00:53:29.999
+  --> 00:53:33.120\nYeah. That''s where\nI got grounded.\n\n804\n00:53:33.120 -->
+  00:53:35.100\nYeah. And so from\nthat standpoint,\n\n805\n00:53:35.100 --> 00:53:39.539\nit
+  was a very\nvaluable experience,\n\n806\n00:53:39.539 --> 00:53:44.779\nbut just
+  not my idea\nof a good time.\n\n807\n00:53:44.779 --> 00:53:49.359\nYeah. And I
+  was\nfortunate enough to\n\n808\n00:53:53.390 --> 00:53:57.090\nMake my way to the\nattorney
+  general''s office.\n\n809\n00:53:57.090 --> 00:54:01.069\nRight. And I loved it
+  there\n\n810\n00:54:01.069 --> 00:54:06.849\nbecause Skip Humphrey was\nthe attorney
+  general. Mm hm.\n\n811\n00:54:06.849 --> 00:54:13.860\nAnd He let the lawyers\n\n812\n00:54:13.860
+  --> 00:54:17.599\nwho were there to do\nthe work do the work.\n\n813\n00:54:17.720
+  --> 00:54:21.799\nAnd let me learn to\n\n814\n00:54:21.799 --> 00:54:26.420\ngive
+  my best legal\nadvice to my clients.\n\n815\n00:54:26.420 --> 00:54:29.720\nI didn''t
+  have to worry\nabout billing hours.\n\n816\n00:54:29.720 --> 00:54:34.159\nDidn''t
+  have to worry about\nclients walking away.\n\n817\n00:54:34.159 --> 00:54:39.679\nTrue.
+  I could do the best\nthat I could to figure out\n\n818\n00:54:39.679 --> 00:54:47.509\nwhat
+  is the best\nWhat is the law?\n\n819\n00:54:47.509 --> 00:54:50.069\nAnd what is
+  the best\nadvice I can give\n\n820\n00:54:50.069 --> 00:54:53.329\nthis client?
+  And\nI could do that.\n\n821\n00:54:53.329 --> 00:54:56.749\nAnd there''s a lot\nof
+  freedom in that.\n\n822\n00:54:56.749 --> 00:55:01.909\nAnd I absolutely loved it.\n\n823\n00:55:01.990
+  --> 00:55:04.690\nDid you have a particular focus\n\n824\n00:55:04.690 --> 00:55:06.069\nin
+  the Attorney General''s side?\n\n825\n00:55:06.069 --> 00:55:07.269\nLabor and employment?
+  You were.\n\n826\n00:55:07.269 --> 00:55:09.550\nOkay. Labor and employment.\n\n827\n00:55:09.550
+  --> 00:55:12.649\nAnd you enjoyed it that''s\nwhat I did at List also.\n\n828\n00:55:12.649
+  --> 00:55:15.289\nSure. On the employee side,\n\n829\n00:55:15.289 --> 00:55:18.829\nthen
+  just flip to\nthe employer side.\n\n830\n00:55:19.470 --> 00:55:22.429\nA you''re
+  working at\n\n831\n00:55:22.429 --> 00:55:26.070\nthe Minnesota Attorney\nGeneral''s
+  office.\n\n832\n00:55:26.390 --> 00:55:30.289\nFour years, five years,\nsomething
+  like that?\n\n833\n00:55:30.289 --> 00:55:32.329\nStarted in 985.\n\n834\n00:55:32.329
+  --> 00:55:33.469\nOkay.\n\n835\n00:55:33.469 --> 00:55:37.470\nThe first week of
+  January 1985\n\n836\n00:55:37.470 --> 00:55:43.430\nand left the last week\nof December
+  in 1992.\n\n837\n00:55:43.430 --> 00:55:53.229\nOkay. So yeah. So when do\nyou start
+  thinking about?\n\n838\n00:55:53.470 --> 00:55:56.909\nMaybe not even necessarily\nthe
+  Minnesota Supreme Court,\n\n839\n00:55:56.909 --> 00:55:58.069\nbut the idea of
+  doing something\n\n840\n00:55:58.069 --> 00:56:00.250\ndifferent and maybe\nthat
+  being judging.\n\n841\n00:56:00.250 --> 00:56:07.959\nYou know, the I had\nthis
+  weird experience.\n\n842\n00:56:08.560 --> 00:56:12.120\n1982, I''m at Lyncest and
+  Venom.\n\n843\n00:56:12.120 --> 00:56:17.100\nMm hmm. And 82 or 83.\n\n844\n00:56:17.100
+  --> 00:56:19.619\nAnd I wake up one morning,\n\n845\n00:56:19.619 --> 00:56:22.040\nand
+  the newspaper has an article\n\n846\n00:56:22.040 --> 00:56:27.520\nabout Governor
+  Perfi is going\nto appoint some new judges.\n\n847\n00:56:27.520 --> 00:56:29.459\nAnd
+  he''s got my\nname in the list.\n\n848\n00:56:29.459 --> 00:56:30.839\nOh.\n\n849\n00:56:31.930
+  --> 00:56:37.189\nNobody had asked.\nInteresting. Nobody. It was\n\n850\n00:56:37.189
+  --> 00:56:38.930\nit was very strange.\n\n851\n00:56:38.930 --> 00:56:40.489\nBut
+  up until that point,\n\n852\n00:56:40.489 --> 00:56:44.109\nit hadn''t really\noccurred
+  to me A,\n\n853\n00:56:44.109 --> 00:56:46.389\nthat I would have\n\n854\n00:56:46.389
+  --> 00:56:49.669\nany interest in being a\njudge or that I could be.\n\n855\n00:56:49.669
+  --> 00:56:53.129\nYeah. Or that, you know,\n\n856\n00:56:53.129 --> 00:56:54.770\nI
+  had the skills or temperament.\n\n857\n00:56:54.770 --> 00:56:59.109\nSure. Long
+  story short made\nme think about it. Mm hm.\n\n858\n00:56:59.109 --> 00:57:02.769\nAnd
+  you know, through that time,\n\n859\n00:57:02.769 --> 00:57:07.469\nI''m learning
+  who\nI am as a lawyer,\n\n860\n00:57:07.469 --> 00:57:11.529\nwhat my skills are,\nwhat
+  my interests are,\n\n861\n00:57:11.529 --> 00:57:18.949\nand what my strengths\nand
+  weaknesses are.\n\n862\n00:57:18.949 --> 00:57:26.429\nYeah. And over time,\n\n863\n00:57:26.429
+  --> 00:57:30.009\nI I sort of start\n\n864\n00:57:30.009 --> 00:57:37.969\nthinking
+  maybe there is\n\n865\n00:57:37.969 --> 00:57:40.309\nsomething in the judiciary\nthat
+  would fit me.\n\n866\n00:57:40.309 --> 00:57:42.729\nBut I can''t see\n\n867\n00:57:42.729
+  --> 00:57:47.149\nmyself a necessarily as\na trial court judge.\n\n868\n00:57:51.110
+  --> 00:57:55.110\nAnd, you know, as lawyers,\n\n869\n00:57:55.110 --> 00:57:57.530\nwe
+  spend a lot of\ntime reading opinions\n\n870\n00:57:57.530 --> 00:58:02.069\nand
+  struggling to figure\nout what they mean.\n\n871\n00:58:04.230 --> 00:58:10.009\nAnd
+  thinking, well,\nif they meant this,\n\n872\n00:58:10.009 --> 00:58:12.489\nwhy
+  didn''t they just say it?\n\n873\n00:58:12.489 --> 00:58:16.449\nWhy did they why\nis
+  it so hard to\n\n874\n00:58:16.449 --> 00:58:22.229\nsay in plain clear\nlanguage,
+  what you mean?\n\n875\n00:58:22.870 --> 00:58:27.169\nAnd of course, my ego\nsays
+  to myself self,\n\n876\n00:58:27.169 --> 00:58:29.449\nyou could do that.\n\n877\n00:58:29.449
+  --> 00:58:31.950\nYou could write clearly.\n\n878\n00:58:32.990 --> 00:58:35.289\nYou
+  could write concisely.\n\n879\n00:58:35.289 --> 00:58:41.209\nMm hm. And so over
+  time,\n\n880\n00:58:41.209 --> 00:58:45.150\nI start to think my skills,\n\n881\n00:58:45.150
+  --> 00:58:46.409\nmy interests, abilities,\n\n882\n00:58:46.409 --> 00:58:48.490\nmy
+  strengths lend themselves\n\n883\n00:58:48.490 --> 00:58:50.929\nto what appellate\ncourt
+  judges do.\n\n884\n00:58:50.929 --> 00:58:58.429\nAnd from there.\n\n885\n00:59:01.890
+  --> 00:59:06.350\nWell, how does one become\nan appellate court judge?\n\n886\n00:59:06.350
+  --> 00:59:08.249\nWell, as you know, in Minnesota,\n\n887\n00:59:08.249 --> 00:59:12.490\nit''s
+  either by appointment\nor by election.\n\n888\n00:59:12.970 --> 00:59:23.089\nAnd
+  the Minnesota Court of\nAppeals is new relatively new.\n\n889\n00:59:23.089 -->
+  00:59:24.409\nRight.\n\n890\n00:59:24.770 --> 00:59:28.149\nAnd most of the judges\nthere
+  or many of\n\n891\n00:59:28.149 --> 00:59:31.250\nthe judges there have\nbeen trial
+  court judges.\n\n892\n00:59:31.250 --> 00:59:34.569\nSo that seems like\na natural
+  step,\n\n893\n00:59:34.569 --> 00:59:37.289\neven though the\ntrial court isn''t\n\n894\n00:59:37.289
+  --> 00:59:41.819\nnecessarily what fits me.\n\n895\n00:59:41.819 --> 00:59:48.580\nSure.
