This meeting is being recorded.
So we are in an interview for the Ray Getz Oral History Project.
And if you could tell us your name, please.
Yeah, I'm Stanley Craven.
And which classes did you have from Ray Getz?
Yeah, I had Ray for Contracts 1, a formative class for any new lawyer, my first semester
in law school.
And then I had Ray Getz the next year for Labor Law 1.
And in those years, there was a Labor Law 2, as I recall.
It could have been a seminar kind of class, but I had him for those three classes.
And when were you in law school?
I was in law school beginning in 1968.
And then I graduated in due course in 71.
Those were interesting years at the law school and society generally.
Anyone that lived through the period from about what, 67 through about 70, pretty much
saw a change in America.
And it was a tumultuous time for sure.
Had you ever met Ray before you started law school?
Nope.
I met Professor Getz.
And I never called him Ray.
He was never Ray to me.
He was always a professor, first of all, and a quote, middle-aged professor, if you will,
when I came.
I sometimes will refer to him as Ray when we talk about him.
But he was generally always Professor Getz to me, even as I then came to know him later
as an arbitrator in a professional capacity.
Yeah, the first time I walked in that class in old Green Hall, and I could walk to the
classroom right now and sit in the same desk, if it were there.
I mean, if the classroom was configured the same way, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you were in law school in old Green Hall?
Yes.
Yes, the whole time.
OK.
And had you ever heard anything about Professor Getz before you went to his first class?
No, I hadn't.
I hadn't.
I was pretty naive going into law school, generally about law school.
And again, one has to look at the tenor of the times.
I think in those times, many of us, and I say talking about a lot of young men, were
as interested in avoiding Vietnam and continuing their education in order to avoid Vietnam
as anything else.
So I pretty much went to went to law school because it was better than joining the army
and going to Vietnam.
Yep.
Was your contracts one class?
Was it a big class or was it a small section?
It was a big class.
It was a big class.
I think, as I recall, my law school class had about 100 folks in it, give or take, probably
five or 10 to the downside.
Maybe it was 95-ish.
But they were divided really into two classes.
So I would say half of my class, my entering class, was in contract one.
And then the other half was in contract one with a different professor.
So probably half of my class took contracts one from Professor Getz and the other half
took it from another professor.
In any of the classes you had with him, was it ever such a small group that he invited
you over to his home?
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, I do remember that.
And he invited, because I was then and I am now a bit of a social recluse, and I do remember
being invited over to his home.
And I remember going.
And I remember being uncomfortable.
Not because of anything he did or said, but that's more a reflection on me.
And so yeah, he served beer, as I recall.
I don't drink.
Didn't then either.
But I remember being a little intimidated, not on account of anything Ray did.
But just going to a professor's home was something new.
It's the only time I ever, ever did it.
Did he live in the big house over in East Lawrence?
I can't be sure about that, where he lived.
I just don't remember any more than a memory of actually being there and with him.
OK, yeah.
So do you remember what your first impression of Professor Goetz was when you got to class?
Sure, sure, sure I do.
I remember a lot about Professor Goetz as much as any other professor, because I've
always regarded him as one of the four or five most important influences on my career.
And yeah, my first impression of him was he was, I guess I would say, professional, maybe.
He was stern in the way a professor is.
He wasn't overly friendly, as professors shouldn't be.
And I guess I should say that a lot of my views of him now are reflective in the fact
that I had a chance to teach as an adjunct labor law teacher one semester at the University
of Missouri and then later one semester at the University of Kansas.
So my reflections back on him, I think in large part, show some things he did well that
I didn't do well or didn't feel I did well.
But I always thought he kept a very appropriate distance between students and professors.
He didn't try to be anyone's friend.
All right.
He didn't joke it up with people.
I think most memorably to me, and I may be jumping ahead a little bit to the labor law
years, but most memorably to me, he didn't have an agenda.
He came, as of course everyone well knows, from a storied background, really, a successful
partner at a prestigious, maybe the prestigious, labor law firm of its time, say for Shaw and
Fairweather, as having left as a partner after having been there right at 20 years.
So that makes him on the order of 45ish or so when I first knew him.
He had not a whit of prejudice or bias or leaning towards the management side.
And that goes more relevant to the issue of his teaching labor law.
Because when I taught labor law some years later, I felt constrained and compelled to
tell people that, look, I come from the management side.
You know, if you want a better view of the inside story from the other side, then you
need to get somebody from the, get Dick Wehres or Tom Marshall or someone with a labor law
firm on the union side.
