Mom pulled our Ram­bler to the curb on a rainy fall after­noon. I sat in the pas­sen­ger seat, feel­ing queasy.

“You see your friends?” she asked.

“Under the awning.”

Mom peered through wipers pump­ing back and forth. “Where are the girls?”

“Richard said to get here ear­ly so we could buy the tick­ets before they show up.”

“Sounds like Richard’s quite the lit­tle man,” Mom said, smil­ing.

Star­ing grim­ly at the movie the­ater, I didn’t smile.

“You all right?” Mom said.

I got out of the car with­out answer­ing and ran across the side­walk to Richard and Arthur. Thir­teen years old, we’d just start­ed the eighth grade. Tall with blonde hair, Richard already had mus­cles. Arthur was chub­by, but begin­ning to fill out. I was the short­est, skin­ni­est boy in our class.

The date was Richard’s idea. He want­ed to take Mar­cia to a movie, but his mom wouldn’t allow it unless oth­er kids went with them. Richard asked Arthur to be his side­kick. Arthur and I were best friends, so he invit­ed me. I didn’t want to go because I was afraid of girls, but Arthur roped me into it by get­ting his girl­friend, Ger­ry, to set me up with her friend, Ann, the only girl in the eighth grade short­er than me. I couldn’t back out with­out look­ing like a hope­less nerd.

When I joined Richard and Arthur under the movie theater’s awning that after­noon, they were hud­dled togeth­er, talk­ing in hushed tones. “Girls act like they don’t like it,” Richard said, “because they don’t want boys to think they’re bad, but secret­ly they want it.”

“Mar­cia tell you that?” Arthur said, look­ing wor­ried.

“No, you idiot. You can’t talk to girls about sex. My broth­er told me. He said the key is to get to first base. After that, girls get so excit­ed they’ll let you do any­thing. That’s why I picked this movie.” Richard point­ed at the poster on the wall behind us.

I blanched when I saw it. “PSY­CHO,” it blared in yel­low let­ters under a pic­ture of a pret­ty blonde woman sit­ting on a bed wear­ing noth­ing but her under­wear.

“That woman gets stabbed in the show­er,” Richard said. “It’ll scare the crap out of the girls. Ger­ry will prob­a­bly jump in your lap. Even a doo­fus like you ought to make it to first base after that.”

What’s first base, I won­dered just as the girls got out of Marcia’s mom’s car and ran over to us. Mar­cia and Ger­ry looked excit­ed. Ann looked like she want­ed to cry.

“Hi,” I said in a small voice. Ann mum­bled some­thing with­out look­ing at me.

Inside the the­ater, Ann sat to my right, star­ing straight ahead, her lips pinched into a tight line, her knees pressed togeth­er, her hands clenched in her lap. Arthur and Ger­ry sat next to her. Then Richard and Mar­cia.

I tried to focus on the movie to calm my nerves. The blonde woman stole some mon­ey from her job. Mak­ing her get-away on a stormy night, she stopped at a motel run by a creepy guy who lived with his moth­er in a spooky house on a hill­top.

I looked over at Richard. He had draped his arm over the back of Marcia’s chair. His hand rest­ed on her shoul­der. A cou­ple min­utes lat­er Arthur lift­ed his arm up on the back of Gerry’s chair.

By the time the woman went to her room and start­ed to undress, Richard’s hand was inch­ing down the front of Marcia’s shirt; Arthur had put his hand on Gerry’s shoul­der; and I hadn’t moved.

In my head, I saw all the boys in the eighth grade massed up at my home­room desk, point­ing at me, laugh­ing, and shout­ing, “Doo­fus!”

If I put my arm up on the back of Ann’s chair, I thought, it might be enough to save face. I didn’t have the guts to touch her shoul­der, but I could lie about that part. Scared wit­less, I took a deep breath and lift­ed my arm onto the chair-back. Ann flinched, sucked in her breath, and teared up, but at least she didn’t bolt out of the the­ater, scream­ing bloody mur­der.