+  And so I started applying\n\n896\n00:59:48.580 --> 00:59:53.600\nfor trial court
+  judge petitions\n\n897\n00:59:53.600 --> 00:59:56.640\nand had absolutely no success.\n\n898\n00:59:57.640
+  --> 01:00:00.500\nEventually, I came\nto the conclusion\n\n899\n01:00:00.500 -->
+  01:00:02.799\nthat I wasn''t going to have\n\n900\n01:00:02.799 --> 01:00:07.179\nany
+  success and that\n\n901\n01:00:07.179 --> 01:00:10.019\nif I wanted the\nopportunity
+  to serve,\n\n902\n01:00:10.019 --> 01:00:15.440\nit was probably going\nto be through
+  election.\n\n903\n01:00:16.570 --> 01:00:19.269\nWhich narrows things down to\n\n904\n01:00:19.269
+  --> 01:00:21.349\nthe Court of Appeals\nor the Supreme Court.\n\n905\n01:00:21.349
+  --> 01:00:22.649\nRight.\n\n906\n01:00:24.050 --> 01:00:32.229\nAnd My thought process
+  was,\n\n907\n01:00:32.229 --> 01:00:37.730\nwell, if you''re going\nto seek collection,\n\n908\n01:00:39.250
+  --> 01:00:43.729\nyou might as well seek\n\n909\n01:00:43.729 --> 01:00:45.849\ncollection
+  to the\nMinnesota Supreme Court.\n\n910\n01:00:45.849 --> 01:00:48.730\nI think
+  I have something\nto contribute.\n\n911\n01:00:49.330 --> 01:00:54.990\nI think
+  both from a\nlegal background,\n\n912\n01:00:54.990 --> 01:00:57.770\nbut also from
+  just a\ndifferent perspective.\n\n913\n01:00:57.770 --> 01:01:03.650\nSure. And
+  so 1990,\n\n914\n01:01:03.650 --> 01:01:07.390\nI decided to seek collection.\n\n915\n01:01:07.390
+  --> 01:01:15.550\nAnd When the filing\nperiod opened,\n\n916\n01:01:15.550 --> 01:01:20.829\nI
+  was down there first\nmorning first hour,\n\n917\n01:01:20.829 --> 01:01:23.609\nfiled
+  for election and\n\n918\n01:01:23.610 --> 01:01:29.030\nthe justice who I was\ngoing
+  to challenge.\n\n919\n01:01:29.030 --> 01:01:31.530\nI thought I was going\nto challenge,
+  resigned.\n\n920\n01:01:31.530 --> 01:01:34.710\nBefore I got out of the\nSecretary
+  of State''s office.\n\n921\n01:01:34.710 --> 01:01:39.290\nOh, wow. Which\ncreated
+  a vacancy.\n\n922\n01:01:40.280 --> 01:01:44.699\nVacancies are filled\nby appointment.\n\n923\n01:01:44.699
+  --> 01:01:47.520\nThe governor\nimmediately appointed\n\n924\n01:01:47.520 --> 01:01:50.320\nsomeone
+  to fill the vacancy,\n\n925\n01:01:50.320 --> 01:01:58.480\nand the election for
+  that\nseat no longer existed.\n\n926\n01:01:59.230 --> 01:02:07.030\nAnd I in seeking
+  election.\n\n927\n01:02:07.030 --> 01:02:12.390\nIt wasn''t about the\nindividual
+  justice?\n\n928\n01:02:12.390 --> 01:02:16.610\nRight, who I was\ngoing to challenge.\n\n929\n01:02:16.610
+  --> 01:02:21.789\nIt wasn''t about their opinions\n\n930\n01:02:21.789 --> 01:02:26.870\nor
+  their philosophy\nor anything else.\n\n931\n01:02:26.870 --> 01:02:29.649\nIt was
+  simply I mean,\n\n932\n01:02:29.649 --> 01:02:31.990\nit seemed to me to\nbe a fair
+  question\n\n933\n01:02:31.990 --> 01:02:35.949\ngiven that the justice\nwas going
+  to reach\n\n934\n01:02:35.949 --> 01:02:40.690\nmandatory retirement\nwithin something\n\n935\n01:02:40.690
+  --> 01:02:44.410\nless than six months\nof re election.\n\n936\n01:02:44.410 -->
+  01:02:46.550\nAnd it was a fair question,\n\n937\n01:02:46.550 --> 01:02:50.029\nat
+  least I thought\nto have the people\n\n938\n01:02:50.029 --> 01:02:55.589\nMinnesota
+  decide who they\nwould want to serve the term.\n\n939\n01:02:55.589 --> 01:03:04.630\nMm
+  hm me a known quantity\nor a known person,\n\n940\n01:03:04.630 --> 01:03:08.589\nor
+  ultimately some\nunknown person.\n\n941\n01:03:08.830 --> 01:03:15.510\nUm the election
+  was\ntaken off the ballot,\n\n942\n01:03:15.510 --> 01:03:21.669\nand, you know,
+  it\nwasn''t clear to me.\n\n943\n01:03:24.110 --> 01:03:30.769\nWhy? You know, being\na
+  person of color.\n\n944\n01:03:30.769 --> 01:03:32.569\nOne of the things\nthat
+  comes to mind\n\n945\n01:03:32.569 --> 01:03:34.749\nis because I''m a\nperson of
+  color.\n\n946\n01:03:34.749 --> 01:03:39.609\nIs it politics? Is\nit I don''t know.\n\n947\n01:03:39.609
+  --> 01:03:43.669\nYeah. Let that go.\n\n948\n01:03:44.230 --> 01:03:49.170\nContinued
+  working at the\nAttorney General''s office\n\n949\n01:03:49.170 --> 01:03:53.629\nand
+  decided to try\nagain in 19 e two.\n\n950\n01:03:53.629 --> 01:04:03.550\nThis time.
+  The justice\nI sought to challenge.\n\n951\n01:04:04.190 --> 01:04:07.070\nWas going
+  to reach\nmandatory retirement\n\n952\n01:04:07.070 --> 01:04:08.369\nwithin about
+  18 months.\n\n953\n01:04:08.369 --> 01:04:13.369\nMm hm of the full six year term.\n\n954\n01:04:13.369
+  --> 01:04:14.869\nAnd I thought, again,\n\n955\n01:04:14.869 --> 01:04:17.469\nit
+  was a fair question to\nhave the people of Minnesota\n\n956\n01:04:17.469 --> 01:04:27.989\ndecide
+  who the justice should\nbe who serves in the see.\n\n957\n01:04:28.230 --> 01:04:32.949\nBefore
+  I could get to\nbefore the filings open,\n\n958\n01:04:32.949 --> 01:04:35.649\nwe
+  have this provision\nin our Constitution,\n\n959\n01:04:35.649 --> 01:04:39.030\nwhich
+  provides for the\nretirement of judges.\n\n960\n01:04:39.030 --> 01:04:45.930\nAnd
+  there is There is a statute\n\n961\n01:04:45.930 --> 01:04:50.009\nwhich also provides
+  for\n\n962\n01:04:50.009 --> 01:04:53.770\nto carry out that\nconstitutional provision,\n\n963\n01:04:53.770
+  --> 01:05:03.190\nwhich provided that the\ngovernor could extend\n\n964\n01:05:03.190
+  --> 01:05:09.229\nthe term of a justice who\nhadn''t reached who hadn''t\n\n965\n01:05:09.229
+  --> 01:05:13.769\nreached full retirement at\n\n966\n01:05:13.769 --> 01:05:16.370\nthe
+  time they were\nup for re election.\n\n967\n01:05:16.730 --> 01:05:19.990\nAnd with
+  mandatory\nretirement approaching?\n\n968\n01:05:19.990 --> 01:05:21.329\nSure.\n\n969\n01:05:23.700
+  --> 01:05:30.980\nAnd so Justice Yeka,\n\n970\n01:05:30.980 --> 01:05:34.760\nwho
+  was the justice I\nwas going to challenge,\n\n971\n01:05:34.760 --> 01:05:37.800\nsought
+  a term extension.\n\n972\n01:05:37.800 --> 01:05:40.099\nThe governor granted it.\n\n973\n01:05:42.300
+  --> 01:05:51.889\nAnd I was to\n\n974\n01:05:51.889 --> 01:05:54.770\nsay the least
+  more than\na little frustrated.\n\n975\n01:05:54.770 --> 01:05:59.990\nAnd so long
+  story short\n\n976\n01:05:59.990 --> 01:06:04.890\ncommenced a lawsuit against\n\n977\n01:06:04.890
+  --> 01:06:08.989\nthe governor and the\nSecretary of State,\n\n978\n01:06:09.270
+  --> 01:06:16.289\na lawsuit that had\n\n979\n01:06:16.289 --> 01:06:19.669\nits
+  original jurisdiction\nin the Supreme Court.\n\n980\n01:06:21.120 --> 01:06:24.939\nAnd
+  a number of\npeople told me I was\n\n981\n01:06:24.939 --> 01:06:29.879\ncrazy that
+  you''re\nwrong on the law.\n\n982\n01:06:29.879 --> 01:06:32.039\nYou''re wrong
+  on the politics,\n\n983\n01:06:32.039 --> 01:06:34.759\nand you''re never, you know,\n\n984\n01:06:34.759
+  --> 01:06:37.639\nwhen you lose this\nlawsuit, you''re never,\n\n985\n01:06:37.639
+  --> 01:06:41.639\never going to have the\nopportunity to serve.\n\n986\n01:06:44.720
+  --> 01:06:52.419\nI felt strongly about one\n\n987\n01:06:52.419 --> 01:06:58.280\nthat
+  the as applied\n\n988\n01:06:58.280 --> 01:07:02.279\nthe term extension\nviolated
+  the Constitution.\n\n989\n01:07:03.640 --> 01:07:06.139\nI wasn''t much concerned
+  about\n\n990\n01:07:06.139 --> 01:07:09.899\nthe politics because I mean,\n\n991\n01:07:09.899
+  --> 01:07:12.559\nI''ve been sort of along the way.\n\n992\n01:07:12.559 --> 01:07:14.959\nI
+  figured out you have to\ndo what you think is right,\n\n993\n01:07:14.959 --> 01:07:17.880\nnot
+  what is expedient.\n\n994\n01:07:19.600 --> 01:07:27.679\nAnd turns out I was\nright
+  on the law.\n\n995\n01:07:27.679 --> 01:07:30.159\nWe were right on the law.\n\n996\n01:07:30.159
+  --> 01:07:35.380\nAnd I was given\n\n997\n01:07:35.380 --> 01:07:38.399\nthe opportunity
+  along with\nanybody else who wanted\n\n998\n01:07:38.399 --> 01:07:42.519\nto file
+  for election\nfor the seat,\n\n999\n01:07:42.519 --> 01:07:46.899\nI filed Justice
+  Yeka did not.\n\n1000\n01:07:50.300 --> 01:07:53.539\nAnd two other people did,\n\n1001\n01:07:53.860
+  --> 01:07:59.879\nand almost immediately\nnot almost immediately,\n\n1002\n01:07:59.879
+  --> 01:08:07.439\nimmediately, my opponents\nstarted down the road of,\n\n1003\n01:08:07.439
+  --> 01:08:10.299\nhe''s just a football player.\n\n1004\n01:08:10.900 --> 01:08:15.179\nAnd
+  initially implicit\nbut unstated.\n\n1005\n01:08:15.179 --> 01:08:19.079\nYeah.
+  He''s just a\ndumb football player.\n\n1006\n01:08:19.079 --> 01:08:23.999\nAlso
+  initially, but not\n\n1007\n01:08:23.999 --> 01:08:29.499\nnecessarily subsequently,\nbut
+  initially.\n\n1008\n01:08:29.860 --> 01:08:33.599\nHe''s just a dumb Black\nfootball
+  player.\n\n1009\n01:08:33.599 --> 01:08:39.799\nI mean, that was the tenor\nof what
+  was being said.\n\n1010\n01:08:39.799 --> 01:08:42.100\nHe''s not qualified.\n\n1011\n01:08:45.020
+  --> 01:08:49.359\nI spent the next three months,\n\n1012\n01:08:49.359 --> 01:08:51.859\n3.5
+  months, whatever it is,\n\n1013\n01:08:51.860 --> 01:08:56.799\ncampaigning around\nthe
+  state to talk\n\n1014\n01:08:56.799 --> 01:09:01.659\nabout why I wanted to be a\nSupreme
+  Court of justice,\n\n1015\n01:09:01.659 --> 01:09:05.019\nwhat I could bring\nwhat
+  I had to offer.\n\n1016\n01:09:05.250 --> 01:09:08.029\nAbout my experience\nand
+  my background\n\n1017\n01:09:08.029 --> 01:09:09.270\nand my qualifications.\n\n1018\n01:09:09.270
+  --> 01:09:13.169\nMm hm. And at every turn,\n\n1019\n01:09:13.170 --> 01:09:16.609\nI
+  got the accusatory question.\n\n1020\n01:09:16.609 --> 01:09:19.150\nWhat are your
+  qualifications?\n\n1021\n01:09:19.150 --> 01:09:22.329\nAnd nobody else was\nbeing
+  asked that.\n\n1022\n01:09:22.810 --> 01:09:28.249\nAnd so that that was difficult.\n\n1023\n01:09:28.930
+  --> 01:09:33.649\nThat said it was\n\n1024\n01:09:33.649 --> 01:09:36.049\nalso
+  satisfying to be\nable to talk to people.\n\n1025\n01:09:36.049 --> 01:09:38.209\nYeah.
