Not rain, cold or the threat of snow could keep almost 250 people (alumni [mostly former students], former colleagues, family, and friends) from gathering at the Law School on Saturday, December 6 to pay their final respects to Professor Charlie Whitebread.
The event entitled “A Remembrance of Charles H. Whitebread: 1943-2008” was designed to celebrate the life of a man who in some ways was bigger than life itself.
Former Dean John C. Jeffries '73, who just returned to the Law School from a semester at Columbia, emceed a very elegant event that featured speakers who knew Professor Whitebread from various times in his life. The speakers included: his brother Joseph Whitebread '77, Professor Paul Stephan '77, Claire Gastanaga '74, Hon. J. Harvie Wilkinson III '72, and Michael Graetz '69.
The ceremony also included a slide show and a BarBri video presentation of some of Professor Whitebread's famous advice to students taking the bar exam.
Interestingly, after watching the BarBri videos, I remembered some of this advice. If you took the BarBri review course, you may as well.
His first bit of advice wasn’t advice at all. He described the stress and anxiety he felt when he sat down to take the bar exam after he graduated from law school in 1968. He described the ensuing incident as one of the most generous things anyone has ever done for him. Upon sitting down, the stranger sitting in front of him turned around and said, “Can you believe that some of the people in here actually took a review course to prepare for this exam?” He said that a smile immediately came across his face and any stress he was feeling quickly dissipated.
His second bit of advice involved what he called the three levels of legal learning:
The first was a very basic, almost glib, understanding of a particular area of the law. The third was a profound insight into that area of the law. The second was the land of confusion.
He reminded us not to even consider trying to leave level one.
Professor Whitebread will be missed.