Speak­ing of bloody mur­der, the blonde woman was stand­ing in the show­er by then. A shad­owy fig­ure sud­den­ly pulled back the show­er cur­tain and stabbed her repeat­ed­ly with a butch­er knife. She screamed while shrill music bleat­ed like an air-raid siren.

Mar­cia jumped into Richard’s arms. Ger­ry put her hands over her face. Arthur pat­ted her on the shoul­der gen­tly and seemed to be try­ing to com­fort her. Ann didn’t move a mus­cle. Nei­ther did I.

The woman’s blood was cir­cling the bath­tub drain when a dull ache began to creep down my arm to my shoul­der. It slow­ly got worse. By the time the shad­owy fig­ure stabbed a pri­vate detec­tive, my arm was killing me.

I real­ized too late what was wrong. The movie chairs were designed for adults. Being short, I had to raise my arm above my shoul­der to reach the high back. All the blood was drain­ing out of my arm. Worse yet, I was trapped in that posi­tion. If I took my arm off the chair, Richard would tell every­one, and I’d nev­er live it down.

I had no choice but to tough it out. I grit­ted my teeth as the pain increased in inten­si­ty. Be a man, I told myself, fight­ing back tears.

I don’t remem­ber any­thing about the rest of the movie except that it last­ed six­teen hours. Some­where near the end, my arm stopped hurt­ing. That scared me more than the excru­ci­at­ing pain. Gan­grene had set in, I fig­ured. They’d have to ampu­tate.

When the movie end­ed and we walked out of the the­ater, my arm hung off my shoul­der like a piece of dead meat.

Out on the street, Ann broke the world record in the fifty-yard-dash sprint­ing to her mom’s car.

Mar­cia walked away slow­ly, her head down­cast. At her car door, she turned and glared at Richard. It was only then I noticed the red welt on his cheek.

Ger­ry lin­gered beside Arthur. Sud­den­ly, she pecked him on the lips and ran out to her mom’s car, leav­ing him with a dazed smile on his face.

Cradling my right arm with my left, I crossed the side­walk and got in our Ram­bler.

“How was your date?” Mom asked, smil­ing.

“Okay,” I mut­tered.

Her smile fell. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Why are you rub­bing your arm?”

“Try­ing to get the blood to come back,” I said under my breath, clench­ing and unclench­ing my fist.

“What?”

“Noth­ing.”

The blood came back; they didn’t have to ampu­tate, and Ann and I avoid­ed each oth­er for the rest of the eighth grade.

Post­script: In The Princess of Sug­ar Val­ley’s open­ing scene, Riley Sny­der, a skin­ny lit­tle boy in Gra­cie Sandridge’s sev­enth-grade class, asks her to meet him at a foot­ball game. Ear­ly in the game, he puts his arm up on her seat’s back­rest. As the game pro­gress­es, she notices he seems to be in pain and guess­es why. In an act of mer­cy, she lifts his hand over her head and drops it in his lap.

“Why’d you do that?” he says, look­ing strick­en.

“You ought to thank me for it,” she says. “Once gan­grene sets in, they have to ampu­tate.”

The scene is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, except for the act of mer­cy.

Today Psy­cho is rat­ed R, but the MMPA movie rat­ing sys­tem didn’t come along until 1968. It has spawned many enthu­si­as­tic detrac­tors. I’m not one of them. If it had exist­ed in 1960, it would have pro­tect­ed an inno­cent thir­teen-year-old boy from almost los­ing his right arm.

On August 9, John Welch, a Lath­am & Watkins retired part­ner, cel­e­brat­ed his 100^th birth­day with his chil­dren, grand­chil­dren, great grand­chil­dren, and great great grand­chil­dren, an astound­ing 104 direct descen­dants in all. In his long life, he has pos­i­tive­ly influ­enced the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple. I’m one of them.  