+  About who I am,\n\n1026\n01:09:38.209 --> 01:09:43.449\nand what I thought\nI had
+  to offer.\n\n1027\n01:09:43.449 --> 01:09:48.949\nAnd in the end,\n\n1028\n01:09:48.949
+  --> 01:09:56.849\nthe people of the state gave\nme the opportunity to serve.\n\n1029\n01:09:59.130
+  --> 01:10:02.229\nThey elected me.\n\n1030\n01:10:02.229 --> 01:10:10.199\nI am
+  humble, honored.\n\n1031\n01:10:13.000 --> 01:10:16.359\nI mean, I have a hard time\n\n1032\n01:10:16.359
+  --> 01:10:21.879\narticulating how meaningful\nit is to me that\n\n1033\n01:10:21.879
+  --> 01:10:30.429\nthey saw through the\neffort to stereotype me?\n\n1034\n01:10:30.429
+  --> 01:10:31.649\nYeah.\n\n1035\n01:10:31.730 --> 01:10:37.189\nThat they saw in\n\n1036\n01:10:37.189
+  --> 01:10:45.630\nme somebody who hopefully\nhad something to contribute,\n\n1037\n01:10:45.630
+  --> 01:10:49.009\nand they gave me the\nopportunity to do it. Mm hmm.\n\n1038\n01:10:52.790
+  --> 01:10:55.709\nWas so, you know,\n\n1039\n01:10:55.709 --> 01:10:58.229\nyou
+  mentioned in terms of\n\n1040\n01:10:58.229 --> 01:11:01.910\nthe campaign Questions\nabout
+  qualification,\n\n1041\n01:11:01.910 --> 01:11:04.229\nbut implicit\nquestions about
+  race.\n\n1042\n01:11:04.229 --> 01:11:06.609\nWhat it means to be\nan athlete race.\n\n1043\n01:11:06.609
+  --> 01:11:10.989\nWas was diversity and the\nfact that if elected,\n\n1044\n01:11:10.989
+  --> 01:11:12.149\nyou''d be the first African\n\n1045\n01:11:12.149 --> 01:11:14.289\nAmerican
+  Minnesota\nSupreme Court Justice,\n\n1046\n01:11:14.289 --> 01:11:16.009\nwas that
+  a part of\nthat conversation\n\n1047\n01:11:16.009 --> 01:11:17.909\nexplicitly
+  or was that not\nreally a part of that?\n\n1048\n01:11:17.909 --> 01:11:19.009\nThat
+  wasn''t a part of.\n\n1049\n01:11:19.009 --> 01:11:21.709\nThat wasn''t a part\nof
+  the discussion.\n\n1050\n01:11:24.590 --> 01:11:27.369\nSo you''re elected.\n\n1051\n01:11:27.369
+  --> 01:11:31.229\nAnd I show up the first day.\n\n1052\n01:11:31.229 --> 01:11:33.569\nWhat''s
+  the first day like?\n\n1053\n01:11:33.569 --> 01:11:37.849\nWell, I had a month
+  before.\n\n1054\n01:11:37.849 --> 01:11:43.709\nI''d been given briefs\nfor for
+  the Get to work.\n\n1055\n01:11:43.709 --> 01:11:53.309\nYes. For the argument calendar\nin
+  January of e three.\n\n1056\n01:11:53.830 --> 01:11:57.509\nAnd initially, I\nhad
+  been assigned\n\n1057\n01:11:57.509 --> 01:12:03.469\na case that was being\nheard
+  that first day.\n\n1058\n01:12:03.469 --> 01:12:04.829\nOkay.\n\n1059\n01:12:09.350
+  --> 01:12:13.209\nMind you. I hadn''t\n\n1060\n01:12:13.209 --> 01:12:17.269\nI
+  I didn''t know how the\nsystem worked, right?\n\n1061\n01:12:17.269 --> 01:12:20.469\nRight.
+  The norms, the\nprocesses the norms,\n\n1062\n01:12:20.469 --> 01:12:22.749\nthe
+  process any of it.\n\n1063\n01:12:24.470 --> 01:12:27.889\nAnd so I''m fast tracking,\n\n1064\n01:12:27.889
+  --> 01:12:30.129\ntrying to figure all this out.\n\n1065\n01:12:30.129 --> 01:12:34.909\nAnd
+  it turns out the\ncase that they gave me.\n\n1066\n01:12:34.909 --> 01:12:43.649\nI
+  had a conflict. So they\n\n1067\n01:12:43.649 --> 01:12:48.909\nswitched cases and
+  gave me\none for the second day.\n\n1068\n01:12:49.870 --> 01:12:52.969\nI was getting
+  my\nbaptism by fire.\n\n1069\n01:12:52.969 --> 01:12:54.189\nYeah.\n\n1070\n01:12:56.590
+  --> 01:13:03.149\nI you know, read the\nbriefs, prepared.\n\n1071\n01:13:04.070
+  --> 01:13:09.589\nDidn''t know what a and for\nmy case the second day,\n\n1072\n01:13:09.589
+  --> 01:13:14.129\nyou know, as you know, we\ndo a report to the court.\n\n1073\n01:13:14.129
+  --> 01:13:17.549\nI never done a\nreport to the court.\n\n1074\n01:13:17.549 -->
+  01:13:20.349\nBecause I hadn''t been\non the court, right?\n\n1075\n01:13:22.270
+  --> 01:13:24.969\nBut I had to sort\nof figure that out,\n\n1076\n01:13:24.969 -->
+  01:13:31.969\nbut I had no sort of\ncontext for doing that.\n\n1077\n01:13:31.969
+  --> 01:13:33.189\nYeah.\n\n1078\n01:13:33.750 --> 01:13:39.629\nAnd I was sworn\n\n1079\n01:13:39.629
+  --> 01:13:43.629\nin before the first\nargument the first day,\n\n1080\n01:13:43.629
+  --> 01:13:48.899\nand we were having a\npublic ceremony after it.\n\n1081\n01:13:48.899
+  --> 01:13:50.239\nThat very first day.\n\n1082\n01:13:50.239 --> 01:13:53.439\nThat
+  very first day,\npublic swearing in.\n\n1083\n01:13:53.439 --> 01:13:55.739\nThere
+  distractions beyond\nthe work of the court?\n\n1084\n01:13:55.739 --> 01:14:02.339\nOne
+  or two. Yeah. And sat\n\n1085\n01:14:02.339 --> 01:14:03.759\nthrough the one argument\n\n1086\n01:14:03.759
+  --> 01:14:06.499\nbecause I was recused\non the other.\n\n1087\n01:14:09.020 -->
+  01:14:14.639\nBut sat through my\nfirst case conference\n\n1088\n01:14:14.639 -->
+  01:14:18.979\nand learned what a\nreport was like.\n\n1089\n01:14:20.980 --> 01:14:24.740\nThrough
+  the public\nswearing in ceremony,\n\n1090\n01:14:24.740 --> 01:14:29.759\ncelebrate
+  with family, and\nat the end of the day,\n\n1091\n01:14:29.759 --> 01:14:32.779\nget
+  that report written.\n\n1092\n01:14:32.779 --> 01:14:34.279\nIs that report on your
+  mind\n\n1093\n01:14:34.279 --> 01:14:36.039\nkind of throughout\nthe day a little
+  bit?\n\n1094\n01:14:36.039 --> 01:14:37.739\nOh, absolutely.\nYeah, I got to get\n\n1095\n01:14:37.739
+  --> 01:14:39.679\nthat report. I got\nsome work to do.\n\n1096\n01:14:39.679 -->
+  01:14:41.359\nI got some work\nto. At least now,\n\n1097\n01:14:41.359 --> 01:14:44.199\nI
+  know Yeah, what it is.\n\n1098\n01:14:44.199 --> 01:14:49.419\nRight. And the second
+  day,\n\n1099\n01:14:49.419 --> 01:14:55.399\nI had I had my we\nhad the two cases.\n\n1100\n01:14:55.399
+  --> 01:14:57.619\nI sat through, gave my report,\n\n1101\n01:14:57.619 --> 01:15:02.699\nand
+  That''s the way it began.\n\n1102\n01:15:02.699 --> 01:15:05.159\nWe don''t do that
+  anymore.\n\n1103\n01:15:05.159 --> 01:15:08.439\nAt least when I left the court,\n\n1104\n01:15:08.760
+  --> 01:15:14.319\nnew justices had some\ntime to learn the system.\n\n1105\n01:15:17.080
+  --> 01:15:19.279\nSo was that I mean,\n\n1106\n01:15:19.279 --> 01:15:21.719\ndo
+  you do you think\nback on the beyond\n\n1107\n01:15:21.719 --> 01:15:24.599\nthe
+  first day or to the first\nweek, the first month is?\n\n1108\n01:15:24.599 --> 01:15:26.739\nWas
+  it sort of because\n\n1109\n01:15:26.739 --> 01:15:29.339\nit was trial by fire
+  a\nlittle bit right away,\n\n1110\n01:15:29.339 --> 01:15:31.199\nthat it was a
+  easy transition.\n\n1111\n01:15:31.199 --> 01:15:35.060\nI mean, hard right away,
+  but\na quick one or Invigorating.\n\n1112\n01:15:35.060 --> 01:15:40.200\nYeah.
+  And a very\nquick transition.\n\n1113\n01:15:41.760 --> 01:15:44.679\nYou know,
+  as with anything new,\n\n1114\n01:15:44.679 --> 01:15:47.959\nparticularly in\nthe
+  world of work.\n\n1115\n01:15:49.600 --> 01:15:52.799\nYou don''t know the rules
+  and\n\n1116\n01:15:52.799 --> 01:15:55.879\nthe norms until\nyou violate them.\n\n1117\n01:15:55.879
+  --> 01:16:01.819\nAnd so you''re trying to figure\nit all out and you know,\n\n1118\n01:16:01.819
+  --> 01:16:03.399\nyou have your missteps\nalong the way,\n\n1119\n01:16:03.399 -->
+  01:16:04.319\nbut you figured it out.\n\n1120\n01:16:04.319 --> 01:16:08.479\nSure.
+  And as with many things,\n\n1121\n01:16:08.479 --> 01:16:11.619\nthe question isn''t
+  whether\nyou made the mistake.\n\n1122\n01:16:11.619 --> 01:16:19.519\nWhat did
+  you learn from it?\nIn this particular instance,\n\n1123\n01:16:19.519 --> 01:16:23.120\nI
+  had to be a quick learner\nand I was. Absolutely.\n\n1124\n01:16:26.840 --> 01:16:32.719\nAnd
+  then, you know, you get\nthat first case behind you,\n\n1125\n01:16:32.719 --> 01:16:36.019\nthe
+  argument and the report.\n\n1126\n01:16:36.019 --> 01:16:39.539\nAnd then you got
+  to\nwrite an opinion.\n\n1127\n01:16:39.539 --> 01:16:41.839\nYou got more work
+  to\ndo. It''s not over.\n\n1128\n01:16:41.839 --> 01:16:45.019\nAnd having never
+  written\nan opinion before,\n\n1129\n01:16:45.019 --> 01:16:47.319\nyou have to
+  learn\nhow to do that.\n\n1130\n01:16:47.319 --> 01:16:50.199\nWhich is a whole
+  other\nbeast in and of itself.\n\n1131\n01:16:50.199 --> 01:16:52.739\nAbsolutely,
+  but I had\n\n1132\n01:16:52.739 --> 01:17:02.839\na good law cl I who\nhelped me
+  a lot.\n\n1133\n01:17:03.600 --> 01:17:10.919\nHe helped me a lot.\nAnd as over
+  the years,\n\n1134\n01:17:10.919 --> 01:17:13.739\nI had a bunch of great clerks\n\n1135\n01:17:13.739
+  --> 01:17:17.519\nwho made me look good\ntime and time again.\n\n1136\n01:17:20.120
+  --> 01:17:22.539\nI wanted to ask about clerks,\n\n1137\n01:17:22.539 --> 01:17:24.479\nnot
+  in a selfish\nway, but, you know,\n\n1138\n01:17:24.479 --> 01:17:25.779\nit''s
+  a part of it''s definitely\n\n1139\n01:17:25.779 --> 01:17:26.919\na part of your\nwork
+  on the court,\n\n1140\n01:17:26.919 --> 01:17:29.119\na daily work on the court.\n\n1141\n01:17:30.240
+  --> 01:17:36.019\nWhat did you look for in\na clerk and kind of I I\n\n1142\n01:17:36.019
+  --> 01:17:42.319\nlooked for people\nwho were curious.\n\n1143\n01:17:45.440 -->
+  01:17:48.799\nPeople who had something in\n\n1144\n01:17:48.799 --> 01:17:53.399\ntheir
+  background that\nwas out of the norm.\n\n1145\n01:17:57.560 --> 01:18:00.619\nJustice
+  Garter ring\nused to refer to\n\n1146\n01:18:00.619 --> 01:18:03.659\nwhat she called
+  standard\nissue law students.\n\n1147\n01:18:03.659 --> 01:18:12.939\nSills. I didn''t
+  want\nstandard issue law clerks.\n\n1148\n01:18:12.939 --> 01:18:15.439\nI wanted
+  people\n\n1149\n01:18:24.160 --> 01:18:25.679\nObviously,\n\n1150\n01:18:25.679
+  --> 01:18:27.399\nyou want somebody\nthat can write.\n\n1151\n01:18:27.399 --> 01:18:29.979\nYou
+  want somebody that''s\ngoing to work hard.\n\n1152\n01:18:29.979 --> 01:18:32.359\nBut
+  you want\nsomebody who''s going\n\n1153\n01:18:32.359 --> 01:18:36.499\nto have
+  good judgment\nand a sense of\n\n1154\n01:18:36.499 --> 01:18:39.819\ncuriosity
+  to sort of look\nunder the rocks that\n\n1155\n01:18:39.819 --> 01:18:41.419\nneed
+  to be looked under\n\n1156\n01:18:41.419 --> 01:18:43.959\nand not under the\nones
+  that don''t,\n\n1157\n01:18:43.959 --> 01:18:46.539\nand who can figure\nthat out
+  quickly?\n\n1158\n01:18:46.539 --> 01:18:47.679\nYeah.\n\n1159\n01:18:51.040 -->
+  01:18:57.929\nAnd who are\n\n1160\n01:18:57.929 --> 01:19:01.249\nwilling to or
+  who\n\n1161\n01:19:01.249 --> 01:19:04.309\nare willing to tell\nme when I was wrong.\n\n1162\n01:19:04.309
+  --> 01:19:07.309\nI didn''t I didn''t\nneed a law clerk or\n\n1163\n01:19:07.309
+  --> 01:19:12.489\na law clerks who would tell\nme what I want to hear.\n\n1164\n01:19:14.490
+  --> 01:19:20.830\nI''m I''m I don''t like surprises.\n\n1165\n01:19:20.830 --> 01:19:25.429\nAnd
+  so when I''m\nworking with a clerk,\n\n1166\n01:19:25.429 --> 01:19:28.329\nI want
+  the clerk to make\n\n1167\n01:19:28.329 --> 01:19:31.129\nsure there are no\nsurprises.