So my first impression of him was businesslike to the point of being a little stern.
Unlike, now we had young professors at that time.
We had young star professors.
And if I may, he was a middle ground.
In 1768 through 1771, you know, we had the incomparable Martin Dickinson.
We had Barclay Clark.
We had Larry Blades.
These were Lawrence Velbel.
We had young stars in their first, second or third years at the law school.
And they were just a few years older than were we.
And on the other hand, we had some of the old successful established professors.
Again, the wonderful Paul Wilson.
Professor Kelly, Professor Scott.
Then we had the old time long-term, you know, tenured established professor.
Here's Ray Getz.
He comes and he is precisely in the middle.
He's a different kind of professor than either of the two ends that I've just described.
Comes from the private sector, the real world.
And he left a prestigious firm recently.
And here he is, our professor.
So he inhabited what I think was a very important middle kind of professor, is my recollection.
And I think we noticed that at the outset.
Yeah, that's great.
What were his classes like?
Okay.
Yeah, his classes were very well structured.
He was, at the time, all the professors used the Socratic method to a greater or lesser extent.
Almost without exception.
Now, I personally think, looking back, that method may be overdone in part
because it's very difficult to do.
Ray Getz was a master at it.
Ray Getz, as were the successful professors I've mentioned earlier.
Dickinson was fabulous at it.
But Ray Getz was a master of the Socratic method.
He spoke in a measured tone, always.
And one of my memories, you know, the Socratic method, the professor will ordinarily pick
a student out of the group to speak to the lesson of the day, the assignment,
and to be the foil, if you will, for the day.
And of course, one sat there, and I think there were probably 40 to 45 folks in my class.
And it was sufficiently memorable.
I can still remember whether some other folks sat in that class.
And he would pick somebody.
And you knew it.
Others would do it.
And one day it was, Mr. Craven, what do you think about the X, Y, or Z?
And of course, your heart jumps up through your throat.
Remember, we're all first year folks now.
And we're all sort of finding our way.
And you look around, and you naturally, one thinks that everyone else is smarter than they are
and knows it all.
So I struggled through it.
But it was such a great release to be done with it.
I was maybe the seventh or eighth, this or seventh or eighth class or so.
And I was greatly relieved.
And I thought I'd handle myself okay.
I was well prepared.
So the next class, I'll be darned if he doesn't start and say,
well, Mr. Craven, what do you think?
And my heart just fell.
Here was, and I don't know to this day, I wish I would have asked Professor Getz many years ago.
Did he do that by mistake or did he do that intentionally to make a point to everybody?
He called on me two days in a row.
And I wasn't as well prepared this time because I didn't think I was subject to being called on.
So he pretty much took one person through the three or four cases and the principles
that they were talking about and used them to bring across the whole class.
The contract points that he wanted to make.
You talked about his just general demeanor.
And was that also true?
You know, very businesslike, formal, not jokey.
That was how he was in class too, is that right?
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
He was very serious.
He didn't dress down people that weren't prepared.
It was, he made it sort of clear just by his manner that that wasn't really right.
But, you know, there are people that say, I didn't have a chance to look at the cases today or whatever.
But whatever, if I could say the single most important factor in his classes,
and I think it's one, if I had to list four or five principles of practice of law,
and the most important one I ever learned from him was from my contracts class.
And I can remember him saying it to the day, explaining what ratio descendi is.
Ratio descendi, of course, as you well know, is the rationale for the rule or the ruling being made.
With respect to contracts, it's sort of the rationale for why the rule is as it is.
The law is basically logical, reasonable, and principled, and tries to be consistent.
So if one understands, and this is sort of what Ray gets taught me, and I learned from him,
that if you can understand the reason for the rule, the underlying principle,
then you can take that to other parts of the law that you may not understand,
or you may not be sure of, you may not have seen a case that says this.
But if you understand the ratio descendi, you can pretty much predict.
And as one enters practice, that's an important principle because you don't know every answer,
but you can figure out most answers if you know the ratio descendi.
So that from Ray gets, and I suppose that was taught by all professors, but to me,
I use that concept that he taught me, and the way he described it, and the importance he
attributed to it is one of the two or three most important principles in my entire career.
