Thank you Professor Weigel

In the development of my legal career, I have been blessed with awesome role models. One of my first role models was Professor Charles Weigel. Professor Weigel passed away this week. We will miss you so much, Professor. We were extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to learn from him.

I was Professor's research assistant. We developed the Child Abuse Nurse Examiner Program together. He was more than a mentor or professor though, he was like an all-knowing, all-caring, all-accepting of faults, grandfather. In our time together, he taught me that the legal profession can be the noblest and most influential calling. He showed me that the greatest lawyers are still the most humble people.

He read me this poem when we were working in the office. He said he believes that it describes attorneys.

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundation stay;
What God abandoned, These defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

– A.E. Housman

I too believe that these words describe attorneys. Attorneys who are called into service for others, who hold up the sky for them. The responsibility is great, and the reward is given according to a non-traditional scale. But how awesome is it that the world relies on our strength of spirit, of character, and of mind to hold up the sky. This poem describes Professor Weigel.

Thank you professor for teaching me this and for so many other things. We loved you very much.