+  Right.\n\n1168\n01:19:35.250 --> 01:19:38.489\nAnd I was pretty\nlucky along the
+  way.\n\n1169\n01:19:38.489 --> 01:19:42.969\nAnd bunch of great writers\nyourself
+  included.\n\n1170\n01:19:42.969 --> 01:19:46.789\nHard workers curiosity,\nyou fit
+  the bill nicely.\n\n1171\n01:19:46.789 --> 01:19:52.689\nWell, it''s I always\ntalk
+  about too.\n\n1172\n01:19:52.689 --> 01:19:54.410\nIt''s one of those\nincredible
+  experiences\n\n1173\n01:19:54.410 --> 01:19:55.869\nwhere you get out of law school.\n\n1174\n01:19:55.869
+  --> 01:19:58.009\nAnd then the work in many ways,\n\n1175\n01:19:58.009 --> 01:20:00.149\nit
+  feels like some of\n\n1176\n01:20:00.149 --> 01:20:01.529\nthe most important\nwork
+  that you''ll\n\n1177\n01:20:01.529 --> 01:20:03.829\ndo as an attorney\nworking
+  on the court.\n\n1178\n01:20:03.829 --> 01:20:07.729\nSo pretty incredible experience.\n\n1179\n01:20:09.970
+  --> 01:20:15.089\nSo talk about I recall in\nthe year in your office.\n\n1180\n01:20:15.089
+  --> 01:20:16.269\nI should also note.\n\n1181\n01:20:16.269 --> 01:20:17.469\nYeah.\n\n1182\n01:20:19.270
+  --> 01:20:22.949\nI wanted diversity in my clerks.\n\n1183\n01:20:22.949 --> 01:20:23.929\nYeah.\n\n1184\n01:20:23.929
+  --> 01:20:29.349\nI wanted women. I wanted clerks\nwho were people of color.\n\n1185\n01:20:29.349
+  --> 01:20:32.829\nI wanted diversity\nin their, you know,\n\n1186\n01:20:32.829
+  --> 01:20:39.949\nwhere they came from, what\ntheir experiences were.\n\n1187\n01:20:39.949
+  --> 01:20:42.809\nBecause all of that\n\n1188\n01:20:42.809 --> 01:20:48.349\nmakes
+  all of that\nenriches the process.\n\n1189\n01:20:48.349 --> 01:20:57.139\nYeah.
+  And makes what I\ndo as a judge better,\n\n1190\n01:20:57.139 --> 01:21:04.359\nhaving
+  different views,\nways of looking at things.\n\n1191\n01:21:04.359 --> 01:21:07.859\nAnd
+  I mean, I think\nthat''s vital.\n\n1192\n01:21:07.859 --> 01:21:17.579\nYeah. Your
+  approach to\ntackling an opinion?\n\n1193\n01:21:17.579 --> 01:21:23.419\nI remember
+  You taking\nI think a lot of\n\n1194\n01:21:23.419 --> 01:21:30.620\njoy in peeling
+  apart the\nlayers, finding the resolution.\n\n1195\n01:21:30.620 --> 01:21:33.059\nAnd
+  obviously, as you''ve\nsaid many times before,\n\n1196\n01:21:33.059 --> 01:21:34.699\nnone
+  of the cases\nthat come before\n\n1197\n01:21:34.699 --> 01:21:37.599\nthe Minnesota
+  Supreme\nCourt are simple.\n\n1198\n01:21:37.599 --> 01:21:38.119\nNo.\n\n1199\n01:21:38.119
+  --> 01:21:39.679\nThey''re there because\nthey''re complex.\n\n1200\n01:21:39.679
+  --> 01:21:41.119\nTalk about a bit.\n\n1201\n01:21:41.119 --> 01:21:43.419\nThey''re
+  there because\nthey''re complex.\n\n1202\n01:21:43.419 --> 01:21:45.559\nThey''re
+  there because they''re\n\n1203\n01:21:45.559 --> 01:21:48.079\nimportant to the
+  people\ninvolved in them.\n\n1204\n01:21:48.079 --> 01:21:50.379\nRight? No matter
+  who they are,\n\n1205\n01:21:50.379 --> 01:21:59.999\nwhether it''s the\n\n1206\n01:21:59.999
+  --> 01:22:02.099\nfifth petition\n\n1207\n01:22:02.099 --> 01:22:11.399\nfor review
+  from a post\nconviction inmate?\n\n1208\n01:22:11.399 --> 01:22:17.000\nOr, you
+  know, some\nlarge corporation.\n\n1209\n01:22:17.000 --> 01:22:19.819\nIt''s important
+  to\nit''s important to\n\n1210\n01:22:19.819 --> 01:22:23.119\nthe people that we
+  serve.\n\n1211\n01:22:23.119 --> 01:22:25.359\nIt''s important to the\npeople of
+  the state.\n\n1212\n01:22:25.359 --> 01:22:30.499\nYeah. That we do\n\n1213\n01:22:30.499
+  --> 01:22:37.279\nit well and that we do\nit as right as we can.\n\n1214\n01:22:38.000
+  --> 01:22:45.989\nAnd I Opinion writing\n\n1215\n01:22:45.989 --> 01:22:51.809\nis
+  on any given day,\n\n1216\n01:22:51.809 --> 01:22:54.669\nI will tell you that\nit''s
+  more art than\n\n1217\n01:22:54.669 --> 01:22:58.989\nscience or that it''s\nmore
+  science than art.\n\n1218\n01:22:58.989 --> 01:23:00.369\nRight.\n\n1219\n01:23:00.370
+  --> 01:23:04.009\nIt''s really a\ncombination of both.\n\n1220\n01:23:10.970 -->
+  01:23:20.369\nFor me, it was very\nimportant to work with\n\n1221\n01:23:20.369
+  --> 01:23:30.529\nthe words so that what the\nopinion said was clear,\n\n1222\n01:23:30.730
+  --> 01:23:38.829\neasily understood, easily\nread, and helpful.\n\n1223\n01:23:38.829
+  --> 01:23:44.979\nYeah. And to do that for me,\n\n1224\n01:23:44.979 --> 01:23:50.819\nit
+  was about making sure\n\n1225\n01:23:50.819 --> 01:23:58.119\nthat there were no\nunintended
+  words,\n\n1226\n01:23:58.119 --> 01:24:01.719\nmuch less unintended ideas,\n\n1227\n01:24:02.200
+  --> 01:24:04.859\nbut no unintended words\n\n1228\n01:24:04.859 --> 01:24:08.719\nthat
+  every word\nwas thought about.\n\n1229\n01:24:10.720 --> 01:24:18.359\nPardon me.
+  That every\nword was where it was\n\n1230\n01:24:19.830 --> 01:24:24.809\nin the
+  sentence because that''s\n\n1231\n01:24:24.809 --> 01:24:27.689\nthe best use of
+  the word in\n\n1232\n01:24:27.689 --> 01:24:30.350\ncommunicating the idea that\nyou''re
+  trying to communicate?\n\n1233\n01:24:30.350 --> 01:24:32.569\nYeah. That every
+  sentence in\n\n1234\n01:24:32.569 --> 01:24:35.529\nthe paragraph was where it was,\n\n1235\n01:24:35.529
+  --> 01:24:39.949\nbecause that was the best way\n\n1236\n01:24:39.949 --> 01:24:41.429\nto
+  communicate what\nyou were trying\n\n1237\n01:24:41.429 --> 01:24:43.189\nto communicate
+  in the paragraph.\n\n1238\n01:24:43.189 --> 01:24:47.609\nThat every paragraph in
+  the\nopinion was where it was,\n\n1239\n01:24:47.609 --> 01:24:56.469\nbecause that''s
+  where it was\nmost helpful. I suspect that\n\n1240\n01:24:57.640 --> 01:25:03.160\nYou
+  clerks probably thought\nI was a little obsessive.\n\n1241\n01:25:06.760 --> 01:25:09.840\nAnd
+  maybe even a\nlittle compulsive,\n\n1242\n01:25:09.840 --> 01:25:15.299\nbut certainly
+  obsessive\nabout words. How we Yeah.\n\n1243\n01:25:15.299 --> 01:25:17.799\nHow
+  we used the language.\n\n1244\n01:25:17.799 --> 01:25:20.579\nBut that was important
+  to me.\n\n1245\n01:25:20.579 --> 01:25:24.499\nThat was very important to me.\n\n1246\n01:25:24.499
+  --> 01:25:26.039\nI remember you\ntalking right away\n\n1247\n01:25:26.039 --> 01:25:28.079\nabout
+  the purpose of every word.\n\n1248\n01:25:28.079 --> 01:25:30.559\nIt doesn''t have
+  a\nrole that''s not there\n\n1249\n01:25:30.559 --> 01:25:33.419\nfor a reason.
+  Gone. Get it out.\n\n1250\n01:25:33.419 --> 01:25:38.249\nNo. I mean, If it\ndoesn''t
+  have a reason,\n\n1251\n01:25:38.249 --> 01:25:39.649\nit''s not helping anybody.\n\n1252\n01:25:39.649
+  --> 01:25:41.669\nYeah. All it does\n\n1253\n01:25:41.669 --> 01:25:47.049\nis add
+  length and the\npotential for confusion.\n\n1254\n01:25:47.049 --> 01:25:50.090\nAnd
+  the potential\nfor interpretation\n\n1255\n01:25:50.090 --> 01:25:53.749\ndifferently
+  than the\nintended what you intended.\n\n1256\n01:25:53.749 --> 01:25:57.109\nRight.