John grew up in north­ern Utah, grad­u­at­ed from Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty, served four years as an Army offi­cer dur­ing World War II, earned his law degree from Har­vard, and joined Lath­am in 1948.

I arrived at Lath­am thir­ty years lat­er and became inter­est­ed in labor law ear­ly on, but I was reluc­tant to join the firm’s Labor Depart­ment. My one and only reser­va­tion was John Welch. By then, he was the chair­man of the depart­ment, a giant in labor law cir­cles, and the most stern, intim­i­dat­ing per­son I’d ever encoun­tered.

For a junior attor­ney, meet­ings with him were an expe­ri­ence in psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture. When I entered his office, he wouldn’t acknowl­edge my pres­ence in any way for at least a full minute. Even when he final­ly looked at me, he remained silent until I vol­un­teered my rea­son for dark­en­ing his door. From there on, he grilled me with ques­tions I hadn’t antic­i­pat­ed. As I stam­mered through a series of insipid answers, his cold stare reduced me to a pud­dle of water. After each meet­ing, I expect­ed the firm to fire me by the end of the day.  

When my fear of John Welch was at its zenith, Lath­am decid­ed to open a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., office, and the firm’s Man­ag­ing Part­ner, Clint Steven­son, asked me to be the new office’s only labor lawyer. I was stunned, in part because I was only in my third year of prac­tic­ing law and didn’t think I had enough expe­ri­ence to do the job, but more impor­tant­ly, because I was con­vinced the Labor Depart­ment Chair­man con­sid­ered me an idiot.

“What does Mr. Welch think about this?” I asked anx­ious­ly.

Clint seemed puz­zled by the ques­tion. “We wouldn’t assign you to the posi­tion if John didn’t have full con­fi­dence in you.”

When I recov­ered from shock, my ego took over. All the big wheels in firm man­age­ment want­ed me to relo­cate to Wash­ing­ton, so I fig­ured tak­ing the job would score points with them and launch my career like a rock­et to the stars.

When John met with me, I saw a dif­fer­ent side of him. He didn’t men­tion the firm’s inter­ests. He focused sole­ly on what was best for me. “Slow down,” he said. “Think this through. Don’t get swept away by the tide.”

I didn’t heed his advice. The tide was swift; my ambi­tion blind­ed me; and I moved to Wash­ing­ton. It proved to be a ter­ri­ble mis­take. For rea­sons unre­lat­ed to me, the firm’s major east coast labor client dumped us, and my rock­et crashed and burned.

I called John and told him I want­ed to come back to LA. We met with Clint. He was deter­mined that I stay in Wash­ing­ton. We went back and forth until John said to Clint, “Ken’s return to LA is best for him, best for the Labor Depart­ment, and best for the firm. So get it done.”

Clint got it done, but when I returned to LA, I was run­ning scared. Clint wasn’t pleased with me, and Car­la Hills, the Wash­ing­ton office Man­ag­ing Part­ner, want­ed me fired. Sens­ing my state of pan­ic, John sat me down. “Calm down,” he said. “Do good work, and you’ll be fine.”

This time I lis­tened to him, and over the next sev­er­al years, John gave me guid­ance with a light touch at the crit­i­cal moments when I need­ed it most. With his help, I rebuilt my career and sur­vived.

A few years lat­er, my-five-year old son fell prey to a rare dis­ease. By the time the doc­tors diag­nosed it cor­rect­ly, his con­di­tion was crit­i­cal. I dropped every­thing at work, and my son and I moved into a children’s hos­pi­tal. John vis­it­ed us our first day there. After a game of Chutes and Lad­ders, he took me aside. “Don’t wor­ry about any­thing at the office,” he said. “We’ll cov­er your work. You stay here with your son until he gets well.” His delib­er­ate use of the word “until,” and not “if,” helped steel me for the com­ing days.

