Family Ties

My family is lousy with lawyers. They are everywhere, several generations of them spread out over two states. And the paterfamilias of this sprawling legal empire is my grandfather. He came from a dirt poor family in eastern Oklahoma and worked his ass off in order to get through college with an engineering degree and then to law school (marrying my grandmother along the way - a source of some great stories I will tell one day). It wasn't long after he left the Navy that he founded his law firm in 1957.

God help me, but some of my fondest childhood memories are of that firm. Both of my parents worked for my grandfather at one point or another in their legal careers and they worked long days and weekends. On occassion, my sister and I accompanied them to the office on the odd Saturday. And we ran the place, playing with grandpa's dictaphone, using the conference table as a fort, making funny faces on the copy machine. Best of all, the downtown branch of the public library was across the street. Many books lost their lives there in vain attempts to acculturize and educate me.

So it came as something of a surprise to me this weekend that I had never bothered to check out the firm's web presence. After a brief google, I came across the site. It is pretty snazzy. My grandfather is no longer an active partner in the firm but he is of counsel.