And I would oftentimes tell prospective lawyers or new lawyers, if you can understand that,
you can understand about 80% of the law. And then when something doesn't follow the normal pattern,
then that sticks out. So this is something that Ray gets taught me, and that I learned from him,
that in my view, has served me well. Yeah, that's great. I really you mentioned that
in your email to me, and I built that for sure. And so I was going to remind you if you didn't
get to the the Did you ever talk about about Professor gets his teaching style,
or his demeanor with your fellow students? Oh, yeah, I'm Professor gets is a very
popular, very popular. I don't know anybody that had nothing. But and I'm gonna use the word respect
for him, because it wasn't popular in the way your friend is popular, he was popular in the way
that he was professional. And he's popular in the way that he spoke from experience, he had the
gravitas, he had a gravitas about him. Now, he, he earned that gravitas, okay, he earned that
gravitas that he didn't the the super professors that I've mentioned earlier, at age 29 or 30,
however old Barclay Clark was or Martin Dickens was they didn't have gravitas yet.
Professor gets had the gravitas. Right. Yeah, so Ray gets acknowledged the contribution you
and a few of your fellow three l students made to his classic 1971 law review article
entitled secondary boycotts in the LMRA a path through the swamp, which when I read when I was
in his labor law class, I'll tell you, and that's probably the first time I ever saw your name,
because I noticed those I noticed that he had acknowledged your work. So just tell,
tell everybody about the experience working with him in that capacity.
Yeah, that I will have to say that I have received more acclaim
from that article and for doing less than anything else in my entire career. And I say that without
exaggeration. There are others who were acknowledged there, who did a lot more than I did.
Bill Samson, I think, I believe was was acknowledged that I remember in particular,
the bill did a lot more than I did on that particular project. It wasn't just the way
things fell. It wasn't that I was being lazier, but but I did not a lot more than do some fact
checking. So I really and I didn't really work with Professor gets on it so much. I think I was
just sort of fact checking, maybe site checking that kind of thing. So I'll have to the the
the working relationship really wasn't there. And I'll have to defer people
that know a lot more about that. I will say I have a very strong recollection with respect to the
title of that of that piece, in particular, the path through the swamp. I was on the law review
at the time. Pete Peterson was the editor of the law review. And again, I didn't do a whole lot on
the law review either. But I was privy to several discussions, as especially I'll put this at
Pete's feet, what a horrible title that was. And I wasn't there when when when Pete Peterson went
by Larry in those years, Larry Petersen went to talk to Ray gets and asked him to change the title.
Now that that would be an interesting follow up because somebody from the law review and
and Larry Peterson now Pete Peterson is still with us is the one I think who had some discussions
with Ray. And I think the thought was it's just sort of not a very high class title,
a path through the swamp. And I can't say what Ray's decision was, or I know what his decision was,
it wasn't changed. But that that's my strongest memory of that article. And I wish to this day,
I had done more to to earn the accolade he gave me in footnote six or whatever it was.
That's great. Well, yeah, you know, these interviews lead to new things for me to track down.
And that is one I will definitely track down. Did you ever go see Professor gets in his office
during his office hours? Nope, don't think so. Don't don't ever remember that I do remember.
I do remember him coming to me. This is this is relevant to that issue, I think.
I pretty much a standoffish person. You know, I respected the teacher, student relationship.
And but but I do remember him coming to me one time. And, and I understand that this this is
not intended to be about me, but I declined an invitation to the law review.
When I earned it based on first year grades, and and and get came to me one time and he said,
Mr. Craven, you know, that can be very helpful in your career. And maybe that is something
you should consider doing. I almost remember that he came to me on out on the front of
Green Hall, I just sort of have that memory. And and based on that, I then entered a competition
to get the the place on the law review that I had passed up the year before. And ended up writing
some innocuous piece in the law review was that I really didn't understand. And when I wrote about
it, and I was far from an expert, and then the real lesson there was you really don't don't look
at notes or something. A lot of you kids are written. But but he had taken and he did take
an interest in me and he was proactive in that regard. And it was the same thing. Thinking of
this today, he came to me one time, and really thought I should consider a clerkship at with a
big law firm. And I think he had full board, one of the Houston firms. And and I again, that's
really why I started the discussion with the acknowledgement that this 68 to 71 period was
different. I mean, we were we were being drafted, we were we had other things on our mind and a
clerkship. We weren't as far sighted in those years as kids are now we didn't plan things ahead.
And I never took them up on that. But looking back on it, he clearly was offering me his
recommendation. Had I chosen to go to one of the other labor firms, and he made that outreach. So
those are two outreaches, and probably the only two that I do remember, but he made both of those
to me. The one I took and probably served me well that I can now put it on my resume some years later.
And the other one probably would have served me well, but I rejected it.
Yeah, that's great. Good story. So did I'm gonna pause this for
this meeting is being recorded.
