Page 68 - The First Fifty Years

Do Not Delete 1/5/2015 4:03 PM

62 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

necessities of academic administration. A hand-scrawled marginal note beside Blakely’s
photo in the University of Houston Law Center O’Quinn Law Library’s official (and only)
copy of Volume 3 illustrates the point graphically, labeling the retiring dean a “Racist
Sexist Pig.” The note’s author declined to leave contact information and therefore was not
interviewed for this essay.

Better, then, to rely on the assessment provided by the dedication accompanying
the photo:

[Dean Blakely] brought [to administration] the same excellence which he
possessed as a teacher. [He] participated actively in the readjustment of
methods and curriculum necessary to meet the changing needs of a dynamic
legal world. Now he leaves [the deanship] to return to the classroom and his
primary goal of educating and refining legal scholars. The Editors of the Review
with unbounded respect and admiration dedicate this issue to Dean Newell H.
Blakely.
The editors’ names, led by Editor in Chief Marvin David Nathan, are disclosed fully. 3
HOUS. L. REV. ix–x (1965).
65. Dedication, Newell H. Blakely, 20 HOUS. L. REV. xv, xvi (1983).
66. Dedication, Newell H. Blakely, 25 HOUS. L. REV. xxv (1988).
67. Dedication, Newell H. Blakely, 30 HOUS. L. REV. xvii–xix (1993). This last of the
Blakely dedications contains the following summation of the feelings of generations of
Blakely’s students toward their teacher and mentor:

In 1949, one year after the University of Houston College of Law opened its
doors, Newell Blakely decided to leave the practice of law for a teaching career.
Thousands of attorneys who have had the privilege of studying under him are
among the beneficiaries of that decision. If our alumni were asked to name the
one faculty member who has had the most positive effect on their professional
lives, the overwhelming response would be Newell Blakely. He was invariably
the master of whatever subject he was teaching, down to the most recent slip
opinion. Moreover, his extraordinary teaching skills have inspired three
generations of lawyers with a commitment to discipline, professionalism, incisive
thought, and logical argumentation. And he did it all with an inimitable style
and wit. No student could ever forget the ubiquitous Bob Oglethorpe and his
unending encounters with one legal problem after another.
Id. Mr. Oglethorpe, incidentally, now is indelibly engraved in the annals of Texas
jurisprudence. See, e.g., TEX. R. CIV. EVID. & TEX. R. CRIM. EVID. 801 official comment,
illustration (2).
68. For a synopsis of Newell Blakely’s early life and pre-deanship career as a
professor, one cannot do better than John’s Mixon’s deft summary:

Newell was born and raised in Gurdon, Arkansas. If you didn’t know where
Gurdon was, he would tell you it was fifteen miles from Arkadelphia, as if that
helped. He earned a B.A. from Ouachita Baptist College, a Ph.M. in speech and
drama at the University of Wisconsin, and in 1947, an LL.B from UT law school.
In 1949, A.A. White rescued thirty-year-old Newell from his two years of law
practice in Harlingen, near the Mexican border, and put him in the
classroom. . . . [W]hether from training as a Baptist preacher at Ouachita, a
thespian at Wisconsin, lawyer at UT, or natural talent, Newell had a sense of
timing that he used perfectly as a teacher. Clearly, teaching was his forte, and
he was master of the art.
MIXON, supra note 5, at 49–50.
69. Joyce, Driven, supra, at 6–8 (“Nothing Succeeds Like Successors”).
70. Id. at 8 (“Enter Houston Law Review”).
71. MIXON, supra note 5, at 52 (providing terrifying examples of Blakely’s
technique).
72. Shivers Questionnaire, supra note 15.
73. Newell H. Blakely, Past Recollection Recorded: Restrictions on Use as Exhibit