claim, and the case was dismissed. Again, luck played a significant part in my success. I was given full access to the files at MAN, but was warned that most of the records had been destroyed in the bombings of World War II. However, some documents that were in a safe had survived. In going through these documents (which, of course, were all in German) I found a ledger page which appeared to show that the amount of money owed by my client to MAN had been written off. I excitedly asked my German interpreter to ask the financial people whether the document indeed reflected a write-off. The answer was yes, and the reason was fascinating. It is hard to imagine that any company would bother, in the midst of the destruction of Nazi Germany, to do the actual bookkeeping needed to void the debt. But, it was explained to me that the financial people had concluded that, because of the war, there was no hope of ever collecting the debt and with classic German precision, they simply wrote it off! Therefore, they were able to give me a sworn affidavit that their records showed no money owed them by Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton!
After finishing my work in Germany, Marilyn and I went to Paris, where we spent several incredible days. Since we had very little money, we scrimped and saved but still had a wonderful time. Ironically, when we got home, my client was so pleased with the result of the trip that it paid all our expenses in France! If we had only known!
In February of 1956, the time came for me to enter the service, and I did so without qualms. Of course, I hated leaving my family and my law practice, which I had enjoyed immensely, but in those days you expected to serve in the armed forces and you simply regarded it as part of your obligation as a citizen.
I had no idea how much I would actually enjoy my time in the service or how rewarding it would be. That’s the next chapter. But let me first tell you about one of my most humbling moments as a young lawyer.
WHEN I JOINED Taft Stettinius & Hollister in July 1955, everyone knew that I would only be there for a few months before I entered the service. There was certainly no point in hiring a secretary for me for that short period of time. The solution that the firm came up with was logical and reasonable but, for me, very unsettling! The senior partner and a founder of the firm, John Hollister, had been named to President Eisenhower’s Cabinet and had, of course, moved to Washington. Thus, his secretary (in today’s world she would be called executive assistant, a much more accurate phrase in my view), a delightful Auntie Mame–type personality named Doris Voorhees, had no boss. So the firm assigned her to me so that we would both be satisfied. I was certainly satisfied—and terrified! I don’t know how Doris felt about it.
The first time I had reason to dictate a letter (which I had never in my life done before), I asked Doris to come into my office. She arrived with steno pad in hand and I commenced. When I finished I felt rather proud of my effort. Doris had other thoughts. She sat back in her chair, looked at the notes that she had taken, and said, “Well, that was a little gem, wasn’t it!” It was neither the first nor the last time that I realized that I was not nearly as good as I thought I was. There is a delightful postscript to this story. Many years later when I was CEO of Taft Broadcasting Company and, incidentally, had probably dictated five thousand letters over the years, I was asked to speak to a women’s club in a northern suburb of Cincinnati. When I arrived I was thrilled to see that Doris Voorhees was a member and she was sitting in the first row. So, I obviously had to tell the story and I did it with great relish. Everyone laughed, including Doris, but she did so with a very red face! Doris Voorhees was an extraordinary person—bright, funny, and irreverent. I could not have had a better secretary to launch me on my way.
Next stop—the United States Army!
CHAPTER VII
The Army
MY THREE YEARS in the Army turned out, to my considerable surprise, to be three of the most interesting and rewarding years of my life. My obligation under the draft was only for two years, but I learned that if I enlisted for three years I could choose my assignment after basic training.* I decided to do this and chose the Counter Intelligence Corps. It meant another year in the service, but it turned out to be the right decision.
It all started with a train ride from Cincinnati to my basic training location at Fort Leonard Wood, in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. On our way the train stopped in Detroit and several more recruits got on board. They were young, sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys from the streets of Detroit. In those days it was not unusual for a young man who got in minor trouble to be given a choice of going to jail or going into the Army. These boys had chosen the Army. One of the boys was a tall, engaging kid named Bobby, and we struck up a friendship on our way to Fort Leonard Wood. He and his pals simply could not believe that I was a lawyer. Their logic was compelling: If you’re intelligent enough to be a lawyer, you should be smart enough to not be on a train taking you to Army basic training! Hard to argue with, but I convinced them by showing them my Ohio Bar Association membership card. They were persuaded and were much more impressed than they should have been! I go into this much detail about the train ride because my new friendship became very important to my well-being in a very short period of time.
We reached Fort Leonard Wood and were directed to our barracks, where we began to get our gear organized and began visiting with people around us. Later that night, after our first dinner, we came back to the barracks and Bobby and his friends were telling everyone that I was a lawyer and therefore, in their eyes, unlike anyone else in the whole place! You have to understand that most of these kids had never finished high school, and having a lawyer in their midst was a unique experience.
It turns out that one of our barracks mates was not so impressed. He was an older guy who obviously resented the attention I was getting. He walked to where we were all sitting and began to say some not-so-kind things about me. Then he stepped forward, and I firmly believed he was preparing to beat me up. As I stood there, not knowing quite what to do, my new friend Bobby stood up, walked over to the older guy, pulled a switchblade knife from his pocket, flipped it open under the older guy’s chin, and said quietly but forcefully, “Don’t f_ _ _ with Charlie.” That ended the confrontation and cemented our friendship forever!
BASIC TRAINING LASTED twelve weeks, and I can’t begin to go into detail about all of my experiences. Rather, I’ll quickly note several high points—and low points!
Surprisingly, I gave up cigarettes during basic. I knew that at age twenty-five I would have a hard enough time getting through basic training even if I was in the best of shape and certainly would have a real problem if I continued to smoke. So, I gave it up and, as a result, was the only guy in my company that gained weight during basic training!
When the commanding officer learned that I was in the group, he called me into the orderly room one day and told me that he wanted me to help him with a project. Obviously, I could not decline. He explained that he was about to retire after twenty years in the service and wanted to go to college. He wanted me to help him put together applications to get him into a good school. I was happy to do this and had fun getting to know him and spending some time with the other officers, even though I was a lowly enlisted man.
One of my favorite memories involves the deputy company commander, a first lieutenant who had recently graduated from Princeton. I was an oddity as an enlisted man because of my educational background, and he had a lot of fun kidding me—in a good-natured way. The incident I remember best happened at the end of a drill where we were marching with our rifles (the legendary M-1) on our shoulders and then came to a halt. We had done this scores of times, and at the moment we came to a halt the lieutenant always called out the next command (known in the manual of arms as “order arms”), which was bringing your rifle from your
