Thanks to a very generous endowment program, Rice is able to maintain a relatively low tuition compared to many other private universities, but the costs were still staggering to me. Of course, that meant I had to earn some money in a hurry.
That summer, my father helped me to get a job sweeping floors at the rice mill where he worked. To some people, the idea of sweeping floors might seem demeaning. After all, I had just completed four semesters on the dean’s list at the Air Force Academy, and I was soon to begin classes at one of the most prestigious and elite universities in the country. But to my father, any job that was not immoral or illegal was noble. I sucked up my ego and went to work. More than the income I earned, the job reminded me of the hard work and sacrifices my parents had made for my siblings and me. As a small concession to my pride, I placed a Rice University sticker on the windshield of my car. I wanted my coworkers at the mill to know: I may be sweeping floors, but I am a college student! At Rice, no less.
The Rice Institute was the brainchild of William Marsh Rice, a wealthy entrepreneur who made a fortune in the cotton trade and other businesses. Rice envisioned a world-class university created for the advancement of science, art, and literature. At his death in September 1900, per his wishes, much of his wealth was placed in a financial trust established to provide a tuition-free education to academically excellent Caucasian students—Hispanics, African Americans, and other nonwhites were excluded. For more than sixty years, the university operated on that basis. In 1965, the Rice Board of Trustees filed a lawsuit seeking to allow Rice to admit students without regard to race. Because of William Rice’s stipulations, the only way to do so was to break the financial trust. The board chose racial equality over the money, resulting in Rice University charging students tuition, but students who looked like me could now attend.
The campus itself is comprised of magnificent Neo-Byzantine architecture with red-tile roofs atop buildings of rose-hued brick. It is situated on 285 acres of land next to the Houston Medical Center in the heart of the city. Yet because the campus is entirely enclosed by hedges and a double row of oak trees, students often refer to “life within the hedges.” I loved walking through the beautiful tree-lined campus. Stepping inside the hedges felt almost as though I were visiting an exotic location in another part of the country.
Rice is known as a top-notch engineering school, and the curriculum is loaded with math- and science-related subjects. With those courses not my strongest suits, I was grateful when I learned that during my two years at the Air Force Academy, I had already satisfied my math and science requirements, so I was free to explore other areas of interest at Rice. I chose a political science major because I was fascinated by comparisons between the American system of government and those of other countries. Although Kent State, Watergate, and the Vietnam War continued to cast long shadows over many American college campuses, I refused to buy into the cynicism shared by many of my fellow collegians and professors. On the other hand, I did not feel it was incumbent upon me to rally the troops to help save the republic. Perhaps because I was a few years older than many of the other students, having already served in the military, I didn’t get caught up in much of the student activism that was rampant in academia. For the most part, I steered clear of campus controversies and focused on my studies.
By the end of my first year at Rice, I was convinced that law school was for me. In the fall of 1978, I applied to six law schools, including Harvard and Yale. Why not? I thought. I believed by now that anything was possible. Moreover, I felt fairly sure that I would be an attractive candidate for law school. After all, I was an air force veteran, an honors student at a prestigious university, and a Hispanic from a southern state. Besides, what did I have to lose?
By March 1979, I received my first acceptance letter. And then another. And another. Before the end of May, all six schools—including Harvard and Yale—responded positively, not only accepting me to their law schools, but offering generous scholarship and loan packages as well. I now faced another potentially life-changing decision, with few close advisors to whom I could turn for wisdom.
During that school year, I’d worked as a messenger at Hutcheson & Grundy, a respected medium-size downtown law firm in Houston. In conversations with some of the attorneys there, I asked for their advice.
“I’ve been accepted at both Harvard and Yale,” I said. “If it were you, which would you pick?” The attorneys looked at me as if I were joking. What? The messenger boy? Accepted at Harvard and Yale? Most of the lawyers working there had not graduated from Ivy League law schools.
Once I convinced them that I had, indeed, been accepted at both storied schools with distinguished law pedigrees, the attorneys usually concurred: mine was an enviable position, and I couldn’t go wrong, regardless which school I chose. That didn’t help a bit, but I appreciated their input. Nor could my parents offer much insight about my decision, as neither one of them had finished high school, much less gone to college.
I had never visited either of my two front-running schools, so I was excited about attending school in a new environment. I was attracted to the relatively small size of Yale’s student body, but something about living in the Cambridge/ Boston area appealed to me even more. I made my decision based not on academics or esteemed faculty members, but primarily on geography. I felt living in Boston for three years would be more enjoyable than living in New Haven, Connecticut, so I said yes to Harvard’s offer with the full intention of returning home to Texas to practice law. In the meantime, I would be a Harvard man.
A few months later, I received my bachelor of arts degree from Rice, graduating with honors in my political science major. My parents attended my graduation ceremony, the first time either of them had ever set foot on a college campus. My father was uneasy with all the pomp and circumstance, but my mother beamed with pride. Her son had not only graduated from high school, here I was graduating from a university. “I could never have imagined this!” she said quietly over and over. And to top it off, I was going to law school—not just any law school, but Harvard Law School. My mother had loved school as a little girl, and although she had no real concept of what it meant to attend Harvard, she knew it was a big deal. I was proud to be her son. It was my graduation, but in many ways, it was her day.
