So I need to click on got it right? Right. Okay, I've done that. Great. This is interview
number 12 in the Raymond gets oral history project. Could you tell us your name, please?
My name is Bill Sampson. And tell us a little bit about your practice. Well, my practice
has concluded. I retired in December of last year. But until then, I was a civil litigator,
I guess most people would say, I looked upon myself as a trial lawyer, because I tried quite
a few cases in my careers in the Navy and in private practice. And at the end of my career,
I was doing entirely civil litigation on both the plaintiff and the defendant side. Most of these
cases were cases involving class actions, product liability cases or contract fraud disputes between
businesses. And did you were here today to talk about Raymond gets Did you ever do any labor
practice? I did not. I was excited to do that my third year of law school. But I was also in the
Navy at that time I had enlisted in my senior year of college. And by the time I got out of the Navy,
I was pretty well hooked on trial practice. So I never actually did them. Okay. Do you know how
Professor gets came to the faculty of KU is law school.
I will say I believe so, Doug. What I do know are these things. I know that Ray gets said he was
frustrated in his practice in Chicago. And he was frustrated by the kinds of things that that
wouldn't frustrate lots of people. One of the things that frustrated him was the need of his firm
to have him become much more involved in business development, rather than in the practice of law.
And what Ray gets enjoyed was the practice of law, the thinking about the law and the writing about
the law. And as the firm needed him more and more to take clients out to dinner and,
and schmooze people around, he just he just didn't like it. And so as he was in a disaffected mood,
one time, he came upon the Dean of the KU Law School, who was an enormously talented,
enormously charismatic guy who was working very hard to build a great faculty at Kansas,
of all places. And this guy hit Ray, I'm, I'm confident at just the right moment,
he had the kind of personality and the kind of intellect that would appeal to array gets. And
I think Ray said, the heck with it, we'll just go teach for a while. And I personally believe that's
how he ended up at Kansas. And do you know, let's state for the record here that we're talking about
Dean James Logan, right? Right. And tell us a little bit about Dean Logan, just so people
who listen to this know who he was. Jim Logan was all Kansas, but he was all Kansas with an A plus
plus intellect. He he, I frankly, assume that he went to KU as an undergraduate. He, he went to,
he was so good as an undergraduate that he he applied for the Rhodes Scholarship. And the story
goes that he was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship. And he was talking with the people from Oxford
about where he would live once he got there. And Jim said, I'll need a place that's big enough for
me and my wife. We're on the school said, Oh, well, that's a problem. Because our Rhodes Scholars
are single people. And Jim reportedly said, Well, you know, thanks very much. It's been fun talking
with you. And he turned down the Rhodes Scholarship, got married and went to law school. He went to
Harvard, of course, he became the editor in chief for the Harvard Law Review. And then because he
developed a real interest in teaching, he decided to come back to Kansas to become a law teacher.
And in very short order, he became the dean of the Kansas Law School. And when he became the dean,
he was the youngest dean in the country. So the business about the Rhodes Scholarship was something
that I didn't know about Jim until much, much later. What people knew about Jim was that he was
the dean of the law school. And then in 1968, I will say he famously ran for the US Senate
as a Democrat against Bob Dole. And of course, he lost, everybody lost when they ran against Bob
Dole in Kansas, even one of my law partners, but Jim even further made a name for himself.
And then once he left the law school, which he did a little bit later on,
and took the position as the senior lawyer of a fine law firm in Olathe, Kansas, this is a suburb
of Kansas City, he became even better known around the state and around the region. Ultimately,
of course, he ended up on the 10th Circuit. Do you happen to know how he met Ray Goetz?
I do not. I do not. Did you ever discuss anything about you sent me an email with kind of an
intriguing little tidbit about Safer's Shaw, Ray Goetz's firm in Chicago? No,
it's got something to do with a beanie. Can you tell us about that?
Well, all law students are intrigued about private practice. And not all law professors have had much
of private practice, but Ray Goetz had. He was one of those people who had a significant private
practice. And so when we had the opportunity to chat him up, so to speak, about his experiences,
we would do so. And Ray was very comfortable having left. And so he could talk about his
private practice experience with a twinkle in his eye. And he had these lovely anecdotes that he
was more than willing to share with you. And apparently, as a first year member of the firm,
he was required to wear a beanie, an honest to God hat beanie, whenever he left the law firm.