My son made a full recov­ery, thank God, and I returned to work with a dif­fer­ent mind­set. Up to that point, I’d made the bad choice of ele­vat­ing my career above my fam­i­ly. I want­ed to change my ways. When the local soc­cer league asked me to coach a team, I faced the first test of my new-found resolve. To coach, I had to com­mit to two week­day after­noon prac­tices dur­ing the sea­son. I couldn’t see how I could leave the office ear­ly and still man­age my case­load.

I men­tioned my dilem­ma to John. “You can do both,” he said.

“How?”

“Treat the soc­cer prac­tices like a client com­mit­ment. When you plan to meet a client at four in the after­noon, you put it on the cal­en­dar, block out the time, and rearrange your sched­ule to com­plete the rest of your work. Do the same with the soc­cer prac­tices. Put them on your cal­en­dar and treat them like a client meet­ing.”

That sim­ple sug­ges­tion worked and it changed my life. I coached my kids’ teams for a decade and spent more time with my fam­i­ly. My bal­ance between fam­i­ly and work wasn’t always per­fect from there on, but I became a bet­ter hus­band and father.

Short­ly before John’s 100^th birth­day, Lath­am facil­i­tat­ed a zoom con­fer­ence call of retired part­ners who were close to him. The goal was to pro­duce a video from edit­ed excerpts of our state­ments about John. We were asked to choose a word or phrase that best describes him and to tell sto­ries about our expe­ri­ences with him. Wise, stead­fast, pro­fes­sion­al, and deter­mined were words the oth­ers chose as they spoke about his pos­i­tive impact on their lives. My phrase for John was life coach, and I told the sto­ries I’ve relat­ed here. When I came to the part about John’s vis­it­ing me and my son in the hos­pi­tal, I broke down and had to regroup before I could go on. Forty years after my son’s ill­ness, my grat­i­tude for John’s encour­age­ment and com­pas­sion dur­ing the biggest cri­sis of my life over­whelmed me dur­ing the tap­ing, and it did again as I wrote this.

John has brought to the art of liv­ing a grace, dig­ni­ty, and con­sis­ten­cy unprece­dent­ed in its qual­i­ty and longevi­ty. In my view, 100 years of John Welch isn’t enough. In August 2021, when this pan­dem­ic is over, I’m look­ing for­ward to a face-to-face cel­e­bra­tion of year 101.

Post Script:  In addi­tion to John’s prodi­gious intel­lect, he’s an amaz­ing phys­i­cal spec­i­men. When he was 63 and I was 36, he invit­ed me to run six miles with him. I’d been run­ning for a while and thought I was in good enough shape to keep pace with him. I was wrong. He ran me into the ground. “Nice easy run, Ken,” he said, slap­ping me on the back at the fin­ish line. When he was out of sight, I went behind a hedge-row and threw up. 

He made back­pack­ing trips to the high Sier­ras reg­u­lar­ly into his 80’s. He climbed Mount Whit­ney five times. A heli­copter took him on 44 trips to the high­est peaks of the Cana­di­an Rock­ies and dropped him off to ski the steep slopes, and he con­tin­ued ski­ing into his late 90’s. An inter­net sports pub­li­ca­tion taped a doc­u­men­tary about his fit­ness reg­i­men when he was 95. It’s less than four min­utes long and gives you a good sense of who he is. You can see it here: https://www.facebook.com/peoplegettingfit/videos/1553166878343180.

John was the ninth attor­ney to join Lath­am & Watkins. Today, it employs 2600 attor­neys in 29 cities all over the world. He is the firm’s first and only retired part­ner to reach the age of 100.

Foot­note: The last three pho­tographs in this post appeared in a May 4, 2018, arti­cle in the Deseret News.

Sen­a­tor Bob Dole rubbed his swollen jaw. “Tooth’s killing me,” he barked. “Head­ed to the den­tist.” He ges­tured toward a young woman stand­ing behind him. “Suzie can tell you all you need to know about . . .” He frowned at me. “Remind me again what you’re here for.”

“Hillary Care,” I said.

He waved his hand in the air dis­mis­sive­ly. “Noth­ing to wor­ry about. It’s dead in the water.”