So at the beginning, we talked about that you also knew regats as an arbitrator. And so I want to
talk a little bit about that. About how many arbitrations did you have with
I personally probably did five, you know, and the firm Spencer Fain law firm probably did another
two or three. So the firm probably had on the order of seven or eight cases with Professor Gatz.
He was just starting out when we basically used him. And by starting out, I mean, before his
baseball career. This is all pre baseball career for which he for which means nothing to me,
because I never participated in that. It's a little bit like saying Don Fear was big with the
Players Association. Well, Don Fear and Rick, I mean, to me, they're good labor lawyers, you know,
I knew them before they moved on to what made them famous. And maybe that's the case with Ray. So
he was probably just then becoming an arbitrator because I think the first time we used him,
it was in about 73. I had only been with the firm now two or three years. And so they would often
ask me about about Ray, my partners, then I was an associate, but they would ask me what I thought
about him on a particular case. And to tell you the truth, I always gave him the same the same
answer the same answer I gave about other really wonderful arbitrators. That is that look, if you're
you've got a good case, he's a great arbitrator. If you've got a bad case, you don't want him.
If you've got a bad case, you don't want him. And, and, and, Pete, I know you understand this,
but you know, you've got some arbitrators that have a that have they do have a bias
one way or another, and they have a hard time putting that bias to the side. And some of them
don't some of them like being biased. And then I've had a few of those. So you can get an arbitrator
and say, this is a this this is a great arbitrator. I love him. I mean, why? Well,
because he's upheld 17 discharges in a row, including four that he shouldn't have, right?
Well, that's not a that's not a good arbor. That's a good arbitrator for the client.
But he isn't a good arbitrator, in the sense of being fair minded, judge of the facts. So my
and my advice always was if you've got a good case, he's great arbitrator. If you don't,
don't try to don't don't try to put something over on him. And I believe I was seven for seven in
predicting how he would find for us or not. He reached in my view, my view, the right decision
in all seven or eight cases that I or my firm had with him. That doesn't mean we won all seven or
eight understand. But but as a lawyer advising clients, that's really what you need to know.
If you've got a bad case, settle it right. So so that that's my recollection of the first case.
I do I do remember only one case in particular that I had with him. And that is also cases stuck
with me for a long time. I remember the name of the individual. I remember the client. I remember
the facts of the case. And and it was a discharge case. And Ray, and after his first
three or three to five years as an arbitrator, didn't like discharge cases anymore. And he would
sort of when you when one would call him and say, you know, we got a case or you've been selected,
you'd want to know what is it about. And, and, and he told me this one time, I'm pretty sure
he and I never engaged in much chit chat. But I think I learned this directly from him, that
he just didn't like those discharge cases, for whatever reason. And, and this this this particular
case, I guess, I do not particularly relevant here. But it doesn't cost anything to tell the story.
I'll tell the story. It was involved, it was involved with a an individual on a factory
production line who was slow. And he could not keep up and the line kept having to be shut down.
Now this individual was just slow. He was large. He was heavy. He was white. And the client had done
what they should have done in counseling him, you know, bring you got to keep up,
you got to be able to keep up. And at bottom, the decision was, you know, 99% of the employees can
keep up, but this particular individual sent couldn't keep up. And Ray gets sustained the
discharge. And he said that that basically, you know, you don't have to continue to employ after
having tried time and again to improve their situation. That that that was an appropriate
basis for discharge, which I guess one could label that a fairly strong management position.
But what's the alternative? I mean, to shut the continue to shut the line down. But I do remember
that case. And that case is from 73 or 74. So it's sort of sort of interesting to me that I can recall
that, you know, I can only recall just a handful of particular facts of particular cases. But the
other thing I do remember is then Ray at some point after that indicated to me that he really
wasn't interested in taking discharge cases anymore. Right. Did he tell you why that was?
No, no, he never told me never told me why. But but I mean, only as a practitioner, you and I
probably both understand it's it isn't mentally challenging. You sort of hear the same thing over
and over again. You know, give him another chance and you know, this kind of thing. And he just
preferred the challenge of a contract interpretation case was was my impression. Yeah,
I think that's right. And he by that time, he had bigger fish to fry. Absolutely. Absolutely.