He didn't have to wear it inside the firm. But if he left the building in which the law firm was
located and walked out on the sidewalks of Chicago, he had to have a beanie. And we were just
stupefied at the very thought of something like that. And that was bad enough. But he also said
that in order to leave the office proper and walk out into the elevator lobby, let's say he wanted
to go down to the second floor for a sandwich or something like that, he had to have his jacket and
tie on. And so things were a bit different when Ray was practicing in Chicago, certainly than they
are today. Yeah, that's that's funny. That's a good one. Which classes did you take from Ray Gatz?
The only class I took from him was labor law. We were assigned contracts teachers, I did not have
him for contracts, always wished that I had, especially once I started hearing the stories
about him. And ultimately, I suspect it was my third year, although I can't say that for sure.
I had the opportunity to take labor law, which was a voluntary class. And I enrolled in that
the very first moment I could. What you mentioned that you had heard about Ray and contracts,
what did you heard about it? I wish I could remember the name of this this fictional teacher.
He may have been in Scott to Rose one L book, but there was a person who allegedly taught at the
Harvard Law School who was a master of the Socratic method, and perhaps just a touch mean spirited on
occasion. And he terrorized first year law students. I think that Ray gets terrorized
the first year students at Kansas by his intellect and by his facility with asking questions.
I debated at KU and I was not unfamiliar with asking questions. But many of my law student
classmates were, you know, they certainly weren't debaters. And they came to KU from a whole variety
of undergraduate degrees. And I think that Ray gets was just way more than anybody had ever
encountered before. And so the stories that were told about being undressed, so to speak,
in contracts class were legion. And none of them was ever any more than Oh, my God, it was terrible.
You know, nobody came away disliking Ray gets. And at the end of the year, everybody loved him
because he was so good. He was he was such, you know, these these were the reports that I was
getting then. He was so well prepared. He was so insistent that you be well prepared. He really,
nobody said he was anything other than courteous, and even kind. But if you're just profoundly
embarrassed, it doesn't matter how kind the other person is, you're still embarrassed. And that he
just had this this fabulous reputation of being the best teacher of contracts ever. And what was
interesting, Doug, is that not only did did that reputation exist throughout my time in law school,
but as I as I got older, as I came back from the Navy, as I was in private practice, and now
engaging these same faculty members as a as a member of the bar, I come to KU, and I'd be part
of a recruiting team, for example, teachers who whom I had in law school would now share with me
that they thought Ray gets was the finest teacher that they had in the law school. And I thought
that was really high praise to get that from your colleagues. We have absolutely. So tell us about
labor law class with Ray gets
a couple things about it. And number one, I was I was excited to take it. Number two, it met
expectations. I knew nothing about labor law. And I knew only Ray gets his reputation. I hardly had
a conversation with him before I walked into that classroom. I never prepared harder for a law
school class. And that was every time we met. I did enjoy the subject matter. And,
and everybody was motivated. You know, it's this was not a class where he would stand up in the
front of the room and ask a question and get a bunch of silence from the students. So everybody
was prepared. Everybody was interested in answering the question or trying to. And everybody was
interested in having the dialogue that would follow. And I and I do remember this about the
final exam to two anecdotes that are that may be interesting to you. One has to do with a guy
named Harry Brown. And the other has to do with the final. I prepared so diligently for the final
in that class that and it was an open book test. I mean, Ray gets was so completely confident in
his ability to ask a vexing question that he didn't care whether you brought the NLRB and with
you, you know, it was still you against him. And he felt pretty confident about the outcome,
but it was an open book test. And he asked a question about an obscure case that was in a
footnote in the labor law text. And I, for some reason, I remembered the case and I found it.
And I cited it back to him in my old school answer, which I thought was very clever.
But what I also remember was his I guess now you might call it an open door policy.
Ray gets enjoyed students. He loved to talk with students. And if they had an interest in labor law,
he absolutely wanted to facilitate that. And so I was interested in labor law and he thought I
would enjoy talking with Harry Brown, who was a practitioner of it in Kansas City, Missouri,
with a law firm that had his name in it. And so I at Ray's invitation and with his arranging it,
I went into Kansas City to meet with Harry Brown one day. And I can remember sitting in his corner
office just listening spellbound to this guy talk with me about all of the labor matters he's
handled and especially the strikes that he had been involved with. And on Harry's ledge was a
four pointed star. Now you may know what that is. I'd never seen one before. If it were larger,
it would be used for anti-tank defense. But what it was used for was you'd throw it, you'd throw it
on a hard surface and it would always land with a spiked point up. And it was designed to puncture
the tires of the scab vehicles as they tried to cross a picket line. And somebody picked one up
and handed it to Ray, I'm sorry, to Harry at one point. And so that was one of his many souvenirs
of his practice. And I just thought it was terrific. So I met Harry thanks to Ray Getz and thanks to
Ray's concern for students and his wanting to give them as broad an experience as possible.
