Eulogy

Tom St. John

January26, 2023

Congregation Sinai

Fox Point, Wisconsin

Tom St. John and I have been friends since 1967, when we started law school together.  He had just turned 23, fresh out of MBA & CPA training at UW-Madison.  I was 26, fresh out of 4 years in the Marine Corps.   Each of us hoped to become a lawyer.  Each of us was married.  Each of us had our first child during our law school days.  We came to know each other early in law school and our friendship grew throughout our first 2 years of study. 

  

 Tom was the undisputed star of our law school class.  At the end of our 1st semester, when grades and class ranks were distributed, Tom was at the top of our class of 119 students.  First by a wide margin.  He maintained that position for the next three semesters and was unanimously elected editor-in-chief of the Marquette Law Review by the outgoing board of editors with the unanimous concurrence of our incoming board and with the approval of the Dean and Faculty.  There was never a question about who would be the Editor-in-Chief.  Our first board  meeting was held in June of 1969 in his little apartment at 46^th & State Street, across from the old Milwaukee Montessori School.  Our exuberance and eagerness about working together on the law review was dampened only a few weeks later when we learned that Tom, our leader, had been drafted into the Army.  The war in Vietnam was getting more lethal every month we all feared that Tom would be sent there and become yet another casualty in that misbegotten conflict.   Fortunately, the Army recognized his already-evident legal and intellectual skills and assigned him to assist a judge advocate general lawyer in the Finger Lakes region of New York.  That office handled appeals from courts-martial and the preliminary reviews were handled by Tom,  with all of 2 years of law school behind him.  During Tom’s tour of duty there, his supervising officer came to realize that if Tom found no serious errors in the court-martial record, there were none.  Tom used a shorthand code from the old Lucky Strike cigarette slogan, LSMFT.  'Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco'.  When Tom wrote those initials on his memos to his supervising JAG officer, they meant, "Legally sufficient/mighty fine trial."  As his time in the Army drew to its close,  Tom wanted to return to Marquette and finish his degree requirements  The good news was that he was a “short-timer”  The bad news was that his scheduled discharge date in New York would make him too late to start his senior year with the class of 1972.   By this time I had graduated and was on the law school faculty .  Tom called me from New York and asked me to write a letter on law school stationery advising the Army of the effect of his discharge date and asking whether he could be discharged a few weeks early to allow him to start and finish school with his new classmates.  I wrote the letter of course and to my great surprise, the Army agreed.   Tom returned to Marquette, and became a star in the class of 1972, as he had been in our original class of 1970.  

 

Federal district court Judge Myron Gordon selected Tom as his law clerk and the two of them became a mutual admiration society until Judge Gordon's death in 2009.  I remember Judge Gordon presiding over Tom and Micaela’s wedding in the living room of their first home on Edgewood Avenue in Shorewood.   While he was clerking for Judge Gordon, Tom got to see in action a young lawyer named Bob Friebert.   He shared with me more than once the story of  him sitting in the courtroom watching Friebert represent a young defendant in a criminal case in which Judge Gordon made what Friebert considered an egregiously erroneous ruling, holding the fellow in contempt of court for lying on the witness stand testifying in his own defense and  summarily jailed him.  Friebert was quiet for a moment or two while he collected his thoughts and then slammed his fist on counsel’s table and  bellowed, as only Bob Friebert could bellow, OUTRAGEOUS! and protested the judge’s action.  Judge Gordon asked “Are you suggesting, counsel, that if you were to throw your chair at me, I could not summarily find you in contempt and jail you?  To which Friebert replied, ‘I may not be throwing my chair at you, your Honor, but at the man creeping behind you with a gun and, in any event, I am entitled to a hearing.” (A matter on which the 7^th Circuit court of appeals agreed, BTW)  

 I mention this  story from so long ago for 2 reasons. First, because it describes the beginning of the long, happy, and important professional and personal relationship between Bob Friebert and Tom St. John and (2) because, as all the lawyers who have known him could attest, Tom St. John could have practiced at any silk stocking law firm in the country, but he knew then watching that otherwise insignificant trial, that he wanted to practice with and emulate Bob Friebert and of course that is just what he did.     And even when he was new to the practice, Tom was a brilliant, skilled, tough-minded lawyer, well respected in the legal community.  In 1975 I decided to leave teaching at the law school to practice law, Tom encouraged me to join his firm, which I did, precisely because Tom St. John was practicing there. That was all I needed to know.  The firm was then known as Friebert & Finerty but would soon become Friebert, Finerty & St. John

 