+  Right. I\nremember that lesson.\n\n1257\n01:25:57.109 --> 01:25:59.389\nThat sticks
+  with me for sure.\n\n1258\n01:26:02.040 --> 01:26:04.739\nI was always struck with\n\n1259\n01:26:04.739
+  --> 01:26:06.779\nthe collegiality and\nrapport on the court.\n\n1260\n01:26:06.779
+  --> 01:26:09.739\nYou know, it was\na serious place,\n\n1261\n01:26:09.739 --> 01:26:11.779\nand
+  a lot of important work,\n\n1262\n01:26:11.779 --> 01:26:15.659\nbut I also remember\nat
+  least feeling\n\n1263\n01:26:15.659 --> 01:26:18.319\nlike the justices had a lot
+  of\n\n1264\n01:26:18.319 --> 01:26:21.199\nrespect for one another and\nwere good
+  friends as well.\n\n1265\n01:26:21.199 --> 01:26:22.879\nCan you speak to\nthat
+  a little bit?\n\n1266\n01:26:22.879 --> 01:26:26.200\nWell, you know,\nit''s interesting.\n\n1267\n01:26:26.200
+  --> 01:26:31.819\nYou have seven people and\nchanging all the time.\n\n1268\n01:26:31.819
+  --> 01:26:39.799\nMh. Who have big brains.\n\n1269\n01:26:40.400 --> 01:26:42.499\nWho
+  would like to think they''re\n\n1270\n01:26:42.499 --> 01:26:44.719\nthe smartest
+  one in the room,\n\n1271\n01:26:45.920 --> 01:26:55.319\nwho have views that conflict
+  and\n\n1272\n01:26:55.319 --> 01:27:02.579\nwho feel\n\n1273\n01:27:02.579 --> 01:27:06.519\nstrongly
+  about their opinions.\n\n1274\n01:27:08.840 --> 01:27:11.939\nBut we''ve been lucky
+  here in\n\n1275\n01:27:11.939 --> 01:27:17.020\nMinnesota to have\npeople understand\n\n1276\n01:27:17.020
+  --> 01:27:25.379\nthat the\n\n1277\n01:27:25.379 --> 01:27:27.879\ninstitution is\n\n1278\n01:27:27.879
+  --> 01:27:30.539\nmore important than\nany one of us.\n\n1279\n01:27:30.700 -->
+  01:27:33.880\nAnd institutionally,\n\n1280\n01:27:33.880 --> 01:27:39.220\nit is
+  important to maintain\nthat collegiality.\n\n1281\n01:27:39.220 --> 01:27:48.689\nMm.
+  Even when you\ncolleagues, in your view,\n\n1282\n01:27:48.689 --> 01:27:53.149\nare
+  so far wrong that you\n\n1283\n01:27:53.149 --> 01:27:59.309\ncan''t understand
+  how they\ncould poly possibly be there.\n\n1284\n01:28:00.830 --> 01:28:08.509\nAnd
+  sometimes the\ntension is pretty high.\n\n1285\n01:28:08.750 --> 01:28:11.569\nBut
+  in the end, you\nhave to understand\n\n1286\n01:28:11.569 --> 01:28:16.430\nthat
+  it''s about the institution\n\n1287\n01:28:16.430 --> 01:28:18.269\nand the work.
+  It''s not about me.\n\n1288\n01:28:18.269 --> 01:28:19.469\nRight.\n\n1289\n01:28:19.469
+  --> 01:28:25.009\nAnd also you have\nto understand that\n\n1290\n01:28:25.009 -->
+  01:28:29.649\nsomeday You may need\n\n1291\n01:28:29.649 --> 01:28:35.789\nthat
+  colleague to get\nwhere you want to go.\n\n1292\n01:28:35.789 --> 01:28:37.969\nSure.
+  In a particular case,\n\n1293\n01:28:37.969 --> 01:28:40.289\nwhere you think a\ncase
+  should go?\n\n1294\n01:28:40.289 --> 01:28:43.589\nI when I first got on the court,\n\n1295\n01:28:43.589
+  --> 01:28:45.989\nI would hear these stories\nabout what was going on\n\n1296\n01:28:45.989
+  --> 01:28:51.589\nin other states with\ntheir Supreme Courts.\n\n1297\n01:28:52.030
+  --> 01:28:58.649\nJustices inviting one another\n\n1298\n01:28:58.649 --> 01:29:01.789\nout
+  into the court\nor to have a fight.\n\n1299\n01:29:01.789 --> 01:29:08.299\nYeah.
+  Justices showing up\n\n1300\n01:29:08.299 --> 01:29:12.239\nat conference and placing\n\n1301\n01:29:12.239
+  --> 01:29:15.739\nthe handgun on the\nconference table.\n\n1302\n01:29:20.180 -->
+  01:29:28.099\nHow does that work? How can\nyou have a justice system\n\n1303\n01:29:33.940
+  --> 01:29:40.639\nthat or that\n\n1304\n01:29:40.639 --> 01:29:47.639\nthe the members\n\n1305\n01:29:47.639
+  --> 01:29:51.959\nof which of their courts are so\n\n1306\n01:29:51.959 --> 01:29:58.059\nantagonistic
+  with one another\nthat they can''t be civil.\n\n1307\n01:29:59.380 --> 01:30:06.019\nEven,
+  you know, under pressure.\n\n1308\n01:30:06.019 --> 01:30:09.779\nHow do you reach
+  good\ndecisions doing that?\n\n1309\n01:30:09.779 --> 01:30:15.659\nYeah. I don''t
+  think you\ncan. One of the things that\n\n1310\n01:30:19.450 --> 01:30:22.189\nThat
+  was also, I\nthink, important for\n\n1311\n01:30:22.189 --> 01:30:26.609\nour court
+  during\nmy time there to\n\n1312\n01:30:26.609 --> 01:30:33.369\nensure the understanding
+  that\n\n1313\n01:30:33.369 --> 01:30:36.409\nColegiality was important and\n\n1314\n01:30:36.409
+  --> 01:30:39.309\nthat it''s the\ninstitution, it''s not us.\n\n1315\n01:30:39.750
+  --> 01:30:45.289\nWas it we in our conference.\n\n1316\n01:30:45.289 --> 01:30:47.349\nYou
+  know, there are seven of us.\n\n1317\n01:30:47.349 --> 01:30:50.269\nWe know each
+  other\nby first name.\n\n1318\n01:30:50.910 --> 01:30:55.189\nWe refer to each other\nas
+  justice so and so.\n\n1319\n01:30:55.510 --> 01:30:57.629\nJust to make it clear
+  in\n\n1320\n01:30:57.629 --> 01:31:00.689\nour own minds and\neverybody else in
+  the room\n\n1321\n01:31:00.689 --> 01:31:08.519\nthat This is an institutional\ndecision
+  we''re making.\n\n1322\n01:31:08.519 --> 01:31:11.979\nThis is the institution\nthat
+  is acting.\n\n1323\n01:31:11.979 --> 01:31:15.119\nIt''s not me, Alan Paige,\nmaking
+  a decision.\n\n1324\n01:31:15.119 --> 01:31:21.000\nRight. I''m making it on\nbehalf
+  of this institution.\n\n1325\n01:31:21.760 --> 01:31:24.479\nAnd you know, and it''s
+  a way to\n\n1326\n01:31:24.479 --> 01:31:26.739\nsort of force you to treat\npeople
+  with respect?\n\n1327\n01:31:26.739 --> 01:31:27.819\nSure.\n\n1328\n01:31:27.819
+  --> 01:31:31.839\nAnd I think it served us well.\n\n1329\n01:31:32.760 --> 01:31:35.519\nThose
+  small things\nare not small things.\n\n1330\n01:31:35.519 --> 01:31:37.719\nThey''re
+  not not small at all.\n\n1331\n01:31:37.719 --> 01:31:40.879\nRight. Not small at
+  all. Right.\n\n1332\n01:31:44.050 --> 01:31:48.769\nYou talk a little\nbit about
+  you know,\n\n1333\n01:31:48.769 --> 01:31:51.909\nthe first of the critical first\n\n1334\n01:31:51.909
+  --> 01:31:53.049\nof being the first African\n\n1335\n01:31:53.049 --> 01:31:55.649\nAmerican
+  Minnesota\nSupreme Court Justice.\n\n1336\n01:31:55.649 --> 01:31:58.309\nJust sort
+  of looking\nback and thinking\n\n1337\n01:31:58.309 --> 01:32:01.769\nabout the
+  role of that first\nin your work on the court.\n\n1338\n01:32:07.690 --> 01:32:10.589\nI
+  have a hard time doing that\n\n1339\n01:32:10.589 --> 01:32:15.529\nbecause that
+  wasn''t\nwhat it was about.\n\n1340\n01:32:15.529 --> 01:32:16.849\nYeah.\n\n1341\n01:32:17.930
+  --> 01:32:21.249\nInstitutionally, I\nthink it''s important.\n\n1342\n01:32:21.249
+  --> 01:32:27.849\nThat there had to be a first.\n\n1343\n01:32:27.849 --> 01:32:29.169\nRight?\n\n1344\n01:32:31.250
+  --> 01:32:33.829\nInstitutionally,\nit would have been\n\n1345\n01:32:33.829 -->
+  01:32:37.409\nbetter had it been\nsomebody long before me.\n\n1346\n01:32:37.409
+  --> 01:32:42.809\nYeah. The fact that it finally\n\n1347\n01:32:42.809 --> 01:32:49.389\nhappened
+  that\n\n1348\n01:32:49.389 --> 01:32:54.809\nwe finally opened the door,\n\n1349\n01:32:54.809
+  --> 01:32:57.569\nif you will, for\npeople of color.\n\n1350\n01:33:00.320 --> 01:33:03.020\nI
+  think it was very significant.\n\n1351\n01:33:03.020 --> 01:33:07.379\nYeah. I think
+  equally\nsignificant was the fact\n\n1352\n01:33:07.379 --> 01:33:12.539\nthat when
+  I joined the court,\n\n1353\n01:33:12.539 --> 01:33:15.799\nthe court was a\nmajority
+  of women.\n\n1354\n01:33:15.799 --> 01:33:17.599\nThat''s right.\n\n1355\n01:33:18.280
+  --> 01:33:21.499\nPeople would ask me, what''s it\n\n1356\n01:33:21.499 --> 01:33:24.959\nlike
+  serving on a court with\na majority of women, right?\n\n1357\n01:33:24.959 --> 01:33:27.839\nAnd
+  of course, having not served\n\n1358\n01:33:27.839 --> 01:33:30.439\non a court
+  that wasn''t\na majority of women,\n\n1359\n01:33:30.439 --> 01:33:34.119\nI thought
+  wasn''t a\nnatural order of things.\n\n1360\n01:33:35.880 --> 01:33:39.419\nBut
+  those things are important.\n\n1361\n01:33:39.419 --> 01:33:47.819\nYeah. That judicial
+  that people\n\n1362\n01:33:47.819 --> 01:33:53.079\nwho serve in our judicial system\n\n1363\n01:33:53.280
+  --> 01:33:57.439\nreflect the people\nof this state.\n\n1364\n01:34:00.030 --> 01:34:09.609\nI''ve
+  said many times\nthat the only power\n\n1365\n01:34:09.609 --> 01:34:14.869\nthat
+  courts have is\n\n1366\n01:34:14.869 --> 01:34:19.749\nfound in the trust and confidence\nof
+  the people we serve.\n\n1367\n01:34:21.550 --> 01:34:29.299\nAnd the less the members\n\n1368\n01:34:29.299
+  --> 01:34:33.339\nof the judiciary look like\nthe people they serve,\n\n1369\n01:34:33.339
+  --> 01:34:38.719\nthe less trust and confidence\nour judiciary will have.\n\n1370\n01:34:38.719
+  --> 01:34:44.119\nRight. And so I\n\n1371\n01:34:44.119 --> 01:34:50.799\nthink
+  finally\nbreaking that barrier\n\n1372\n01:34:50.799 --> 01:34:53.959\nwas critically
+  important. Right.\n\n1373\n01:34:57.970 --> 01:35:00.989\nOn that note, I mean,\n\n1374\n01:35:00.989
+  --> 01:35:04.209\nearly on in your\ntenure as a justice,\n\n1375\n01:35:04.209 -->
+  01:35:05.889\nand I want to get this right,\n\n1376\n01:35:05.889 --> 01:35:09.349\nyour
+  service on the Minnesota\nSupreme Court Task Force\n\n1377\n01:35:09.349 --> 01:35:11.429\non
+  racial bias in\nthe Judicial system.\n\n1378\n01:35:11.429 --> 01:35:14.090\nYes.