“We sup­port the bill, Sen­a­tor.”

He scowled. “Well, it won’t get a sin­gle Repub­li­can vote!” He winced and grabbed his mouth. “You tell em what-for, Suzie.” And he hur­ried out the door.

Stand­ing in the Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader’s office beside Safeway’s CEO and its Senior VP of Pub­lic Affairs, I stared bale­ful­ly at the emp­ty door­way, Sen­a­tor Dole’s toothache hav­ing tor­pe­doed an hour-long meet­ing we’d sched­uled weeks ear­li­er. Not an aus­pi­cious start to our trip to the Hill, I thought, wor­ried that this day might turn out to be a career lim­it­ing expe­ri­ence.

Labor rela­tions was one of my areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty at Safe­way. The company’s con­tracts with the Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers (UFCW) union required us to pro­vide Cadil­lac health­care cov­er­age to our store employ­ees. Our nonunion com­peti­tors didn’t offer health­care, giv­ing them a huge cost advan­tage which they used to under­cut our prices. They were killing us.

Safeway’s CEO made the prag­mat­ic deci­sion to sup­port Hillary Care because it would lev­el the play­ing field. We were skep­ti­cal that the bill would actu­al­ly pass, but we thought we could gain a side ben­e­fit by sup­port­ing it. The UFCW was a major pro­po­nent of the leg­is­la­tion. By join­ing hands with the union, we hoped to improve our rocky rela­tion­ship and enhance our cred­i­bil­i­ty about cost reduc­tions at the bar­gain­ing table.

We sched­uled a full day of meet­ings at the Capi­tol Build­ing to lob­by for Hillary Care, start­ing with Sen­a­tor Dole. After he vamoosed for the den­tist, I pre­sent­ed our argu­ments to Suzie, his staffer. She dis­agreed with every point I made, end­ing with, “The last thing we need is politi­cians decid­ing what a bro­ken leg is worth.” Sen­a­tor Dole’s oppo­si­tion remained firm.

We trun­dled down the hall to Idaho’s Sen­a­tor Lar­ry Craig. You may remem­ber him. An under­cov­er police­man arrest­ed him in the men’s bath­room of an air­port for pass­ing a note under the stall solic­it­ing a sex­u­al encounter. The sen­a­tor claimed he had a wide stance when squat­ting, saw the note beside his shoe, and picked it up out of curios­i­ty. He resigned from the Sen­ate in dis­grace, but that was a decade after our meet­ing with him. In the ear­ly 90’s, wide-stance Lar­ry still wield­ed a lot of clout. He must have been up late the night before our meet­ing (doing God knows what) because he nod­ded off about half-way through my elec­tri­fy­ing pre­sen­ta­tion. Out num­ber two.

My par­ents had met Vir­ginia Sen­a­tor John Warn­er and his wife, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, at a clam bake on the North­ern Neck. Dad didn’t like him. Mom didn’t like his movie-star wife because of her track record with hus­bands (the sen­a­tor was her sev­enth mar­riage) and her wardrobe at the clam bake. “Some­body ought to tell that woman she’s gained too much weight to traipse around in tight jeans.”

At least my par­ents got to meet the sen­a­tor. He didn’t grace us with his pres­ence, send­ing his chief of staff in his place. I made my pitch. He looked at me like I was a Russ­ian spy and showed us the door.

On a roll by then, I whiffed with Sen­a­tors Kempthorne and Gor­ton.

I was 0 for 5 when we talked to Sen­a­tors Rock­e­feller and Fein­stein. They said they were in favor of the bill, but that didn’t improve my bat­ting aver­age. They’d announced their sup­port for it months ear­li­er. The way things were going, I was relieved that noth­ing I said turned them against it.