Yeah, that's a great story. This may not really apply to labor law, but were any of the students
in your labor law class ever less than fully prepared? If they were, I don't remember it.
I certainly remember it for other law school classes, but not that one.
Right. I mean, I think that's right. But I wanted to ask,
did you and your fellow students discuss Ray's teaching style?
I'm sure we did. By the time I was a third year student, the results, if you will, of Jim Logan's
recruitment of a faculty were apparent at KU. And KU had a whole collection of really fine teachers.
There's no point in listing them. But there was another teacher, his name was Martin Dickinson,
who was also a gifted educator. Barclay Clark was probably the third. They had wildly different
styles. Barclay was a machine gun type speaker in class. He could cover so much text, it was just
dazzling. Martin Dickinson was a lovely, lovely human being who had a marvelous memory. He taught
tax. And he also taught part of the corporations segment then. And then there was Ray. And
everybody had had Barclay. That's not the right way to say this. I had had class with Barclay,
and I really liked him. And I had had two classes with Martin Dickinson by the time I took Ray's
labor law class. And I was frankly skeptical that Ray would be as good as advertised. But he was.
He was just by himself as the finest teacher that we had there. And people in the school
talked about that. And we would always compare the teachers and who had this and who had that.
And once we got to be third year students, and we had all experienced all of the teachers in the
school, Ray was the consensus winner every time. Do you know why? I mean, because those two were
really outstanding teachers, Martin and Martin Dickinson. What was it that made Gets stand out
above those giants? His private practice. Martin came to the school after what I think were three
years of practice. I think he was in Denver. And I'm almost certain that Barclay was in Denver as
well. Barclay, I can't remember whether Barclay was in private practice or whether he worked for
a bank in Denver. But like Martin, he worked for a couple, three years. He worked just long enough
to know that what he wanted to do was teach. And so both of these people benefited from a private
practice experience. But neither of them had really had it. They certainly hadn't become partners in
the firm. They certainly hadn't had the work, the breadth of the work and the intensity of the work
and the dependence upon you that clients can create that Ray Gets had had. And that just
makes a difference. And I suspect that it made as much of a difference in how Ray Gets
presented himself and the calm confidence with which he presented himself. In comparison with
Barclay, Ray Gets was an iceberg. Barclay was just frenetic at the head of the classroom. He was
wonderful, but he was so different. And encountering Gets was like encountering George Marshall.
He didn't need to say anything. He was just George Marshall. Well, Ray Gets was just Ray Gets. And so
it was fascinating. Do you remember the conversation you had with Gets
when you talked to him about setting up the meeting with Harry Brown?
I can remember one aspect of it. I'd like to be able to tell you I knew where Ray Gets's office was.
He was probably on the top floor of what was then called Green Hall. It's now called Lippincott
Hall on KU's campus. And there were four lovely big offices just off the main reading room of the
library. He probably had one of those. And the only part of it that I can tell you that I
remember, I honestly remember, was how he brightened when it occurred to him that I would
probably enjoy talking to Harry Brown. And although I don't remember this clearly, Doug,
what could easily have happened was for Ray to have gotten this big smile across his face
and then just reaching behind him and picking up the phone and calling Harry and saying,
Harry, there's a student here who needs to meet you. And that's probably how it happened.
But all I remember is how tickled he was at the thought of getting me in touch with Harry Brown.
So did you ever go to the Gets home?
We did. What I can't remember is when. I'm sure I was there twice. If I had to guess right or die,
I suspect I was there once for a larger law school gathering my first year. And then I think
that he and Mo had the labor law class out our third year. So I think I was there twice. So yes,
I was certainly there. Describe the house.
Well, Lawrence, if you imagine Lawrence as a typical geographical grid, the Gets house was
in the southeast quadrant. That is the least dense spot from a residential standpoint.
And there was no density about where Ray and Mo Gets lived because they lived in a very large lot,
on a very large lot immediately east of and adjacent to a nursery. So there was you drove
east on 15th Street, you drove past the nursery. And then at that corner, and I think it was the
corner between the dirt road that separated the nursery and the Gets house, was the entrance. And
the entrance was on the northwest corner of their lot. And it was between two very tall hedges.
So it was difficult to see the house, you basically had to drive in the driveway to get to it.
But you know, we were all invited. And so we all drove in the driveway and we drove up. And once
you drove through that opening, you encountered this gigantic white wood frame house. Quite unlike
anything else that you'd seen in Lawrence, it was bigger to begin with, it was virtually as big as
the Chancellor's residence, although different in style. And it was white wood, it wasn't brick,
it wasn't stone, it was just this immense pile of boards. And so you get out and you'd walk in.