The do you remember anything in particular about Ray's style as an arbitrary? I never had him as
an arbitrary. Yeah, he well, first of all, one of my memories is that is that he always kept an
appropriate distance between me and him, a professional distance. And that was also part
of my philosophy. I mean, I would say hello, Mr. Arbitrator, shake hands, there was never any
by play at any point in the hearing. And this was both his style and my style. You know, you don't
want to signal to anybody else. I mean, they know where I went to law school, and they know, you
know, I mean, I what we weren't trying to hide that. But none of this chit chat. And I just felt so
strongly about it. And I know he did too, because he had to engage in this. I, you know, I've had
other arbitrators and bust in, you know, I haven't seen you since that last case we had, or there was
none of that. And to me, that's an important factor. When the when when it was lunchtime,
when it was over. Thank you, goodbye. And that was it. So that's that's when I mentioned earlier that
I had a lot of opportunities for chit chat with him about old times or about, you know, I looking
back, I wish I could have thanked him for what he did for me. Because again, I've described he is one
of the three or four most important father figures, if you will, mentors in my life.
And even now I sit here and think I wish I could have thanked him, as many people like to thank
their professors. But no, so that tells you about his style. He was he was formal, not in the sense
of objection, you know, overruled or, you know, he would sort of work through it,
I would say was his style. But he commanded such respect that I don't recall many
hearings ever getting out of out of hand. But but the lack of the lack of chit chat, the
awareness that he had to at all times appear impartial.
Says a lot, I think about him.
What was his reputation just generally among the management bar, which is what you know about?
Yeah, I, as far as I can tell, it was good. But but you know, the management bar, as far as I'm
concerned, was Spencer Fane, Britton Brown, you know, we didn't, you know, we didn't, you know,
the people I was closest to professionally, or people like those that Blake and you laid
on the other side. Those are guys I dealt with every time I didn't deal with other
management lawyers, we were competitors, if you will. And the so so my impression was that,
uh, with respect to to, and you could obviously, and your compatriots could speak to this more, but
my impression was he was respected by the union side as well. And of course, we know that to be
true, based on what happened later. But again, I'm, I, I pretty much ended my relationship with him,
maybe in 7677, somewhere in there, I think he moved on to bigger things.
Yeah, did, did the lawyers, I mean, you know, I mean, to me, Spencer Fane was,
when I started practicing law in 85, was still the premier management side,
firm. And, you know, I had nothing but good experiences with the people I dealt with it,
Spencer Fane, that's for sure. And the, I just wondered if people at Spencer Fane,
if you know, did anything to help Professor get get some of those big national arbitrator appointments
that he got? Do you know? I would say almost certainly not. Oh, okay. I just I just I don't
think so. Because the only ones that would have, first of all, Harry Brown,
I would have known it. I wouldn't, I would have known it had any of that happened. So I don't
think there are any leads there at all. I think he, he got those probably just on merit from his own,
from his own biography. I don't, I don't think anybody at Spencer Fane, and I can say this with
some certainty, I think, I don't think anybody at Spencer Fane helped him to the success he achieved.
Yeah, okay. Good. So I think I know the answer to this next section, which we'll just move on
quickly, I think, but he was involved in, I mean, he in the ABA's labor and employment
section. He was secretary of the collective bargaining committee at one point, and was
involved in the Kansas City chapter. He was president of the Kansas City chapter of the IRRA
back in the mid 70s. Did you interact with him at all in those capacities? Not at all, not at all.
That was my guess. And probably similarly, did you ever socialize with
Professor Goetz or his family? No, I did, I did not. Okay. All right. So when was the last time
you remember seeing Ray Goetz? It was probably another arbitration case in the 76, 77 time frame.
Okay. And did you talk to him on the phone after that period of time?
Nope. Nope. Did you, when did you learn that he had died? Do you remember?
I don't remember. I don't remember. I remember, I just remember it being a surprise. I mean,
so I don't know whether he'd been sick long. I don't even know the circumstances of it, but
it was a surprise to me. Right. Okay. As we sit here today, how would you describe Raymond Goetz?
Father figure, great mentor. I think, I think I understand he came to Lawrence for family reasons.
And I don't know for sure whether that's hearsay or not, but I think my understanding was that he
was concerned about perhaps one or two of his children in particular and wanted to bring them
to a better, better place to be raised than Chicago area. But mentor, father figure is what
I would say of Raymond Goetz. Okay. Any other memories you can, this is the wrap up question.
I'm sort of looking through my list that I jotted down about half an hour ago.
And I think I pretty much told you everything I know. Okay. I just, I just, one other thing,
I just want to make clear that he wasn't able to teach labor law without suggesting a side.
I know I mentioned that earlier, but I just wanted to, to sort of restate that. He,
I don't know how he did that. I don't know how he did that. He was a remarkable man. I think.
Okay. I'm going to stop the recording and then we hear for a second.