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20 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW
Batmobile), plus a plain grey 1975 Ford Escort GL first owned
by a young Polish priest who would become John Paul II.
On the morning of October 29, 2009, having forgotten a file he
needed for a hearing later in the day in San Antonio, O’Quinn left
Houston’s Hobby Airport in the rain in his black Suburban and
headed toward his home in Houston’s tony River Oaks
neighborhood, speeding along at 76 miles per hour on a slick,
winding road posted at 40 mph. He lost control of the vehicle. The
Suburban slid first, then flew across three lanes of traffic, a wide
grassy median, and three more lanes of oncoming traffic, before it
crashed head-on into a massive oak. O’Quinn was killed instantly.
Many of the autos from his beloved collection were exhibited at his
memorial service.
John O’Quinn’s is an out-sized story. But stripped of its wholly
personal extravagances, it is much like the story of Houston Law
Review.77 O’Quinn had come up from the bottom. He possessed
enormous drive always to be better. He worked with all the might
he had. And in the end, he succeeded in making something of
himself.
***
“Context matters,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once
observed.78 So it was with Houston Law Review during the first
decade of its intended journey toward “enduring greatness.”
Fourteen members, a closet-sized office, and barely 300
pages—Houston Law Review had been born amidst humble
circumstances in 1963. The dedicated editors of Boards 1 through
10 strove to make the Review a publication of substance and
quality, if still a publication with only regional ambitions. They
hobnobbed with their fellow wizards79 (at the National Conference
of Law Reviews), broadened the horizon of the journal’s subject
matter, published a precursor to later symposium issues, and grew
the organization in prestige, scope, and size.
By the end of Decade 1, it could be said truly of the men and
women of Hous. L. Rev. that, like perhaps their most famous
member, they were . . .
Driven.
1. Cf. John 1:1.
2. The following section, unless otherwise noted, is drawn principally from JOHN
MIXON, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A LAW SCHOOL (2012) [hereinafter MIXON] (used with its author’s
enthusiastic endorsement), plus the personal recollections and reflections of this essay’s
author. The publication of the MIXON HISTORY celebrated the 65th anniversary of the founding
of what is now the University of Houston Law Center, with funding for the book made possible
by the John Mixon Society and through the generosity of Don R. Riddle, UHLC Class of 1966,