And I remember, I'll use the term traditional, there was nothing about the house that struck
me as odd or innovative either. It was just a very large, comfortable place, but it was large,
and it had tall ceilings, and it had a formal entryway. And as you walked in, the very first
thing that I saw was this huge Andy Warhol painting. And I barely knew Andy Warhol's name
at that point. But I was conversant enough about art, and about contemporary art, that when you saw
the Campbell's Suit Can or the Marilyn Monroe, it was just clearly a Warhol
piece. And Gats God love him had one, right there in his entryway. And so that was,
it was like a shot across the bow, if you will, for people who didn't yet appreciate what they
were about to walk into. And he and Mo liked art, and they collected quite a bit of it. And although
I can't name the rest of the pieces that they had in their house, I do remember the house was full
of it. It was full of books, like many professors' homes were, like your office is. But it was also
full of artwork, and that was so different. It was different to my experience, just period,
at that moment, and it was different than most people's experiences. And then it was a big house.
It had high ceilings, it had large rooms. The first time we went there, it was full of people.
And it would be unfair to say we saw a different side of Ray Gats, because he was
no less welcoming in class. He may have come across as just a bit austere in class, but he was certainly
a person you wanted to talk with. In his home, he was completely at ease. He was completely
welcoming. He would greet you with a big smile. If you didn't know Mo, he would introduce you to
his wife, and she was fantastic. And between the two of them, they would just entertain the whole
group, which they did. It's not like you walked into a large house with a whole bunch of people
who'd been paid to serve the cocktail party. It was Mo and Ray and you, and it was great.
And I suspect that the second time was very much the same, just a little smaller, probably a little
bit more intimate. We probably actually sat down with Ray and Mo for conversations the second time.
I can't imagine we did that the first time, because there were just too many people there.
But it was a, even though you're in Lawrence, Kansas, even though you're next to a nursery,
even though you're in a big wood frame house, it was an elegant experience, and it was just terrific.
You and three of your classmates worked for Professor Gats as research assistants on his
classic law review article, Secondary Boycotts in the LMRA, A Path Through the Swamp.
How did that project come about?
One of the people who most enjoyed Gats as a teacher was, we called him Larry, I think he
now calls himself Pete Peterson. He's a lawyer in Salina, Kansas, and Pete was the editor-in-chief
for the law review. It could have been the summer of 1970, it could have been the early fall of 1970.
And Pete, of course, he had a very keen interest in the law review, as did all of us, we were all
editors, and he really liked Gats. I hadn't taken Gats's class yet, and he was, I'll use the word
frustrated by the fact that the Kansas law review had never published anything by Ray Gats.
And none of us knew why, none of us knew whether he just didn't like the Kansas law review, or
whether he'd had a bad experience with a previous editor, or what. We just didn't have any idea,
we just thought, gosh, if we could get Ray Gats to publish something here, that would be worth having.
And so, as though we were a bunch of second graders trying to figure out how to work a yo-yo,
we were sitting around talking, and probably Pete said, well, how do we do this? And Stan Craven,
who is nothing but practical, said, why don't we ask him? Well, brilliant, what a great suggestion.
So I think it was the four of us, probably Pete made an appointment with him, and all four of us,
went to talk with him. And either Pete or Stan said, we would like for you to consider publishing
something in the Kansas law review, what can we do to get that done, or words to that effect?
And Ray was, you know, he was just like Ray, he was glad to see us, he was open to the idea,
and he probably, you know, I don't remember the conversation, but he probably said something about
thinking about working on this article. And then he probably said, I've had a hard time getting to
the research, that's my house phone, it'll go off in a minute. I've had a hard time getting to the
research, if I could get somebody to help, you know, you'd be terrific, because he knew all of
us for good students. That would be great. And so we immediately volunteered to provide whatever
research assistance that he needed. And he said, great, let's go. And so off we went.
And what ended up being your role?
I would love to tell you I remember. But I don't. I probably had, well, I probably is not correct.
I know I had more time than Pete Peterson did, because he was the editor in chief.
And...
And...
Dave Dagen is on his way to install your show.
Okay. My guess is that I was just one of the worker bees. I was one of the people who
got an assignment from Ray, and it was probably, you know, here's a list of 25 cases. I'd like to
know generally what they say, if there's anything in any of them that is sparkling language, or
really insightful, please call that to my attention. But otherwise, I just need to know
what the cases say and what the holdings are. And so I probably went off to do several assignments
like that.
Great. You were both in the Navy. Did you ever discuss the Navy with Ray again?