Years later, I often watched with amusement as reporters asked my mother what it was like to have one of her children escape poverty, grow up to attend Harvard, and become the attorney general of the United States. “Aren’t you proud of your son?” the reporters probed.
“I’m proud of all my children,” my mother responded.
That’s a mom.
The reporters always nodded in agreement at Mom’s perfect response.
CHAPTER 5
CRIMSON PRIDE
Diane and I had become more serious in our relationship during my last semester at the Air Force Academy, so when I moved back to Houston, she soon followed and got a job there. Shortly after I graduated from Rice University, Diane and I married in a small Protestant ceremony at a church in north Houston.
We had barely returned from our honeymoon when it was time to pack up a U-Haul trailer hitched to Diane’s old Pontiac LeMans and make the 1,800-mile drive to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August 1979. After days of fruitless searching for housing, we arrived at a low-income government high-rise known as Rindge Towers at Fresh Pond, a dirty, roach-infested residence. Trash littered the halls and the parking lot. But Diane and I were out of options and begged the manager to allow us to live there for a year. The landlord must have seen the looks of desperation in our eyes, because he finally relented and agreed to lease an apartment to us.
Diane got a job as a paralegal in a small Boston law firm, so she drove the car to work, while I rode a ten-speed bicycle her parents had given us. As I pedaled my bike up the tree-lined sidewalk and stopped for the first time in front of the steps of Langdell Hall, the majestic law library on the Harvard campus—replete with old stone column
s, huge paneled windows, and ivy growing up the walls of the stately building, just as I had seen it in photographs—the full force of the miracle of my being there suddenly struck me: I am going to Harvard Law School! Unbelievable. It was a moment I have never forgotten.
I had read Scott Turow’s book One L, in which he chronicled his first year of law school, and I had watched the movie Paper Chase, about a first-year law student at Harvard, so I thought I knew what to expect. But nothing could have prepared me for going to class in Harvard’s historic Austin Hall, a red-stoned building built in a Romanesque Revival style, the initial home of Harvard Law School. I enjoyed learning the law in the old-fashioned Socratic method, a style of teaching in which, rather than lecturing, the professors asked evocative questions that stimulated debate and demanded critical thinking. Students were expected to be prepared, ready with meaningful and correct answers to the professor’s questions, based on their reading of legal cases involving the subject matter.
Shortly after moving into Rindge Towers, we awakened one morning to discover that somebody had stolen our car, parked outside the apartment. We were disappointed but not entirely surprised, considering the environment in which we were living. We couldn’t afford to buy another car, but Boston has a good mass transit system, so Diane rode the bus and then the train to and from Harvard Square to work, and I continued riding my bike to and from campus.
Harvard provided me with a helpful financial package of scholarships and loans, and part of my tuition and other expenses were defrayed by my GI benefits, but we still fell far short of what we needed. After my first year, I got a summer job clerking at the regional Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Boston. When classes resumed, I continued to work part-time at the EPA.
Many of my fellow Harvard Law School students had sufficient financial resources that they did not have to work. I didn’t, so I was glad for the job. It was difficult to balance my studies—law school demands so much reading—along with marriage and working a part-time job, but I felt it was worth it. Diane and I were young and we believed that our temporary sacrifices would lead to long-term success, so we did whatever we had to do to make things work.
Maybe because we were so busy trying to survive, we allowed our church attendance to take a backseat. We dropped into services occasionally, but church was less of a priority; we made little effort to improve our lives spiritually and engaged in few spiritual activities with friends in our social circles. That was a mistake. Although we didn’t recognize it at the time, neglecting our spiritual lives starved essential elements of our relationship that had attracted us to each other in the first place.
Rather than becoming involved in a local church congregation, our closest friends were fellow male Harvard students and their wives. Fortunately, they were mostly salt-of-the-earth types, Midwesterners who planned to return to their home states after earning their law degrees. Few of these friends confessed to having aspirations to become involved politically, nor did I. Most of us simply wanted to return home and stake out a comfortable career in law. Had someone jokingly suggested, “Can you imagine Al Gonzales as the White House counsel, or the attorney general of the United States?” it would seem improbable.
Diane and I enjoyed doing things together with other married couples, as well as going to Red Sox baseball games at Boston’s famous Fenway Park, a childhood dream come true for me. We loved touring the many picturesque and historic sites in the Boston area, and after a year of living in Rindge Towers, we were excited to find a nice, one-bedroom apartment on Concord Avenue near the Radcliff Quadrangle, which was home to three upperclassmen residence buildings. This quad was between Harvard and Porter Squares, surrounding a beautiful lawn where students often studied or simply relaxed outdoors in warm weather. I was glad to be closer to campus, and both Diane and I were relieved to be out of the low-income housing in which we had been living.
Diane remained working in Boston while I went back to Houston during the summer following my second year of law school so I could work at jobs clerking for two blue-blood Houston law firms. We hoped to return to Houston after I graduated.