+  Reports issued in 1993.\n\n1379\n01:35:14.090 --> 01:35:16.209\nSix months after
+  I\njoined the court?\n\n1380\n01:35:16.209 --> 01:35:17.869\nRight. And you were
+  involved.\n\n1381\n01:35:17.869 --> 01:35:20.829\nCan you Well, I can you\ndescribe
+  that a little bit,\n\n1382\n01:35:20.829 --> 01:35:22.750\nor what was what was\nyour
+  participation?\n\n1383\n01:35:22.750 --> 01:35:23.909\nWhat was your experience?\n\n1384\n01:35:23.909
+  --> 01:35:27.109\nI I became the chair of\n\n1385\n01:35:27.109 --> 01:35:31.249\nthe
+  committee that was\ngoing to implement.\n\n1386\n01:35:31.249 --> 01:35:35.009\nRight.
+  The taskforce Report.\n\n1387\n01:35:42.170 --> 01:35:46.249\nThat was challenging
+  for me.\n\n1388\n01:35:46.450 --> 01:35:49.849\nRemember, my interest in\n\n1389\n01:35:49.849
+  --> 01:35:56.210\nthe law was the law and not\nin being an administrative?\n\n1390\n01:35:56.210
+  --> 01:36:01.109\nRight. And so from\nthat standpoint, Yeah.\n\n1391\n01:36:01.109
+  --> 01:36:04.909\nOne of the things that\nnot only that committee,\n\n1392\n01:36:04.909
+  --> 01:36:09.970\nbut all we had various\ncommittee assignments.\n\n1393\n01:36:12.340
+  --> 01:36:15.920\nI have to say those\ncommittee assignments\n\n1394\n01:36:15.920
+  --> 01:36:20.819\nwere not my favorite part\nof being on the court.\n\n1395\n01:36:20.819
+  --> 01:36:25.179\nSure. But this was an\nimportant one. Mm hm.\n\n1396\n01:36:25.179
+  --> 01:36:28.179\nAnd, you know, we ended\n\n1397\n01:36:28.179 --> 01:36:37.859\nup
+  working through the depending\non how you count them,\n\n1398\n01:36:37.859 -->
+  01:36:42.220\nthe hundred plus\nrecommendations.\n\n1399\n01:36:43.380 --> 01:36:47.820\nPretty
+  much most of\nthem being implemented.\n\n1400\n01:36:48.700 --> 01:36:50.739\nBut\n\n1401\n01:36:59.270
+  --> 01:37:00.389\nand\n\n1402\n01:37:00.389 --> 01:37:08.209\nthe implementation\nmade
+  things better,\n\n1403\n01:37:08.209 --> 01:37:11.109\nbut it didn''t solve the
+  problem.\n\n1404\n01:37:11.109 --> 01:37:13.509\nRight. It was a little\n\n1405\n01:37:22.250
+  --> 01:37:27.229\nI think we made very\nincremental progress.\n\n1406\n01:37:27.229
+  --> 01:37:32.369\nThe disparities that\ncame out of the report,\n\n1407\n01:37:32.530
+  --> 01:37:36.109\nparticularly in the\ncriminal justice area,\n\n1408\n01:37:36.109
+  --> 01:37:42.130\nwhere African Americans,\n\n1409\n01:37:42.130 --> 01:37:47.849\npeople
+  of color arrest stopped,\n\n1410\n01:37:49.410 --> 01:37:55.929\ncharged given higher
+  bail.\n\n1411\n01:37:56.320 --> 01:38:02.059\nLess fair trials, higher\nconviction
+  rates,\n\n1412\n01:38:02.059 --> 01:38:06.799\nlonger sentences, all\nthings being
+  equal.\n\n1413\n01:38:07.880 --> 01:38:11.619\nThat hasn''t that hasn''t ended.\n\n1414\n01:38:11.619
+  --> 01:38:14.559\nAnd that''s just on the\ncriminal justice side.\n\n1415\n01:38:14.559
+  --> 01:38:16.159\nThere''s the juvenile justice\n\n1416\n01:38:16.159 --> 01:38:19.799\nand
+  all the other\naspects of the report.\n\n1417\n01:38:20.200 --> 01:38:23.799\nI''ve
+  more or less come\nto the conclusion\n\n1418\n01:38:23.799 --> 01:38:31.809\nthat
+  before real change\nis going to happen.\n\n1419\n01:38:31.809 --> 01:38:38.429\nWe
+  have to take\n\n1420\n01:38:38.429 --> 01:38:46.269\na more fundamental look at\nwhat
+  our law is grounded in.\n\n1421\n01:38:47.870 --> 01:38:54.350\nWhich is to say,
+  it''s\ngrounded in a constitution\n\n1422\n01:38:54.350 --> 01:39:03.249\nthat counted
+  those imported\n\n1423\n01:39:03.249 --> 01:39:06.209\nas slaves as three\nfifths
+  of person.\n\n1424\n01:39:06.970 --> 01:39:09.149\nAnd while we''ve had\n\n1425\n01:39:09.149
+  --> 01:39:19.289\nthe 13th 14th and 15th\namendments ending slavery,\n\n1426\n01:39:19.289
+  --> 01:39:27.449\nensuring due process and\n\n1427\n01:39:30.330 --> 01:39:33.729\nguaranteeing
+  the right to vote\n\n1428\n01:39:36.180 --> 01:39:40.159\nThe law itself the\nfoundation
+  is still on\n\n1429\n01:39:40.159 --> 01:39:43.959\ncases that arose out of slavery.\n\n1430\n01:39:43.959
+  --> 01:39:47.899\nRight. And we''ve got\nto figure out how to\n\n1431\n01:39:48.100
+  --> 01:39:55.139\ntease that out of it before\nwe have fundamental change.\n\n1432\n01:39:55.139
+  --> 01:39:57.619\nStructural fundamental\nchange. Yeah. Right.\n\n1433\n01:39:57.619
+  --> 01:40:04.459\nIt''s at systemic problem.\n\n1434\n01:40:10.390 --> 01:40:12.989\nWhat
+  about Justice Page,\n\n1435\n01:40:12.989 --> 01:40:18.789\nany notable opinions,
+  dissents,\n\n1436\n01:40:18.789 --> 01:40:22.889\nAnything come to mind.\nYou wrote
+  a lot.\n\n1437\n01:40:22.889 --> 01:40:24.309\nSo it''s a big body of work,\n\n1438\n01:40:24.309
+  --> 01:40:25.469\nbut\n\n1439\n01:40:29.110 --> 01:40:35.759\nI I have\n\n1440\n01:40:35.759
+  --> 01:40:40.239\nnever in my own head,\n\n1441\n01:40:40.239 --> 01:40:45.479\nquantified
+  or qualified,\nwhether it was\n\n1442\n01:40:45.479 --> 01:40:51.779\na dissent
+  or an opinion in\nterms of its importance.\n\n1443\n01:40:51.779 --> 01:40:55.499\nBecause
+  it seems to me\nthat once you do that,\n\n1444\n01:40:55.499 --> 01:40:59.059\nonce
+  you decide that this one\n\n1445\n01:40:59.059 --> 01:41:01.359\nis more important
+  than that one,\n\n1446\n01:41:01.359 --> 01:41:05.160\nyou start doing both\nof
+  them a disservice.\n\n1447\n01:41:05.160 --> 01:41:08.819\nAnd so I took each one
+  as they\n\n1448\n01:41:08.819 --> 01:41:12.899\ncame and tried to put the same\n\n1449\n01:41:14.900
+  --> 01:41:21.719\nEnergy and effort into\ntrying to get it right.\n\n1450\n01:41:21.719
+  --> 01:41:24.859\nYeah. And again, as I say,\n\n1451\n01:41:24.859 --> 01:41:30.899\nwhether
+  it was that fifth\npost conviction petition or,\n\n1452\n01:41:31.220 --> 01:41:40.379\nyou
+  know, some mega million\ndollar corporate issue.\n\n1453\n01:41:43.020 --> 01:41:46.019\nThe
+  people who come before\n\n1454\n01:41:46.019 --> 01:41:50.679\nus deserve to have\nour
+  fulest attention.\n\n1455\n01:41:50.679 --> 01:41:54.999\nMm hmm. And so\n\n1456\n01:41:54.999
+  --> 01:41:57.399\nI just don''t qualify him and\n\n1457\n01:41:57.399 --> 01:42:00.819\nquantify
+  him that way.\nThink of it as that, right?\n\n1458\n01:42:03.650 --> 01:42:08.729\nSo
+  during your\ntenure in the court,\n\n1459\n01:42:08.729 --> 01:42:10.889\none thing
+  I wanted to ask\nyou about too is just\n\n1460\n01:42:10.889 --> 01:42:14.809\nsort
+  of the interplay,\n\n1461\n01:42:14.809 --> 01:42:18.389\nif you think of there
+  being\none at all between your kind\n\n1462\n01:42:18.389 --> 01:42:20.069\nof continued\ncommunity
+  engagement\n\n1463\n01:42:20.069 --> 01:42:21.529\nand still working on the court.\n\n1464\n01:42:21.529
+  --> 01:42:23.729\nYou know, we would I\nthink back a lot on\n\n1465\n01:42:23.729
+  --> 01:42:26.429\ngoing and reading with you\n\n1466\n01:42:26.429 --> 01:42:28.869\nand
+  other staff in\nthe court reading to\n\n1467\n01:42:28.869 --> 01:42:30.189\nelementary
+  school kids on\n\n1468\n01:42:30.189 --> 01:42:32.669\nWednesdays or\nwhatever day
+  it was.\n\n1469\n01:42:32.669 --> 01:42:38.109\nThat community\nengagement and You
+  know,\n\n1470\n01:42:38.109 --> 01:42:40.949\ndid that play a role in\nyour work
+  as a justice?\n\n1471\n01:42:40.949 --> 01:42:42.849\nDid you see it\nsort of separately\n\n1472\n01:42:42.849
+  --> 01:42:46.649\nor was it related and\ndidn''t inform your work?\n\n1473\n01:42:46.649
+  --> 01:42:49.029\nOh, I think everything we do,\n\n1474\n01:42:49.029 --> 01:42:51.909\nour
+  lives inform our work.\n\n1475\n01:42:51.909 --> 01:42:56.609\nI don''t know that
+  I, you know,\n\n1476\n01:42:56.609 --> 01:42:59.029\nreading with kids\nor my involvement\n\n1477\n01:42:59.029
+  --> 01:43:00.849\nto the extent that I had it,\n\n1478\n01:43:00.849 --> 01:43:02.809\nwhich
+  was quite limited, right?\n\n1479\n01:43:02.809 --> 01:43:05.429\nThe Page Education
+  Foundation.\n\n1480\n01:43:06.630 --> 01:43:09.469\nInfluenced my work directly.\n\n1481\n01:43:09.469
+  --> 01:43:11.129\nBut it''s a part of who I am.\n\n1482\n01:43:11.129 --> 01:43:20.049\nRight.
+  And being engaged in\nthe community around us at\n\n1483\n01:43:20.049 --> 01:43:22.269\nsome
+  level helps us\n\n1484\n01:43:22.269 --> 01:43:31.329\nunderstand those people\nwe
+  are a part of,\n\n1485\n01:43:31.329 --> 01:43:32.849\nbut also who we represent.\n\n1486\n01:43:32.849
+  --> 01:43:34.269\nMm hm.\n\n1487\n01:43:34.270 --> 01:43:40.989\nAnd I think it\n\n1488\n01:43:40.989
+  --> 01:43:42.289\nwould be a mistake to be\n\n1489\n01:43:42.289 --> 01:43:46.509\nisolated
+  and not a part\nof the world around us.\n\n1490\n01:43:46.509 --> 01:43:49.649\nYeah.