Tom was a man of immense talent.  He was a brilliant lawyer, a lawyer’s lawyer, regularly appearing on lists of Super Lawyers, the top lawyers of Southeast Wisconsin and the state.  More importantly, he was a client’s lawyer, a zealous advocate on behalf of each of his many clients, a professional and a friend they could trust.  He was a teacher, regularly called upon as a guest lecturer at the law school and asked every year to serve as an advisor to law students in their appellate practice and trial practice courses.  He never refused.  He acted as a mentor  both to the young lawyers in our office and to our law clerks.  He shared his legal, business, and other expertise generously throughout our community, serving both as a volunteer providing services and as a board member in charitable organizations providing leadership, significantly including Jewish Vocational Services, as it was then known, and Neighborhood House, the vital community center on 28^th Street that serves the residents of  some of Milwaukee’s most underserved neighborhoods.  He also was  an accomplished carpenter, an outdoorsman, a  sportsman and an athlete.  We spent many a day fishing and boating and water skiing, with him opting to do the skiing and me opting to drive the boat.  We went camping together, sometime by ourselves, and when we could with our children.  Tom introduced me to downhill and cross country skiing, undoubtedly hoping that  I could develop some skill in these sports at which he excelled.  I managed to dash those hopes pretty quickly but I have always been grateful to Tom for his great if misplaced optimism about my potential.

 

Mostly, Tom was devoted to and so proud of his wife Micaela, his children, Jessie, Ben, Saul, and Jake, to whom he has passed on som many great qualities, his grandchildren, Sophia and Sebastian, his sisters Judy and Mary, and all his mishpuche.  Our hearts have been with all of them this past week.

 

    Tom was my close friend, my bosom buddy, from the 1960s into the 2020s, 55 years.  He helped me learn how to practice law, though never as well as he did.  He stood by my side and supported me through difficult times in my life.  He was with me during the best times.  My wife Geri and I were married under the crabapple tree in Tom and Caela’s front yard on Wood Place.  Tom and Caela hosted our wedding reception in their home.  They retained a videographer to record it all. We had keys to each other’s houses in case of emergencies.  I was given my own key to their cottage on Bean’s Lake, Funkytown.

 

  Tom introduced me to many good friends of his who were to become good friends of mine.  I remember telling him at a dinner at the old Chip and Py’s restaurant that he and Caela had hosted that he was  a catalyst of friendship for all the people he brought together, who knew and befriended one another only through their common friendship with him.   Many of those friends are here today. I am grateful to Tom for that, for enriching my life with that gift, and for so much more.   

 

My son Andy stopped over to visit me yesterday afternoon and he shared some of his memories of Tom.  He said he always thought Tom his Dad’s “coolest friend.”  It was a close call because he really liked David Lowe too  but he tipped the scale in favor of Tom, maybe because he was a bit older and he was so friendly and supportive, but also because Tom looked so much like Robert Redford, and how cool is that?  He reminded me that he and Ben St. John played on the same Little League team, the Pirates and one day Andy had a real good game and got the MVP of the game award from the coach.  I was out of town and not there, but Tom was and Tom took Andy and Ben out to McDonald’s  afterwards to celebrate the game.  I still have Andy’s award for that game so I know  exactly when it occurred.  It was June 24, 1984, going on 40 years ago.  Andy ordered a Big Mac but had just gotten new braces on his teeth so he came to regret that Big Mac.  But he hasn’t forgotten Tom St. John’s support and Tom St. John’s kindness.  That was the kind of effect  Tom had on people,  including children.

 

 When I learned of his death in water, I thought to myself that it seemed fitting that he should take his leave outdoors, with his family, enjoying their company, engaging Nature, living life large.  And I couldn't help remembering a fable that the two of us concocted decades ago.  Someone somewhere, probably in a bar, asked us how the two of us met and became such good friends, a guy from Appleton and a guy from the South Side of Chicago. One of us, probably Tom, said we met cliff diving at Acapulco.  That after a full day of defying death by diving off the high cliffs into the pounding surf, we  went to a local cantina to drink beer and compete for the attention of a beautiful senorita named Maria Conchita.   We got into a fistfight over her and she went off with some other guy, but we dusted ourselves off and became friends.   It was all made up of course and ridiculous and when we told the story no one believed us for more than a few minutes.  But Tom and I both  enjoyed the imaginary beginning of our friendship  and played off it for years. 

 

 Emily Dickinson’s wrote what probably was her shortest poem, just 2 lines, a couplet:  “In this short life that only lasts an hour / How much - how little - is within our power.”  Since Tom was younger than me, and since he lived a much healthier, more vigorous life,  I long assumed that Tom would be the eulogist at my funeral.  But here we are.  I’m so grateful to Micaela for the honor of bearing witness to Tom’s character, to his generosity of spirit, to his excellence as a lawyer and more importantly as a man, to honor him.  I’m grateful to Tom for the honor of his friendship for so many, many years, for sharing his goodness with me and my family, and with so many others.