Barb started law school in the fall of 1983. In October, she made the cover of the school paper, The Advocate, in a photo from a volleyball outing with a professor who would later become something of a nemesis, John Banzhaf (The Advocate misspelled his name – that can’t have gone over well).
We don’t have a lot of pictures of Barb at law school, but she did clip out these cartoons to reflect our sentiments of the time:
In May, 1984, on the occasion of our first anniversary, we went to Florida to visit Bill’s mom and dad and took a trip with them to Epcot, which had opened in October, 1982.
Walt joined us in summer of 1984. We have a longer page dedicated to Walt.
One of these summers around law school, Joe was able to get a week at his parents’ beach house in Corolla, North Carolina. They had built a house at what was then a new development called Ocean Sands, a bit south of the Corolla light house. There was some controversy over this development but when we were there it was an isolated, idyllic spot away from the clutter and development of Nags Head and Kitty Hawk. Joe and Betsy invited me and Fred down with them; for some reason Barb and Louise couldn’t come right away but I think drove down later for the weekend.
My memories were of several days wandering the big, empty beach in front of the house and playing golf with Joe at the Duck Woods course back in Kitty Hawk. Most especially, though, I remember one gorgeous evening on the deck of the house, listening to the waves and watching for shooting stars in the clear night sky with thousands of bright stars. We drank way too much wine and Joe and I started to serenade Fred with as many songs by John Prine, Little Feat and others that we could remember. Joe remembered way more lyrics than I did and we warbled together until late into the evening; there were no neighbors to disturb and Fred ate it all up, laughing at every clever turn of phrase. I think Betsy had long gone to bed.
I also remember being terrifically hung over the next day. I was mighty impressed that Joe got up very early to surf fish and seemed none worse for wear. I rolled around in bed until 11am or so, getting up to puke once or twice. Betsy was concerned that I’d taken ill, but I recovered well enough to welcome Barb later in the day. We didn’t have any more evenings quite like that. Sadly, the senior Embreys only kept that house for a few more years and we had no more time there on our own.
Fred’s ping pong trophy from SS President Cleveland
The Fairlington townhouse was two levels, with enough room on the bottom floor for a ping pong table. Fred fancied himself a ping pong (or table tennis, if you prefer) player from way back, having won a shipboard tournament crossing the Pacific on the SS President Cleveland on the way to Taiwan, I think. He brought over his trophy at some point to intimidate me. Fred and I developed a regular Sunday morning ritual of him coming for a spirited game — he was good but I would usually win — followed by a refreshing shandy and chat on the porch. Barb was always away, studying. It was a great chance to get to know Fred even better, and we had a fine time solving most of the world’s troubles each week.
One set of troubles we could never solve was getting Bert to use his box in the basement. Instead, he would pee on the carpet at the bottom of the steps. We tried all sorts of things to dissuade him, to no avail. It didn’t stop us from playing ping pong, however.
One weekend, Barb’s UVA friend, Patti Bowman, visited along with her husband Lee and new son, Jimmy. They arrived late Friday evening having driven straight from Pittsburgh where they lived at the time. We folded up the ping pong table and put them on a fold out sofa downstairs. After a few hours, at about 3am, Patti was frantically wheezing with an asthma attack in an allergic reaction to Bert and his domain. She had to leave and get a hotel. I think they may have had to stop at the Emergency Room along the way. I’d never seen anyone react so quickly and severely. Bert had some powerful pee.
Eventually, we decided that Bert needed to find another home. I came up with the clever idea of taking Bert to Florida to live with Sue and her kids. She agreed and we made a long road trip with Bert over several days, down to Marathon in the Keys. We stayed a few days and helped Bert acclimate. He seemed to be doing well and it was time for us to head back north. Within a few days we got a call from Sue that Bert was missing. There was another possible sighting or two over the next couple of weeks, but then no more. We like to think he found a nice retirement home, but suspect he more likely became gator bait (not really…there are no gators in the Keys…are there?).
When we moved out of the apartment after a couple of years, we lost our security deposit and had to pay extra to try to get the cat smell out of the carpet and concrete underneath. Our track record with cats was not really improving.
In October, Barb attended the opening of the new Law Library at GW and got to see Chief Justice Warren Burger, her first encounter with a Supreme.
We celebrated Louise’s birthday in November, 1984, along with guests and family friends from Dusseldorf, Mrs. Black and her son Jonty.
Fisher family shots featuring Betsy’s perm, with the Blacks.
Our 1984 Christmas picture with Walt and Bert!
Next Post: Law School Second Half, 1985-1986
Previous Post: After College, 1980-1983
You must be logged in to post a comment.