+  To the extent obviously,\n\n1491\n01:43:49.649 --> 01:43:50.889\nto the extent possible.\n\n1492\n01:43:50.889
+  --> 01:43:54.790\nYeah. To the extent that it\ndoesn''t create conflicts.\n\n1493\n01:43:54.790
+  --> 01:44:04.189\nYeah. You''ve had some\ntime now after retiring,\n\n1494\n01:44:04.189
+  --> 01:44:11.069\nI suppose to think\nback any Well,\n\n1495\n01:44:11.069 --> 01:44:15.549\nIs
+  I guess maybe the question\nis in thinking about it.\n\n1496\n01:44:15.549 --> 01:44:18.430\nThis
+  kind of gets to maybe\nsome final reflections\n\n1497\n01:44:18.430 --> 01:44:20.589\nabout
+  your time on the court.\n\n1498\n01:44:20.910 --> 01:44:23.609\nIt''s a big question,\nbut
+  what is it you\n\n1499\n01:44:23.609 --> 01:44:26.350\nknow, personally\nand professionally?\n\n1500\n01:44:26.350
+  --> 01:44:30.629\nCan you put into words what\nthe service meant to you?\n\n1501\n01:44:33.030
+  --> 01:44:35.569\nWell, for me, it was the most\n\n1502\n01:44:35.569 --> 01:44:37.949\nin
+  terms of my\nprofessional life,\n\n1503\n01:44:37.949 --> 01:44:41.109\nthe most
+  fulfilling\nthing I''ve ever done.\n\n1504\n01:44:42.150 --> 01:44:50.469\nThe challenges
+  of working\nwith seven other people.\n\n1505\n01:44:54.520 --> 01:44:57.459\nI mean,
+  I looked\n\n1506\n01:44:57.459 --> 01:45:00.039\nforward every day when\nI was on
+  the court.\n\n1507\n01:45:00.039 --> 01:45:03.579\nParticularly to\nthose days where
+  we\n\n1508\n01:45:03.579 --> 01:45:07.600\nwould hear argument\nand have conferences,\n\n1509\n01:45:07.600
+  --> 01:45:14.979\nbecause every conference,\nyou got stretched in ways\n\n1510\n01:45:14.979
+  --> 01:45:22.919\nthat You would never You\nwould never get stretched.\n\n1511\n01:45:22.919
+  --> 01:45:26.299\nAnd I love that.\n\n1512\n01:45:26.299 --> 01:45:29.099\nTrying
+  to understand what\n\n1513\n01:45:29.099 --> 01:45:31.699\nyour colleagues are\nsaying
+  and thinking,\n\n1514\n01:45:31.699 --> 01:45:34.319\ntrying to understand\nwhat
+  you''re thinking in\n\n1515\n01:45:34.319 --> 01:45:36.799\nthe context of what
+  they''re\nsaying and thinking,\n\n1516\n01:45:36.799 --> 01:45:39.359\nand trying
+  to understand\nwhat you''re thinking.\n\n1517\n01:45:39.359 --> 01:45:41.799\nYour
+  thought process is, right?\n\n1518\n01:45:41.799 --> 01:45:47.579\nAnd working through
+  all that.\nDoesn''t get any better.\n\n1519\n01:45:47.579 --> 01:45:50.479\nSometimes
+  arriving\nat unexpected places\n\n1520\n01:45:50.479 --> 01:45:52.079\ntoo. All
+  the time.\n\n1521\n01:45:52.079 --> 01:45:58.839\nAll the time. Arriving\nat expected
+  places,\n\n1522\n01:45:58.839 --> 01:46:02.199\narriving at places that\non a personal
+  level,\n\n1523\n01:46:02.199 --> 01:46:04.479\nyou wouldn''t want to arrive at.\n\n1524\n01:46:04.479
+  --> 01:46:09.639\nYou would. If I could\ndecide this on my own,\n\n1525\n01:46:09.639
+  --> 01:46:16.319\nI would not this is\nnot what I would do.\n\n1526\n01:46:16.319
+  --> 01:46:17.099\nYeah.\n\n1527\n01:46:17.099 --> 01:46:21.579\nBut not my choice.
+  You know,\n\n1528\n01:46:24.210 --> 01:46:29.549\nOne of the a\n\n1529\n01:46:29.549
+  --> 01:46:34.929\nlittle bit disconcerting\nthings about our society.\n\n1530\n01:46:35.170
+  --> 01:46:45.969\nI don''t think people understand\nhow important it is for\n\n1531\n01:46:45.969
+  --> 01:46:51.629\njudges to be impartial and\n\n1532\n01:46:51.629 --> 01:46:59.609\nto
+  exercise their judgment\nand not impose their will.\n\n1533\n01:46:59.609 --> 01:47:06.039\nMm
+  hmm. And just the challenge\n\n1534\n01:47:06.039 --> 01:47:07.439\nof doing that
+  all the time.\n\n1535\n01:47:07.439 --> 01:47:08.359\nYeah.\n\n1536\n01:47:08.359
+  --> 01:47:11.139\nAnd trying to get that right.\n\n1537\n01:47:11.139 --> 01:47:17.159\nIt''s
+  all very very much fun.\n\n1538\n01:47:17.159 --> 01:47:25.340\nYeah. Very invigorating,\nvery
+  satisfying.\n\n1539\n01:47:25.340 --> 01:47:26.499\nYeah.\n\n1540\n01:47:28.580
+  --> 01:47:32.379\nAnd hopefully in the end,\n\n1541\n01:47:39.790 --> 01:47:43.389\nI
+  did it as well\nas I could do it.\n\n1542\n01:47:43.990 --> 01:47:47.469\nLeave
+  that up to to\nothers to decide.\n\n1543\n01:47:47.469 --> 01:47:54.229\nSure. But
+  that was\ncertainly my goal.\n\n1544\n01:47:54.229 --> 01:48:02.149\nYeah. And I
+  enjoyed every\nminute of it along the way.\n\n1545\n01:48:03.690 --> 01:48:06.409\nWhat
+  about the\nfuture of the court?\n\n1546\n01:48:06.409 --> 01:48:09.049\nYou''re
+  not on it,\nobviously anymore,\n\n1547\n01:48:09.049 --> 01:48:13.969\nbut thinking
+  about\nchallenges. Hopes.\n\n1548\n01:48:13.969 --> 01:48:16.349\nAny thoughts come\nto
+  mind about Well,\n\n1549\n01:48:16.349 --> 01:48:20.510\nMy hope would be that they\ncontinue
+  to be independent,\n\n1550\n01:48:20.510 --> 01:48:27.249\nthat they continue to
+  act\n\n1551\n01:48:27.249 --> 01:48:32.409\nimpartially and understand that\n\n1552\n01:48:32.570
+  --> 01:48:36.409\nit is about the\nexercise of judgment.\n\n1553\n01:48:40.220 -->
+  01:48:46.599\nAnd if the court''s\nmembers can do that,\n\n1554\n01:48:46.599 -->
+  01:48:49.339\nit''ll have a bright future.\n\n1555\n01:48:51.340 --> 01:48:54.899\nAnd
+  there''s something about,\n\n1556\n01:48:54.899 --> 01:48:57.159\nat least from
+  my experience on\n\n1557\n01:48:57.159 --> 01:49:01.219\nthe court looking back\nand
+  looking forward.\n\n1558\n01:49:01.540 --> 01:49:04.859\nI think there''s a p good
+  chance\n\n1559\n01:49:04.859 --> 01:49:11.314\nthat things will continue in\nthat
+  regard as they have.\n\n1560\n01:49:11.314 --> 01:49:19.210\nYeah. The Court''s\nleadership
+  understands.\n\n1561\n01:49:20.090 --> 01:49:25.629\nI had the good fortune\nto
+  serve with.\n\n1562\n01:49:25.629 --> 01:49:28.429\nLet me think. I knew\n\n1563\n01:49:28.429
+  --> 01:49:31.609\nthe number exactly at\none time. Let''s see.\n\n1564\n01:49:32.970
+  --> 01:49:40.619\nTo I can''t remember\n\n1565\n01:49:40.619 --> 01:49:43.319\nthe
+  exact number six or seven\nor eight. Chief Justice.\n\n1566\n01:49:43.319 --> 01:49:46.679\nChef
+  Justices. Yeah. And each\n\n1567\n01:49:46.679 --> 01:49:50.979\none of them got
+  it. They\nwere all different.\n\n1568\n01:49:51.500 --> 01:49:54.819\nBut each one
+  of them\n\n1569\n01:49:55.300 --> 01:50:01.239\nunderstood how important\nit is
+  for this for\n\n1570\n01:50:01.239 --> 01:50:04.519\ncourt to maintain\nits independence
+  and\n\n1571\n01:50:04.519 --> 01:50:09.620\nits impartiality and\nto make decisions\n\n1572\n01:50:10.300
+  --> 01:50:19.619\nbased on the law and\n\n1573\n01:50:19.619 --> 01:50:23.819\nthe
+  facts and their\nbest judgment and not\n\n1574\n01:50:23.819 --> 01:50:29.279\non
+  the way the wind\nis blowing today.\n\n1575\n01:50:33.160 --> 01:50:36.879\nWe''ve
+  been lucky to have\nreally good people,\n\n1576\n01:50:36.879 --> 01:50:40.299\nboth
+  at the Chief Justice as\n\n1577\n01:50:40.299 --> 01:50:44.999\nChief Justices and
+  as\nassociate justices.\n\n1578\n01:50:44.999 --> 01:50:51.939\nYeah. And to be\n\n1579\n01:50:51.939
+  --> 01:50:55.439\nincluded in that group,\nit''s pretty special.\n\n1580\n01:50:59.840
+  --> 01:51:04.759\nYou know, I want to definitely\nbefore we close out,\n\n1581\n01:51:04.759
+  --> 01:51:08.859\ngive you an opportunity to\nspeak to your late wife,\n\n1582\n01:51:08.859
+  --> 01:51:14.139\nDiane''s role in your career.\n\n1583\n01:51:14.139 --> 01:51:18.579\nWell,
+  I mentioned earlier\n\n1584\n01:51:18.579 --> 01:51:26.039\nabout that $40.000 that
+  I\nlost on the vending machine.\n\n1585\n01:51:26.039 --> 01:51:28.119\nYeah. That''s
+  right.\n\n1586\n01:51:28.960 --> 01:51:31.959\nThe company that\n\n1587\n01:51:33.290
+  --> 01:51:35.749\nThat owned the vending machines\n\n1588\n01:51:35.749 --> 01:51:37.669\nwas
+  a subsidiary\nof General Mills.\n\n1589\n01:51:37.669 --> 01:51:39.969\nI know where
+  this is going now.\n\n1590\n01:51:39.969 --> 01:51:43.389\nAnd long story short?\n\n1591\n01:51:43.389
+  --> 01:51:46.349\nYeah. I was in the lobby\nat General Mills one day,\n\n1592\n01:51:46.349
+  --> 01:51:48.849\nhaving left the meeting and left\n\n1593\n01:51:48.849 --> 01:51:55.269\nmy
+  car keys and everything\nelse in the meeting.\n\n1594\n01:51:55.269 --> 01:51:57.209\nAnd
+  I''m sitting waiting\n\n1595\n01:51:57.209 --> 01:52:00.649\nfor somebody to bring\nthem
+  back to me,\n\n1596\n01:52:00.649 --> 01:52:03.789\nand Diane walks in\n\n1597\n01:52:03.789
+  --> 01:52:06.729\nto a meeting that she\nwas going to there.\n\n1598\n01:52:06.729
+  --> 01:52:09.449\nI got introduced to her,\n\n1599\n01:52:09.449 --> 01:52:15.649\nand
+  best thing that\never happened to me.\n\n1600\n01:52:15.810 --> 01:52:21.409\nAbsolutely
+  the best thing\nthat ever happened to me.\n\n1601\n01:52:25.190 --> 01:52:29.789\nShe
+  is the love of my life.\n\n1602\n01:52:31.990 --> 01:52:35.069\nShe kept me grounded,\n\n1603\n01:52:35.350
+  --> 01:52:37.829\nat the same time lifting me up.\n\n1604\n01:52:37.829 --> 01:52:40.529\nShe
+  had this magic ability\nto lift people up,\n\n1605\n01:52:40.529 --> 01:52:42.389\nno
