Sometimes a posting doesn’t warrant excessive commentary.
When I heard the news that Professor Charlie Whitebread had passed away, I read the article and reflected for a brief moment in sadness.
I had met Professor Whitebread on a few occasions but didn’t really know him. I did know that he was beloved by his students and the faculty of our Law School.
I also knew that he maintained a home in Charlottesville and that he was one of the best Bar/Bri instructors during my bar preparations.
Rather than try to explain the importance of Professor Whitebread to our community and the community at USC, I thought I would just share the article from the Daily Journal written by Amanda Becker.
Charles H. Whitebread, 1943-2008
By Amanda Becker
Daily Journal Staff Writer
Law professor Charles H. Whitebread, whose colorful lecture style drew throngs of students to his classes at USC and held the attention of many more nationally through bar review courses, has died from lung cancer. He was 65.
Whitebread, the George T. Pflegler Professor at the Gould School of Law, taught law and an undergraduate course at USC and delivered review lectures for BAR/BRI, a widely used bar exam preparation course.
When current and former students learned of his death on Tuesday, impromptu memoriams sprung up across the Internet.
"He probably could have lectured on the history of linoleum and still filled the lecture hall," said Jonathan Klein, a 2006 graduate of Gould who took both the Trust and Estates course and Whitebread's bar exam review. "He was the most gracious and accessible personality in all of USC Law School."
Whitebread is believed to have taught more students than any other member of the law school faculty, largely due to his popular undergraduate seminar Law and Society. His courses at the law school - Criminal Procedure, Juvenile Law, Trusts and Estates and Law and Psychiatry - led to multiple awards from law students, including the Faculty Appreciation Award and the William A. Rutter Distinguished Teaching Prize. Nomination form after nomination form said that Whitebread's influence and guidance extended beyond law school and into peoples' lives.
"His reach, among law students, went well past USC," said George Lefcoe, a fellow law professor and longtime friend. "You've never seen a tribute like this to a law teacher."
His BAR/BRI students across the country also counted Whitebread as an influential teacher and his legendary lectures on criminal law are mentioned frequently. If he did not come to a school personally during one of his whirlwind summer travel schedules, his lecture attracted a large viewership on video discs.
"Though I never knew Charlie Whitebread outside of BAR/BRI tape-land (his words), he was nonetheless one of the most memorable professors from whom I ever had the pleasure of learning from," said Melissa Oliver, a newly minted attorney in the litigation group at Davis, Polk and Wardwell's New York office who started a Facebook tribute in his honor.
"It was meant to celebrate his colorful style and his ability to bring humor to the law, both of which will not soon be forgotten by those of us who were lucky enough to experience even one lecture."
Whitebread's anecdotes, while often amusing, were always relevant to the topic at hand. His explanations of "Plain View!" and kidnapping resonated with students long after the bar examination, many said.
"I hope that one day the only thing that I still remember from my bar review experience is my time listening and watching Professor Whitebread put on his show as only he could," said Klein, who is now a Presidential Management Fellow with the Federal Transit Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, based in Washington D.C.
Whitebread's impact extended beyond the classroom walls. Los Angeles attorney Rich Chacon, Whitebread's former student and personal friend, said he wasn't just book smart, he knew about life.
Chacon remembers one evening when they were driving west on the Interstate 10 Freeway, and he wondered aloud why cars always came to a standstill just around the bend before the 405 interchange. Whitebread deftly explained something Chacon pondered every time he drove the route.
"He said, 'That's where all the cars take a break to put the visor down,'" Chacon said. "It happened again the other day and I started crying."
Whitebread was a mentor and source of information to his friends and acquaintances even when he was a student himself. When John D. Eure, an attorney in private practice in Virginia, was an undergraduate at Yale University, Whitebread was his dormitory counselor.
"Charlie's ebullient energy, rapier-sharp and lightning-fast wit and extraordinary generosity of spirit brightened those first gray, rainy days, and the whole year for all of us," Eure said. "Charlie became a professor of law at Virginia and his presence there brought a number of my college classmates to the law school."
"When I realized there were no jobs for future PhDs in Shakespeare, I went to see Charlie and that was that," continued Eure, who received his law degree from the University of Virginia.
Whitebread was raised in Bethesda, Md., and graduated from Princeton before attending law school at Yale. He practiced law and taught at the University of Virginia, Georgetown University and UCLA before joining the faculty at USC. A treatise he published in the Virginia Law Review in October 1970, "The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge," traced how drug prohibition stemmed from racial prejudice. The article, co-authored with professor Richard Bonnie, was the first major step in the battle to legalize marijuana.
One of Whitebread's personal achievements was the Jeff Griffith Youth Center, a center for at-risk youth at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center that he established in memory of a friend. His continued support of the center, through solicitations and receptions, raised a quarter of a million dollars.
When Whitebread died on Tuesday at a small apartment he has kept on the ocean in Santa Monica since the 1980s - despite owning a house that was featured in Architectural Digest just blocks away - with close friends and family members at his side.
Whitebread is survived by his sister, Anne Tower; his brother, Joseph Whitebread; his life partner, John Golden; and his friend, Michael Kelly.
There will be a champagne tribute and memorial at USC in November to celebrate his career. A scholarship fund at Gould will be established in his honor. For information, call 213-743-1710.
"If life was a game of 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,'" Chacon said, "Charlie was my lifeline."