We closed the day with Oregon’s Sen­a­tor Mark Hat­field. He’s gen­er­al­ly for­got­ten now, but he was a big deal in his day. Insid­ers say Richard Nixon’s choice for VP at the 1968 G.O.P. con­ven­tion came down to Hat­field and Mary­land Gov­er­nor Spiro Agnew. Nixon chose Agnew. A bribery scan­dal forced Agnew to resign dur­ing Nixon’s sec­ond term, and Ger­ald Ford took his place as VP. I’ve often won­dered what the world would be like today if Nixon had cho­sen Hat­field and he had suc­ceed­ed Nixon to become our 38^th Pres­i­dent.

When we met with him, he was a grand­fa­ther­ly 72, dressed in a blue shirt and red sus­penders that flanked a lit­tle pot­bel­ly. When I fin­ished my pre­sen­ta­tion, he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I’ll tell you how this will play out.” Hillary Care would receive no Repub­li­can sup­port, he said, and Sen­a­tor Dole would block it from com­ing to the floor with the fil­i­buster rule. As time dragged on, Democ­rats would jump ship and pro­pose com­pro­mise bills. None would gain momen­tum, and uni­ver­sal health­care would die with­out a vote in the sen­ate.

And that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader George Mitchell declared the final com­pro­mise bill dead on Sep­tem­ber 26, 1994.

Although Hillary Care failed, we achieved the bet­ter rela­tion­ship with the UFCW we had hoped for and our con­tract nego­ti­a­tions were less con­tentious from there on.

An unex­pect­ed byprod­uct of our efforts came along lat­er when the Pres­i­dent of the UFCW invit­ed me to a lun­cheon with Pres­i­dent Clin­ton and a small group of his sup­port­ers. These affairs usu­al­ly require a huge cam­paign dona­tion, so I begged off. “Can’t fit it into the bud­get,” I told him.

“You won’t have to pay,” he said.

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. The Pres­i­dent wants to thank Safe­way for its help with health­care.”

The lun­cheon took place at bil­lion­aire Ron Burkle’s Bev­er­ly Hills estate. Safeway’s VP of Pub­lic Affairs and I walked up a ser­pen­tine dri­ve­way to a mas­sive man­sion where Secret Ser­vice agents searched us before we were admit­ted to a spa­cious din­ing room that was obvi­ous­ly way above my pay grade.

Pres­i­dent Clin­ton entered from a side door and worked the room, spend­ing one-on-one time with the thir­ty atten­dees. When he came to me, he beamed and thanked me for Safeway’s help. I’d heard that some politi­cians have a charis­mat­ic mag­net­ism, but I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced it. I did then. I wasn’t a fan of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton before or after that lun­cheon, but when I was in his pres­ence, talk­ing with him about our daugh­ters going off to col­lege, I felt a pow­er­ful grav­i­ta­tion­al pull into his orbit that I didn’t expect or under­stand. I want­ed to like him. I want­ed to believe in him.

After the lun­cheon, he stopped on his way out of the room to speak to me again. He said he might make anoth­er run at expand­ed health­care. I offered our help. I heard cam­eras click­ing as he shook my hand. The call for help nev­er came, but pho­tographs of the hand­shake arrived in the mail.

Think­ing I’d impress my par­ents with what a big wheel I’d become, I sent them the pho­to­graph of me shak­ing hands with the Pres­i­dent. On our next call, Dad’s first words were “I hope you washed your hands after they took that pic­ture.”

In the end, my for­ay into the polit­i­cal world on behalf of Hillary Care left me kind of cold. Pres­i­dent Clin­ton was by far the most tal­ent­ed politi­cian I met, and he turned out to be spec­tac­u­lar­ly flawed. Look­ing back on those days now, I’d say Dad’s pithy hygien­ic advice made good sense in the polit­i­cal are­na even before Covid-19 came along.

Post script: I met Pres­i­dent Clin­ton once more years lat­er. I’d heard he had an astound­ing mem­o­ry for peo­ple he’d encoun­tered only briefly. The rumor was true. He remem­bered my name and I felt that pull again, at least until I got out of the room.