+  matter who they were, no\n\n1606\n01:52:42.389 --> 01:52:45.629\nmatter what the\ncircumstances
+  were.\n\n1607\n01:52:45.629 --> 01:52:55.009\nShe she\n\n1608\n01:52:55.009 -->
+  01:52:58.429\nhad incredible\ninsight into people.\n\n1609\n01:52:58.630 --> 01:53:00.669\nAnd\n\n1610\n01:53:12.230
+  --> 01:53:14.349\nShe\n\n1611\n01:53:16.830 --> 01:53:19.929\nshe is in large measure,\n\n1612\n01:53:19.929
+  --> 01:53:26.669\na key to much of the\nsuccess that I have had.\n\n1613\n01:53:26.669
+  --> 01:53:31.869\nShe was there every\nstep of the way,\n\n1614\n01:53:31.869 -->
+  01:53:36.709\nallowing me, encouraging\nme, supporting me.\n\n1615\n01:53:37.190
+  --> 01:53:44.089\nAnd As I say,\n\n1616\n01:53:44.089 --> 01:53:49.749\nI couldn''t
+  have been\nluckier to have met her,\n\n1617\n01:53:49.749 --> 01:53:51.949\nfallen
+  in love with her,\n\n1618\n01:53:51.949 --> 01:53:56.349\nand spent the years\nthat
+  we had together.\n\n1619\n01:53:56.349 --> 01:54:01.469\nAnd she was she''s one\nof
+  those people who\n\n1620\n01:54:02.430 --> 01:54:13.469\nI I have ideas.\n\n1621\n01:54:13.469
+  --> 01:54:15.309\nShe was a doer.\n\n1622\n01:54:15.309 --> 01:54:17.010\nExecutor.\n\n1623\n01:54:17.010
+  --> 01:54:21.149\nAbsolutely. And it wasn''t,\n\n1624\n01:54:21.149 --> 01:54:26.729\nyou
+  know, when are you\ngoing to get this done?\n\n1625\n01:54:26.729 --> 01:54:30.029\nIt''s
+  why wasn''t this\ndone yesterday?\n\n1626\n01:54:30.029 --> 01:54:32.269\nWell,
+  because we just found\n\n1627\n01:54:32.269 --> 01:54:33.609\nout that we had to
+  do it today.\n\n1628\n01:54:33.609 --> 01:54:39.749\nYeah. She was in\n\n1629\n01:54:39.749
+  --> 01:54:44.709\na sense driven and\ndriven to do good.\n\n1630\n01:54:44.709 -->
+  01:54:46.709\nDriven to make this world a\n\n1631\n01:54:46.709 --> 01:54:48.249\nbetter
+  place. That''s for sure.\n\n1632\n01:54:48.249 --> 01:54:54.389\nAnd, M. Got lucky.\n\n1633\n01:54:59.510
+  --> 01:55:07.229\nWell, you have retired from\nthe court, but you''re busy.\n\n1634\n01:55:07.229
+  --> 01:55:08.729\nI am busy.\n\n1635\n01:55:08.729 --> 01:55:11.069\nAnd so I got
+  to ask.\n\n1636\n01:55:12.750 --> 01:55:16.369\nWhat''s next? What''s\nnext for
+  Justice Page?\n\n1637\n01:55:16.369 --> 01:55:20.649\nWell, there''s still plenty\n\n1638\n01:55:20.649
+  --> 01:55:23.709\nof work to do with the\nPage Education Fund.\n\n1639\n01:55:25.910
+  --> 01:55:29.889\nAnd beyond that,\n\n1640\n01:55:29.889 --> 01:55:30.889\nI''m
+  trying to figure out\n\n1641\n01:55:30.889 --> 01:55:33.149\nwhat I''m going to\ndo
+  when I grow up.\n\n1642\n01:55:34.150 --> 01:55:40.229\nI I haven''t sorted that
+  out yet.\n\n1643\n01:55:40.229 --> 01:55:44.629\nBut I spend a lot\n\n1644\n01:55:44.629
+  --> 01:55:46.469\nof time in schools\nand classrooms still.\n\n1645\n01:55:46.469
+  --> 01:55:49.429\nYep. Talking to young children.\n\n1646\n01:55:50.430 --> 01:55:55.569\nAs
+  you know, I''ve\nhad the good fortune\n\n1647\n01:55:55.569 --> 01:55:58.649\nto
+  be able to write\nthree children''s books\n\n1648\n01:55:58.649 --> 01:56:00.309\nwith
+  my youngest daughter.\n\n1649\n01:56:00.309 --> 01:56:06.009\nYes. And we''ve got
+  to\nget onto Book four.\n\n1650\n01:56:06.009 --> 01:56:08.149\nI was going to ask.
+  That\nwas my next question.\n\n1651\n01:56:08.149 --> 01:56:09.949\nWe''ve got to
+  get on to Book f.\n\n1652\n01:56:09.949 --> 01:56:10.949\nMore work to be done.\n\n1653\n01:56:10.949
+  --> 01:56:12.989\nMore work to be done.\n\n1654\n01:56:13.750 --> 01:56:17.229\nAnd
+  Justice Page Middle School.\n\n1655\n01:56:19.350 --> 01:56:22.449\nPretty I mean,
+  it seems\njust fanta, I mean,\n\n1656\n01:56:22.449 --> 01:56:24.069\nI see pictures
+  and things\n\n1657\n01:56:24.069 --> 01:56:26.569\nand you''re really\nengaged with
+  the school.\n\n1658\n01:56:26.569 --> 01:56:28.189\nI am engaged with the school.\n\n1659\n01:56:28.189
+  --> 01:56:32.309\nThe school is magic. Yeah.\nThe school is magic.\n\n1660\n01:56:32.309
+  --> 01:56:35.829\nYou know, six, seven,\neighth graders.\n\n1661\n01:56:37.790 -->
+  01:56:40.329\nThey energize me still.\n\n1662\n01:56:40.329 --> 01:56:42.669\nYeah.
+  They keep me going.\n\n1663\n01:56:42.669 --> 01:56:44.269\nAnd I also have\n\n1664\n01:56:44.269
+  --> 01:56:47.329\nfour grandchildren that\ndo the same thing.\n\n1665\n01:56:47.329
+  --> 01:56:52.789\nBeing a grandfather. Job\nin and of itself. Yes.\n\n1666\n01:56:53.910
+  --> 01:56:57.389\nWell, I think it''s a\ngood place to close.\n\n1667\n01:56:58.230
+  --> 01:57:01.229\nUnless you have any\nother thoughts,\n\n1668\n01:57:01.229 -->
+  01:57:03.450\nwe''ve had a good conversation.\n\n1669\n01:57:03.450 --> 01:57:08.489\nYeah.
+  So thanks for\nsharing insights today.\n\n1670\n01:57:08.489 --> 01:57:11.489\nAnd
+  thank you, in thinking\nabout this conversation,\n\n1671\n01:57:11.489 --> 01:57:13.089\nsort
+  of the arc from\nthe beginning to end\n\n1672\n01:57:13.089 --> 01:57:15.269\nand
+  the focus on the\nMinnesota Supreme Court.\n\n1673\n01:57:15.269 --> 01:57:16.729\nYou
+  know, I want to,\n\n1674\n01:57:16.729 --> 01:57:18.449\nand then I think we all
+  want to\n\n1675\n01:57:18.449 --> 01:57:20.449\nthank you for your service\non the
+  Supreme Court, too.\n\n1676\n01:57:20.449 --> 01:57:23.789\nWell, thank you for
+  that,\n\n1677\n01:57:29.340 --> 01:57:39.339\nI can''t articulate how much I\nloved
+  serving on the court.\n\n1678\n01:57:41.060 --> 01:57:45.339\nAnd being able to
+  serve\nthe people of this state.\n\n1679\n01:57:45.339 --> 01:57:50.659\nI can''t
+  articulate how honored I\n\n1680\n01:57:50.659 --> 01:57:55.499\nam that the people\n\n1681\n01:57:55.499
+  --> 01:57:58.779\nof the state gave me the\nopportunity to do it.\n\n1682\n01:58:01.860
+  --> 01:58:10.359\nAnd I don''t know.\n\n1683\n01:58:18.360 --> 01:58:22.259\nWell,
+  let me just back up.\n\n1684\n01:58:22.259 --> 01:58:33.399\nYou know, one of the
+  humbling\nthings about serving.\n\n1685\n01:58:34.760 --> 01:58:36.979\nYou know,
+  you''re there, you''re\n\n1686\n01:58:36.979 --> 01:58:38.999\nworking on cases
+  and you''re\n\n1687\n01:58:38.999 --> 01:58:45.039\nlooking at cases from 18 60.\n\n1688\n01:58:48.200
+  --> 01:58:54.499\nTrying to figure out\nwhat the law is today.\n\n1689\n01:58:54.499
+  --> 01:58:56.659\nBecause it''s grounded in\n\n1690\n01:58:56.659 --> 01:58:59.439\nsomething
+  that took\nplace back then.\n\n1691\n01:59:00.920 --> 01:59:08.999\nThe idea that
+  cases\nthat I worked\n\n1692\n01:59:08.999 --> 01:59:16.700\non when I was on the\ncourt
+  will be used 150,\n\n1693\n01:59:16.700 --> 01:59:18.959\n200 years from now,\n\n1694\n01:59:20.280
+  --> 01:59:24.139\nthat the law will be\ngrounded in something that\n\n1695\n01:59:24.139
+  --> 01:59:29.479\nI was a part of\nduring my tenure.\n\n1696\n01:59:29.479 --> 01:59:32.720\nIt''s
+  almost overwhelming.\n\n1697\n01:59:36.380 --> 01:59:39.199\nIt''s an awesome thought.\n\n1698\n01:59:39.199
+  --> 01:59:46.819\nI just I just hope that\nI didn''t goof it up.\n\n1699\n01:59:46.980
+  --> 01:59:55.299\nSo that Hopefully, what I\n\n1700\n01:59:55.299 --> 01:59:58.479\ndid
+  what we did when I was on\n\n1701\n01:59:58.479 --> 02:00:04.059\nthe court will
+  make\ntheir jobs easier. Sure.\n\n1702\n02:00:07.460 --> 02:00:11.099\nA good note
+  to end\non. Thank you.\n\n1703\n02:00:11.099 --> 02:00:12.539\nThank you. Appreciate
+  it.\n\n1704\n02:00:12.539 --> 02:00:14.239\nIt''s good to talk\nto you Jesse Pager.\n\n1705\n02:00:14.239
+  --> 02:00:16.299\nGood to see you, Jeff.\n\n1706\n02:00:16.580 --> 02:00:18.619\nM.\n"}'
diff --git a/spec/requests/captions_spec.rb b/spec/requests/captions_spec.rb
index 3557fd0a..f0274c22 100644
--- a/spec/requests/captions_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/requests/captions_spec.rb
@@ -1,30 +1,37 @@
 require 'rails_helper'
 
 describe 'fetching captions for A/V items' do
-  let(:entry_id) { 'someEntryId' }
   let(:captions) { <<~VTT }
+    WEBVTT
+
     1
-    00:00:12,020 --> 00:00:14,110
-    Okay.
+    00:00:00.720 --> 00:00:05.680
+    All right. It's
+    February 19, 2019,
 
     2
-    00:00:19,220 --> 00:00:21,430
-    Right.
+    00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:07.600
+    and I'm at the Continuing Legal
 
     3
-    00:01:12,550 --> 00:01:14,885
-    You want to go to copycat?
+    00:00:07.600 --> 00:00:10.320
+    Education Center
+    in Minneapolis to
+
+    4
+    00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:12.040
+    Interview Retired
+    Minnesota Supreme
+
+    5
+    00:00:12.040 --> 00:00:13.660
+    Court Justice Allen Page
   VTT
 
-  before do
-    allow(FetchCaptionService)
-      .to receive(:fetch)
-      .with(entry_id)
-      .and_return(captions)
-  end
+  before { solr_fixtures('sll:22548') }
 
   it 'returns the captions' do
-    get "/tracks/#{entry_id}.vtt"
-    expect(response.body).to eq(captions)
+    get "/tracks/sll:22548/entry/1_fisppzr2.vtt"
+    expect(response.body).to start_with(captions)
   end
 end