Now, when I was a law student, I was in the Navy in the summer between my second and third year.
Other than that, until then, it was probably not, it probably didn't occur to anybody,
including me, I'm not proud to say that I was in the Navy. This was just one of these things that
you signed up for when you were a college senior. And then suddenly it got to be that summer.
And then I was on active duty for the very first time. And when I got back my third year,
I had three or four pairs of Navy issue blue jeans. These are the button up dungarees that
the enlisted guys wear. And I had three or four Navy issue chambray shirts. And that's what I wore
to law school my third year. And then it was clear that I was either I was in the Navy, or I really
like Worcester plus one of the two. So but I don't remember ever talking to Ray about that.
I think I did learn that about him at some point. But it was probably after I left the law school.
So when was the last time you remember seeing Ray?
Ray?
It is entirely possible, Doug, that the last time I saw him was my third year of law school.
I graduated, I took the bar immediately after passing the bar. And you may or may not know that
at that moment, Kansas lawyers took the bar exam on Monday and Tuesday. And we got the results on
Friday morning. And so on Friday morning in May, I knew that I had passed the bar and probably
that weekend, we moved to Great Bend, Kansas, which is where I worked, I worked in a private
law firm in Great Bend until I went on active duty. And then we moved to Newport, Rhode Island
for justice school. And then we moved clear across the country to a Naval Air Station in California.
And when we came back, we came back to Wichita, Kansas. And it would not surprise me, I can't
remember when Ray left the law school. But it would not surprise me if the last time I saw him
eye to eye was my third year of law school. Okay. Do you remember when you learned that he had died?
I do not. I do not. I do, you know, I will say this as much as I admired Ray Getz and I admired
him hugely. He was, you know, I will say this, regretfully, he was never a mentor to me. I never,
I was never fortunate enough to become close enough to him to that kind of relationship with him.
Notwithstanding that, there were people in the law school that meant more to me than others
to say it that way. And when I heard that he died, I remember stopping, you know, you just,
you just stop what you were doing, you stop what you were thinking, you basically stop what you
were feeling. And then you experience these, this flood of memories about a guy like Ray Getz.
And that's what happened to me. I can't even tell you where I was, but that I do remember that that's
how I reacted to it. Great. Any other memories you want to share about Ray Getz that we haven't covered?
I, you know, I did send this, this note to you. And I think,
I think that's, I think that's probably it. I've said, I've said just a little bit about his wife.
You know, some people are, are just simply lucky in their, in their life partner. I've always thought
that Ray Getz was lucky in his, he found somebody in Moe who was probably every bit as smart as he
was. She was a little bit more irreverent, at least I thought she was. I thought she was just
such an amazing breath of fresh air every time I met her. And so I always, I always, I always felt
good about Ray, that he was married to somebody like Moe and felt that way every time I encountered
them. But I suspect that's, that's pretty much it. Great. I'm going to stop the recording.
Okay. So we're back on the record and we were talking about mentoring relationships. And one
of the things that I've observed in these interviews is that people consider Ray a mentor,
did not have an ongoing relationship with him. And you had some good observations about that. So go
ahead, Bill. I would attribute that to a couple of things. Number one, for the people who were
really close to Ray, all of them left Lawrence, Kansas. You know, they probably went a whole
variety of places. Kittsmith went to Washington. Stan Craven went to Kansas City. Other people went
other places. But once they left Lawrence, the distance was enough that it just didn't allow
people to stay in physical contact with one another. And then of course, a new lawyer and all these
people would have been new lawyers are very busy trying to establish themselves where they are.
And so if you're in Washington, DC, you have a whole law firm of people you need to get to know.
You have a whole neighborhood of people you need to get to know. You need to put your kids in
schools. It just becomes very, very busy. And it's harder to maintain a relationship with someone
back in the middle of the country, even if you really, really want to do that. So I will say,
first of all, it's difficult. Next, I would say that Ray gets was give or take a generation older
than all of the people in my class. He and we benefited from his significant private practice
in Chicago. But one of the consequences of that was that we were just a lot younger than he was.
And I am confident that let me close this door, Doug, and just I'll be right back.
I was saying that just the age gap between us and Ray, which was at least 20 years, I would say,
was another reason why it would be difficult even to form a mentor relationship, but certainly
difficult to sustain one once we graduated from law school. So I think if someone had had the good
fortune to graduate from KU and be admitted to the faculty, I think that those relationships
would have been very natural and would have continued. But for the people who left Lawrence
and went into private practice, it was just difficult. It doesn't reflect at all on Ray
gets and wouldn't reflect on any of the students either. It's just a situational thing.