Who's That With Charlie?. Charles S. Mechem

got a job offer from the highly respected Cincinnati firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, and, upon graduation, we headed back to Ohio.

      In the Yale Law School library.

      CHAPTER VI

      Back in Ohio

      THE FIRST ORDER of business when we got back home to Ohio was to study for, take, and hopefully pass the Ohio State Bar Examination. This was a three-day ordeal upon which, literally, your entire future rested. Technically, in those days, if you failed in your first effort, you could take the exam again. But, obviously, a failure on your record was not calculated to enhance your career opportunities! I frankly admit that I was traumatized by the enormity of the Bar Exam. I found it very hard to focus, and, as the day approached, my nerves were increasingly frayed. I even contemplated postponing taking the exam until another time, but my father put me straight on this in a hurry. He insisted that I stop being a “wuss” and go forward with the exam. He was right. It was a very good lesson for me at a relatively early age. Postponing dealing with major decisions or challenges only makes them more difficult to deal with and undermines your confidence in your own abilities.

      To make a long story short, I took the exam, passed it, and officially joined the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister. Though it is hard to imagine now, I was only the twentieth lawyer on the firm’s letterhead. Today there are more than 250. There are only two of us left of that original twenty.

      Robert Taft, Jr., later to become a United States Senator in the footsteps of his distinguished father, was a good friend of our family and took me under his wing from day one. I remember him showing me into my small, spare office, and giving me my first assignment. I have often laughed to myself that that was the last time my desk has ever been totally free of papers!

      My time at the firm was limited because I knew that I would be drafted into the Army within a year. Indeed, I entered the service in the late winter of 1956. However, my seven months at the law firm before entering the Army were challenging, exciting, and extremely intense. I was assigned to the senior partner in charge of the corporate department, a man named John Bullock. He was a brilliant and demanding boss from whom I learned a tremendous amount, not only about the law, but also how to deal with and relate to clients.

      My experiences over the months before I went into the Army were quite varied. In a small firm, you are required to do a variety of things. However, there was one especially memorable episode. There was a case that had been around the office for years. It involved an attempt by the U.S. government to collect a significant sum of money from one of our clients, arguing that this was money owed by our client to a German company, Maschinenfabrik Augsberg-Nürnberg,* and could be appropriated by the U.S. government because of Germany’s status as an “enemy nation” during World War II. Although every young lawyer who came into the firm was given the case, nothing really happened for some years. But, as fate would have it, shortly after I was assigned to the case, the government became aggressive. This had nothing to do with me but rather with the government’s need to accelerate the case so as not to be precluded by the statute of limitations. My boss called me into his office one day and said, “Charlie, I need you to go to Germany and review all the files of the German company to see if there is any way we can defend against the government’s claim.” Needless to say, I was overwhelmed. First of all, neither Marilyn nor I had ever been out of the country, and, further, I had been handed a big and challenging assignment.

      I could write a chapter on this case alone, but suffice it to say, Marilyn and I went to Germany, and I had the great good fortune to find some documents in the files of the German company that became a complete defense to the government’s claim, and the case was dismissed. Again, luck played a significant part in my success. I was given full access to the files at MAN, but was warned that most of the records had been destroyed in the bombings of World War II. However, some documents that were in a safe had survived. In going through these documents (which, of course, were all in German) I found a ledger page which appeared to show that the amount of money owed by my client to MAN had been written off. I excitedly asked my German interpreter to ask the financial people whether the document indeed reflected a write-off. The answer was yes, and the reason was fascinating. It is hard to imagine that any company would bother, in the midst of the destruction of Nazi Germany, to do the actual bookkeeping needed to void the debt. But, it was explained to me that the financial people had concluded that, because of the war, there was no hope of ever collecting the debt and with classic German precision, they simply wrote it off! Therefore, they were able to give me a sworn affidavit that their records showed no money owed them by Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton!

      After finishing my work in Germany, Marilyn and I went to Paris, where we spent several incredible days. Since we had very little money, we scrimped and saved but still had a wonderful time. Ironically, when we got home, my client was so pleased with the result of the trip that it paid all our expenses in France! If we had only known!

      In February of 1956, the time came for me to enter the service, and I did so without qualms. Of course, I hated leaving my family and my law practice, which I had enjoyed immensely, but in those days you expected to serve in the armed forces and you simply regarded it as part of your obligation as a citizen.

      I had no idea how much I would actually enjoy my time in the service or how rewarding it would be. That’s the next chapter. But let me first tell you about one of my most humbling moments as a young lawyer.

      WHEN I JOINED Taft Stettinius & Hollister in July 1955, everyone knew that I would only be there for a few months before I entered the service. There was certainly no point in hiring a secretary for me for that short period of time. The solution that the firm came up with was logical and reasonable but, for me, very unsettling! The senior partner and a founder of the firm, John Hollister, had been named to President Eisenhower’s Cabinet and had, of course, moved to Washington. Thus, his secretary (in today’s world she would be called executive assistant, a much more accurate phrase in my view), a delightful Auntie Mame–type personality named Doris Voorhees, had no boss. So the firm assigned her to me so that we would both be satisfied. I was certainly satisfied—and terrified! I don’t know how Doris felt about it.

      The first time I had reason to dictate a letter (which I had never in my life done before), I asked Doris to come into my office. She arrived with steno pad in hand and I commenced. When I finished I felt rather proud of my effort. Doris had other thoughts. She sat back in her chair, looked at the notes that she had taken, and said, “Well, that was a little gem, wasn’t it!” It was neither the first nor the last time that I realized that I was not nearly as good as I thought I was. There is a delightful postscript to this story. Many years later when I was CEO of Taft Broadcasting Company and, incidentally, had probably dictated five thousand letters over the years, I was asked to speak to a women’s club in a northern suburb of Cincinnati. When I arrived I was thrilled to see that Doris Voorhees was a member and she was sitting in the first row. So, I obviously had to tell the story and I did it with great relish. Everyone laughed, including Doris, but she did so with a very red face! Doris Voorhees was an extraordinary person—bright, funny, and irreverent. I could not have had a better secretary to launch me on my way.

      Next stop—the United States Army!

      CHAPTER VII

      The Army

      MY THREE YEARS in the Army turned out, to my considerable surprise, to be three of the most interesting and rewarding years of my life. My obligation under the draft was only for two years, but I learned that if I enlisted for three years I could choose my assignment after basic training.* I decided to do this and chose the Counter Intelligence Corps. It meant another year in the service, but it turned out to be the right decision.

      It all started with a train ride from Cincinnati to my basic training location at Fort Leonard