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24 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

was to be built in an area . . . he knew to be flood prone. He was, of course, completely
correct; TU 1 always flooded badly during heavy rains, with the result that any
entrance with a door below grade was heavily sandbagged, in order to try to prevent
flooding. On the instance of the heaviest storm that I can remember during my time
in law school, a torrent of water had overwhelmed the sandbags and was flowing
down the steps toward the below-grade entrance into TU 1. As I stood in the hallway,
I saw water cascading down the stairs, then rolling into the elevator shaft and
shorting out the elevator. As a result, the doors would open and close, the elevator
would go up to the top floor, the doors would open and close, it would come back
down, the doors would open and close, with the cycle endlessly repeating itself.
Occasionally, sparks would fly out. I had never seen anything like it.
Baker Questionnaire, supra note 45. The design would have calamitous consequences for both
the school and the Review during the latter’s Decade 4.
54. LLEWELLYN, supra note 49, at 105.
55. A battlefield reference. Cf. STEPHEN E. AMBROSE, D-DAY 406–17 (1994). On the 40th
anniversary of D-Day, standing above the beach where Allied soldiers had stormed ashore to
liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny, President Ronald Reagan memorably described the Allied
Expeditionary force thus: “These [we]re the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These [we]re the men who
took the cliffs.”
56. As the foregoing subsection on membership and logistics makes clear, the boards of
the earliest volumes were small. But by Volume 10, the mastheads (an unreliable measure but
still the best one readily available) indicate that somewhere north of 150 students had, at one
time or another, been members of HLR during Decade 1. Each had a story, but cumulatively,
there are too many to attempt to tell here. With apologies for necessary omission and
compression, what follow are but a few of those stories of sacrifice and achievement.
57. Caldwell’s current contact information is unknown as of this writing. Houston Law
Review’s hope, however, is that these 50th Anniversary essays will elicit further information,
including the whereabouts of former members, relevant to the history of the Review’s first five
decades. The essays will be compiled, and corrected as necessary, after the publication of their
fifth episode.
58. Dinkins currently is a partner at Vinson & Elkins LLP, with offices in Houston and
Washington, D.C., and serves as the firm’s Group Leader for Environmental Practice.
59. E-mail from Carol Eggert Dinkins, Partner, Vinson & Elkins LLP, to the author
(Aug. 30, 2012) (on file with Houston Law Review).
60. Nathan is Senior Partner at Nathan Sommers Jacobs in Houston, specializing in
real estate law, business organizations, and finance. He, along with Lawrence Pirtle and Alvin
Zimmerman, see supra text accompanying notes 63 and 66, in a December 14, 2012 oral history
of Decade 1 on file with Houston Law Review.
61. Questionnaire Response, Marvin Nathan, Senior Partner, Nathan Sommers Jacobs
(Nov. 11, 2011) (on file with Houston Law Review).
62. Interview by Rebekah Reed with Marvin Nathan, Senior Partner, Nathan Sommers
Jacobs (Feb. 16, 2012) (on file with Houston Law Review).
63. Today, Pirtle is Of Counsel, focusing on tax law at Houston’s Gardere Law Firm.
64. The phrase is taken from T. Gerald Treece, My Friend John, 47 HOUS. L. REV. 253,
253 (2010).
65. Questionnaire Response, Lawrence J. Pirtle, Of Counsel, Gardere (Nov. 30, 2011) (on
file with Houston Law Review).
66. Zimmerman currently is chair of Zimmerman, Axelrad, Meyer, Stern & Wise, P.C.,
in Houston, and is board certified in family law.
67. While probably HLR had not moved up all that much in the ranks three years later
despite the addition of a fourth issue, by Board 6 (1968–69) the Review was at least sufficiently
“on the map” for its editors to be asked to journey to San Antonio, which they happily did, to
assist in the start-up of St. Mary’s Law Journal. Questionnaire Response, Wendell B. Alcorn,
Jr., Alcorn Law Office (Dec. 4, 2011) (on file with Houston Law Review).