I began my last year at Harvard in the fall of 1981. I used my spare time to fill out job applications for law firms back in Houston. I was pleased when I received an offer for a full-time position as a transactional lawyer with Vinson & Elkins, one of the most prestigious law firms in Houston; I had clerked for them the previous summer. I still had six months of law school to complete, but I accepted the opportunity at V&E, so we knew where we’d be going once I graduated.
I was back in school on Friday afternoon, January 22, 1982, and Diane and I were about to go out to dinner when we received a call from my sister Angie in Houston. My father and a coworker had been working on the roof of a fifty-foot-high rice silo when my dad slipped and lost his footing. He plummeted to the cement-surfaced parking lot below. His buddies raced to his aid and found him still alive, but with multiple critical injuries, including what doctors would later describe as several broken bones and a fractured pelvis.
When medical help arrived, they immediately called for a LifeFlight helicopter to transfer my father to the hospital. Whether on the ground or in the chopper, I don’t know, but my father’s injuries caused him to experience heart seizures.
While the medical team attended to my father, a representative from the rice mill company called to inform my mother, picked her up, and then raced across town to the hospital. My father was still breathing when Mom arrived, but he had already been taken into surgery, so she didn’t get to see him or talk with him.
My father passed away on the operating table, without even an opportunity to say good-bye. He had died the way he had lived—working hard to provide for his family.
I hung up the phone, stunned. It was hard to fathom that my dad—strong, healthy, vibrant, and vigorous at fifty-two years of age—was no longer alive. I wanted to reach out to him, to talk with him, to tell him that I loved him. But he was gone. There was so much we had left unsaid, so much I wanted to know about him, so much I had hoped to share with him about me, so many conversations we’d never have. A heavy sadness fell over me like a soaking wet blanket, weighing me down. Diane tried her best to console me, but this was new territory for both of us. After a while, I forced myself to straighten up, and as quickly as we could catch a flight, Diane and I flew home to Houston for the funeral.
Staring at my father in the casket, I was most struck by his hands. They were the hands that had held me as a baby; hands that had helped me carve a model canoe out of a tree limb; hands that could build anything. They were callused, strong hands, full of grace and character.
A number of my father’s coworkers attended the funeral. Similar to my father and mother, most of them were poor, yet they collected several hundred dollars and presented the money along with their condolences to my mother. The man who had been working alongside my father when he fell literally wept at the graveside; he was so distraught that he had been unable to save his friend.
All of my siblings except for our brother Rene were there for the funeral. Rene had been killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was eighteen. Rene had struggled with alcohol and drug problems and had dropped out of high school. Prior to the tragedy, we had not heard from him in a while. We only learned about his death when the newspaper printed a sketch of his face and asked the public for help identifying this unknown person.
I pondered then and many times afterward on what had made the difference in my brother’s life and my own. Rene had a bright smile and was fiercely competitive on the baseball field. We both had the same DNA, yet we had made different choices. Perhaps my father’s drinking influenced Rene’s life in different ways than it had mine.
Diane and I stayed in Houston for a few days following my father’s funeral, talking with my siblings and making sure my mother would be well cared for. Because it was a work-related accident, she would receive workman’s compensation, but we were still concern
ed about her financial well-being. Our older sister, Angie, chose to stay at the family home with Mom. We tried to cover as many details as possible in a short period of time, but knowing that I would soon be returning to Houston to practice law helped ease my concerns for how Mom would survive.
I tried to encourage my mother as Diane and I headed to the airport: “We’ll be back in a few months, Mom.” She hugged me good-bye and tried to smile. She was a strong woman, strong in her faith and strong in her love for family.
We returned to Cambridge, and I threw myself into my studies, anxious to complete my academic education and get back home. More than ever, the lessons I had learned from my father propelled me to pursue my dreams. It had been a good experience at Harvard, but I was excited to start a new adventure, practicing law and hopefully earning a good income.
My brother Paul and sister Christina flew to Boston to visit and helped Diane and me pack up our belongings once again, prior to the long drive back to Texas. I graduated from Harvard Law School in the spring of 1982. I was so glad to be going home, I did not even stay to attend my graduation ceremony. Twenty years would pass before I returned to campus as the Harvard Law School “Class Day” speaker and to receive the Harvard Law School Association Award, the group’s highest award given to a Harvard graduate.
CHAPTER 6
A PARTY TO CALL HOME
Vinson & Elkins boasted a distinguished reputation for excellence in law and business circles. Long before law firm mergers became commonplace, V&E employed hundreds of lawyers with multiple offices in Texas, Washington, DC, and a few foreign countries.
I joined the firm as part of the business/real estate/energy group, working on business mergers and acquisitions, the purchase and sale of stock or assets of companies, commercial real estate leasing and sales, and corporate and partnership transactions. The ventures with which I was helping often involved millions of dollars and allowed no room for mistakes. The work was fascinating but demanding. We worked long hours—my first week on the job, we were closing a large transaction, so I didn’t get home until the wee hours of the morning every single night—but the diversity of challenges and the talent of the V&E legal team made my chosen career more fulfilling than I had imagined.
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